I currently have an Acer Spin 5 I bought like 3 years ago. It’s an awesome little machine. I use it every day to code on, and once in a while I’ll do some graphic design work on it where I need the pen support. The pen it comes with is too small to be comfortable, so I use a Dell active pen. Everything works on it out of the box except the fingerprint reader. I don’t use fingerprint readers anyway, but there is a way to get it working.
There is a way to recover it. You can use a root shell aka recovery shell (usually available through your GRUB menu) to change the permissions on your home directory. But just reinstalling was probably easier anyway.
I created a new email service that prevents spam and organized your email. If it works out and I become successful, I can imagine Google trying to buy it, and if I say no, all of a sudden Gmail starts having issues receiving mail from my service. Gmail and Exchange together share about 70% of the business email market, so they can destroy smaller competitors if they aren’t willing to sell. Yay capitalism!