Acer Aspire OneDon't expect these to rival the Sony UX series, Sony Vaio TZ or other high end ultra-portables. That said, they offer plenty of computing power for web surfing, email, MS Office work and youtube viewing. Both the Linux and Windows XP models run on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and have a gloss 8.9" 1024 x 600 pixel LED backlit color display with Intel integrated GMA 950 graphics (remember the GMA 950 from a few generations ago on regular notebooks?). The display is very sharp and easy to read despite the relatively small size, and it's quite bright (it seems even brighter thanks to the black bezel). There's Atheros WiFi 802.11b/g but no Bluetooth, stereo speakers, and a webcam + mic that work very well with Skype.
The XP version has a generous 120 gig hard drive (a 160 gig model is coming now that Microsoft allows XP factory installations on up to 160 gig machines instead of capping it at 120 gigs). The Linux version has an 8 gig SSD drive and it can use one of the two built-in card reader slots to expand storage using an SD card. We'll take a large hard drive over a cramped, though more power-efficient flash drive any day, but currently there's no conventional hard drive option for the Linux model (sorry penguin-heads). The drive is a standard 9.5mm tall, t2.5" serial ATA notebook drive running at 5400 RPM (ours was a Seagate Momentus) which is a step up from ultralights that use smaller but much slower ATA 1.8" hard drives.
The XP machine has 1 gig of PC-4200 DDR2 RAM and the Linux model has 512 megs of RAM. There's 512 megs of RAM soldered on the motherboard and one standard SODIMM slot. Max memory is 1.5 gigs, but the bad news is you literally have to take apart the entire machine to access the SODIMM slot. There is no RAM access door on the bottom of the notebook, and the slot faces the bottom.
The Aspire One is available in Sapphire Blue and Seashell White, both of which are attractive. We like the gloss finish and overall "real notebook" build quality that compares well to the cheaper looking Eee PC, and the 89% of full size keyboard that's a tad larger than the 8.9" Eee's 84% keyboard. Either way, you'll have to adjust to the smaller keyboard, but that's not hard to do unless you've got really big paws. The keyboard has 4 arrow keys, page up/down keys and a row of Fn keys. The trackpad's mouse buttons flank each side of the trackpad, which is a little weird. The Aspire One doesn't have enough real estate to fit the buttons below the trackpad. The Aspire One is very similar in size to the Eee PC 8.9" model, and is smaller than HP's Mini-Note. At 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.25 inches, it will fit easily in a large purse, gear bag or briefcase.
Clearly, the hard drive is as fast as current standard notebook drives, memory speeds are what we'd expect from older generation chipsets and a 533MHz front side bus, and the CPU is passable (fine for XP and Linux but not good enough for Vista). The graphics numbers tell us that we won't be playing any 3D killer games, but the machine is fine for video playback, Tetris and the like.
SoftwareThe Windows XP version ships with Windows XP Home Edition, service pack 3. It comes with Adobe Reader 8, a full version of MS Works 8.5 and a 60 day MS Office 2007 trial. Surprisingly, WinDVD 5 is included, though the machine lacks an optical drive/DVD drive. You can however use any external CD/DVD drive to watch movies, install software or rip music. Thankfully, there's no bloatware! The machine has a restore partition and you can re-install applications and drivers, or re-install the OS and apps back to the factory state. Overall, we were impressed with the system's stability and the quality of the drivers. We didn't run into little driver-related quirks as we did with the Eee PC and it was clear and easy to figure out how to use Acer's restore software. A quick start guide and full PDF manual are pre-installed on the notebook.
Since this is a full Windows XP machine, you get the usual batch of Microsoft software including Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player (both older versions that you should update via Windows Update), Windows Movie Maker and more. Acer includes viewers for PowerPoint and viewers that handle MS Office 2007 files should you decide to ditch MS Office and stick with MS Works or another Office suite. Music playback through the integrated stereo speakers that live just above the keyboard was surprisingly decent, and sound through headphones was obviously much better. The machine has RealTek HD audio hardware, and a built-in mic (you can use an external mic if you wish). We were pleasantly surprised at how well Skype ran for video calls: our outgoing video looked sharp and bright and the built-in mic sounded good with no echo or volume issues. Nice!
Battery
Being impossibly portable, we'd love it if the Acer also ran for hours upon hours on a charge. Alas, with the standard 3 cell battery, it runs about 2.5 hours with WiFi on and screen brightness set to 65%. Not horrid, but not impressive either. A 160 gig version of the Aspire One with a 6 cell battery is in the works and it will sell for $399. That's a bargain considering that the 6 cell battery sells for just over a $100, nearly a third of the 120 gig notebook's price.Happily, the included 110-240v AC power brick is light and compact. There's nothing worse than buying a tiny computer only to discover the power brick is unwieldy.
ConclusionThe Acer Aspire One is the best buy among netbooks at the moment. It's got good performance, solid build quality and good looks. The features for the price beat ASUS, Dell and HP. At $349, portable computing just got more affordable. And for those who aren't budget-constrained, the Acer is one cool ultraportable that's perfect for vacations, the living room sofa or anyplace else you want to use a small, light computer. The screen is sharp and bright, there are plenty of ports for common peripheral and lots of disk space for photos, video and music. We're particularly pleased with Skype video call performance, making the Aspire One a very affordable free-call and video conference machine.
Specs:
Display: 8.9" Acer CrystalBrite, LED backlit, gloss display. 1024 x 600 resolution (can drive external monitors and projectors at higher resolutions via VGA port). Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics with up to 224 megs shared memory.
Battery: 3 cell, 2200 mAh, 24 watt Lithium Ion rechargeable. 6 cell battery available (57 watt, 2600 mAh). Compact world (100-240V AC) power brick included.
Performance: 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor. Intel 945 Express chipset. 1 gig DDR2 533MHz RAM (1 meg soldered to motherboard, one 512 meg SODIMM in slot). Max RAM: 1.5 gigs (must take machine apart to access the DIMM slot though). 120 gig SATA hard drive (2.5" standard notebook drive, 9.5mm height). Ours is a Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM drive. The Linux version has 512 megs of RAM and an 8 gig SSD flash drive.
Size: 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.25 inches. Weight: 2.19 pounds with standard 3 cell battery.
Camera: 0.3MP Acer Crystal Eye webcam.
Audio: HD audio, Built in stereo speakers, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder and Windows Pocket Media Player 10 included for your MP3 pleasure.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and 10/100 Ethernet. Atheros AR5007EG wireless and RealTek RTL8102E PCI-E Ethernet NIC.
Ports: VGA, 3 USB 2.0, RJ45 Ethernet, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and mic jack.
Software: Windows XP Home Edition. MS Works 8.5, WinDVD 5, 60 day MS Office 2007 trial, Adobe Reader 8.
Expansion: 1 SD (Secure Digital) slot intended for storage expansion (this carries over from the Linux model which has only 8 gigs of storage). 5-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, RS-MMC, xD Picture Card, Memory Stick). Supports SDHC high capacity cards.
The XP version has a generous 120 gig hard drive (a 160 gig model is coming now that Microsoft allows XP factory installations on up to 160 gig machines instead of capping it at 120 gigs). The Linux version has an 8 gig SSD drive and it can use one of the two built-in card reader slots to expand storage using an SD card. We'll take a large hard drive over a cramped, though more power-efficient flash drive any day, but currently there's no conventional hard drive option for the Linux model (sorry penguin-heads). The drive is a standard 9.5mm tall, t2.5" serial ATA notebook drive running at 5400 RPM (ours was a Seagate Momentus) which is a step up from ultralights that use smaller but much slower ATA 1.8" hard drives.
The XP machine has 1 gig of PC-4200 DDR2 RAM and the Linux model has 512 megs of RAM. There's 512 megs of RAM soldered on the motherboard and one standard SODIMM slot. Max memory is 1.5 gigs, but the bad news is you literally have to take apart the entire machine to access the SODIMM slot. There is no RAM access door on the bottom of the notebook, and the slot faces the bottom.
The Aspire One is available in Sapphire Blue and Seashell White, both of which are attractive. We like the gloss finish and overall "real notebook" build quality that compares well to the cheaper looking Eee PC, and the 89% of full size keyboard that's a tad larger than the 8.9" Eee's 84% keyboard. Either way, you'll have to adjust to the smaller keyboard, but that's not hard to do unless you've got really big paws. The keyboard has 4 arrow keys, page up/down keys and a row of Fn keys. The trackpad's mouse buttons flank each side of the trackpad, which is a little weird. The Aspire One doesn't have enough real estate to fit the buttons below the trackpad. The Aspire One is very similar in size to the Eee PC 8.9" model, and is smaller than HP's Mini-Note. At 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.25 inches, it will fit easily in a large purse, gear bag or briefcase.
Clearly, the hard drive is as fast as current standard notebook drives, memory speeds are what we'd expect from older generation chipsets and a 533MHz front side bus, and the CPU is passable (fine for XP and Linux but not good enough for Vista). The graphics numbers tell us that we won't be playing any 3D killer games, but the machine is fine for video playback, Tetris and the like.
SoftwareThe Windows XP version ships with Windows XP Home Edition, service pack 3. It comes with Adobe Reader 8, a full version of MS Works 8.5 and a 60 day MS Office 2007 trial. Surprisingly, WinDVD 5 is included, though the machine lacks an optical drive/DVD drive. You can however use any external CD/DVD drive to watch movies, install software or rip music. Thankfully, there's no bloatware! The machine has a restore partition and you can re-install applications and drivers, or re-install the OS and apps back to the factory state. Overall, we were impressed with the system's stability and the quality of the drivers. We didn't run into little driver-related quirks as we did with the Eee PC and it was clear and easy to figure out how to use Acer's restore software. A quick start guide and full PDF manual are pre-installed on the notebook.
Since this is a full Windows XP machine, you get the usual batch of Microsoft software including Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player (both older versions that you should update via Windows Update), Windows Movie Maker and more. Acer includes viewers for PowerPoint and viewers that handle MS Office 2007 files should you decide to ditch MS Office and stick with MS Works or another Office suite. Music playback through the integrated stereo speakers that live just above the keyboard was surprisingly decent, and sound through headphones was obviously much better. The machine has RealTek HD audio hardware, and a built-in mic (you can use an external mic if you wish). We were pleasantly surprised at how well Skype ran for video calls: our outgoing video looked sharp and bright and the built-in mic sounded good with no echo or volume issues. Nice!
Battery
Being impossibly portable, we'd love it if the Acer also ran for hours upon hours on a charge. Alas, with the standard 3 cell battery, it runs about 2.5 hours with WiFi on and screen brightness set to 65%. Not horrid, but not impressive either. A 160 gig version of the Aspire One with a 6 cell battery is in the works and it will sell for $399. That's a bargain considering that the 6 cell battery sells for just over a $100, nearly a third of the 120 gig notebook's price.Happily, the included 110-240v AC power brick is light and compact. There's nothing worse than buying a tiny computer only to discover the power brick is unwieldy.
ConclusionThe Acer Aspire One is the best buy among netbooks at the moment. It's got good performance, solid build quality and good looks. The features for the price beat ASUS, Dell and HP. At $349, portable computing just got more affordable. And for those who aren't budget-constrained, the Acer is one cool ultraportable that's perfect for vacations, the living room sofa or anyplace else you want to use a small, light computer. The screen is sharp and bright, there are plenty of ports for common peripheral and lots of disk space for photos, video and music. We're particularly pleased with Skype video call performance, making the Aspire One a very affordable free-call and video conference machine.
Specs:
Display: 8.9" Acer CrystalBrite, LED backlit, gloss display. 1024 x 600 resolution (can drive external monitors and projectors at higher resolutions via VGA port). Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics with up to 224 megs shared memory.
Battery: 3 cell, 2200 mAh, 24 watt Lithium Ion rechargeable. 6 cell battery available (57 watt, 2600 mAh). Compact world (100-240V AC) power brick included.
Performance: 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor. Intel 945 Express chipset. 1 gig DDR2 533MHz RAM (1 meg soldered to motherboard, one 512 meg SODIMM in slot). Max RAM: 1.5 gigs (must take machine apart to access the DIMM slot though). 120 gig SATA hard drive (2.5" standard notebook drive, 9.5mm height). Ours is a Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM drive. The Linux version has 512 megs of RAM and an 8 gig SSD flash drive.
Size: 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.25 inches. Weight: 2.19 pounds with standard 3 cell battery.
Camera: 0.3MP Acer Crystal Eye webcam.
Audio: HD audio, Built in stereo speakers, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder and Windows Pocket Media Player 10 included for your MP3 pleasure.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b/g and 10/100 Ethernet. Atheros AR5007EG wireless and RealTek RTL8102E PCI-E Ethernet NIC.
Ports: VGA, 3 USB 2.0, RJ45 Ethernet, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and mic jack.
Software: Windows XP Home Edition. MS Works 8.5, WinDVD 5, 60 day MS Office 2007 trial, Adobe Reader 8.
Expansion: 1 SD (Secure Digital) slot intended for storage expansion (this carries over from the Linux model which has only 8 gigs of storage). 5-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, RS-MMC, xD Picture Card, Memory Stick). Supports SDHC high capacity cards.
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