OK... loving my Acer Aspire One netbook!
Category Acer Aspire One netbook
As I've twittered recently, I was sucked into buying an Acer Aspire One netbook from buy.com last week when it came across in an email ad for only $329. I've contemplated going the netbook route before, but some of the specs put me off. Like, do I *really* want to live with an 8GB hard drive? No... I don't care how light it might be. I want to be able to surf the web, do email, and work on writing projects without being concerned about disk space. And if I want to rip a DVD down to ISO format and play it, then I need space.
The Acer is the first machine that had specs I could live with!
1 GB of RAM was a nice starter, as was it being loaded with Windows XP (sorry, still not quite ready to jump to Linux yet). It's just slightly over 2 pounds, so I couldn't complain about the weight. It has a normal keyboard in the 9+ inch package, and with my small hands it's not hard to make the shift. Screen resolution is 1024 x 600, so I give up nothing side-to-side, and not a whole lot from top to bottom. The clincher was the hard drive... 160GB. *That* I can live with... It even has a webcam built in!
Battery life seems to be exceptional, also. I haven't yet charged it fully and tried to run it down with a DVD or something. But I did take it to work today, set it on minimal power management, and used it to take notes throughout the day. When I got home, I still had 75% of the battery left, something over 4 hours worth. Can't complain there... It boots up quickly from hibernate mode, too. Only about 5 to 7 seconds from opening the lid and hitting the power button, to being at the XP user screen.
Overall, this is one nice little package that I'm quickly falling in love with. When we go on our cruise next month, I can leave nearly 10 pounds of laptop, power adapter, and other paraphernalia behind. About 3 pounds of netbook is all I'll need to keep in touch with life (and the kids) via email and the web.
If you've been waiting to get something like this, wondering if and when the time would be right to jump in, I think your time has just arrived...
As I've twittered recently, I was sucked into buying an Acer Aspire One netbook from buy.com last week when it came across in an email ad for only $329. I've contemplated going the netbook route before, but some of the specs put me off. Like, do I *really* want to live with an 8GB hard drive? No... I don't care how light it might be. I want to be able to surf the web, do email, and work on writing projects without being concerned about disk space. And if I want to rip a DVD down to ISO format and play it, then I need space.
The Acer is the first machine that had specs I could live with!
1 GB of RAM was a nice starter, as was it being loaded with Windows XP (sorry, still not quite ready to jump to Linux yet). It's just slightly over 2 pounds, so I couldn't complain about the weight. It has a normal keyboard in the 9+ inch package, and with my small hands it's not hard to make the shift. Screen resolution is 1024 x 600, so I give up nothing side-to-side, and not a whole lot from top to bottom. The clincher was the hard drive... 160GB. *That* I can live with... It even has a webcam built in!
Battery life seems to be exceptional, also. I haven't yet charged it fully and tried to run it down with a DVD or something. But I did take it to work today, set it on minimal power management, and used it to take notes throughout the day. When I got home, I still had 75% of the battery left, something over 4 hours worth. Can't complain there... It boots up quickly from hibernate mode, too. Only about 5 to 7 seconds from opening the lid and hitting the power button, to being at the XP user screen.
Overall, this is one nice little package that I'm quickly falling in love with. When we go on our cruise next month, I can leave nearly 10 pounds of laptop, power adapter, and other paraphernalia behind. About 3 pounds of netbook is all I'll need to keep in touch with life (and the kids) via email and the web.
If you've been waiting to get something like this, wondering if and when the time would be right to jump in, I think your time has just arrived...
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Comments
I went for the 8 Gig SSD based one, running Linux and the first thing I did was install Notes (quickly followed by VLC and Opera).
OK, let me ammend that. I use Nomad on a USB stick... but it is the Windows version. So I installed Wine instead. Plugged in the USB stick. It detected the auto play and powered up Notes straight away. And quite frankly, it works. Even after copying the admin.exe and designer.exe into the install I now have a small low powered go-anywhere machine with which to get my emails, and manage my Notes servers.
Being the SSD version it has an even better battery life that the hard disk version. I can watch videos on it. But better yet, insert a nice large SD card into the left slot and it become part of the internal disk (leaving the right slot for normal SD cards from my camera etc.).
What more could you ask from a handy light weight device? Now if only it could make the coffee...
Posted by Dragon Cotterill At 01:13:20 On 10/02/2009 | - Website - |
When you see these machines compete on price with a fancy cordless phone systems, yet offer webcam + surfing + multimedia +++, you know it's just a matter of time.
Another prime demographic for these might soon prove to be grandparents. You figure if you can make it dead simple for them to turn it on and see the grandkids via skype from anywhere, anytime, how can it be anything but a matter of time. And with tools like LogMeIn you can always remote in and fix stuff.
At this point I'm probably going to go with a Lenovo S10 or whatever replaces it in 6+ months, not least because my two recent purchases were also Lenovo.
Enjoy it
Posted by Kevin Pettitt At 06:21:45 On 10/02/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Andy Donaldson At 17:24:54 On 10/02/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Duffbert At 17:37:01 On 10/02/2009 | - Website - |
Notes 8.5 for Linux just loaded up and ran and replicated without a hitch
I have two 16B cards plus the 8GB internal which gives me enough storage.
Posted by John Stockbridge At 21:14:24 On 10/02/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 20:59:50 On 11/02/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by refurbished computers At 02:07:56 On 20/12/2009 | - Website - |