ACER ASPIRE ONE REVIEW

ACER ASPIRE ONE 8.9 INCH NETBOOK - PROBABLY BETTER THAN YOUR OLD LAPTOP!

I have to say this -accepting the risk of sounding like a real geezer- not so long ago, 1 GB of RAM or 1.6GHz of CPU power was sci-fi! Seriously! I clearly remember the articles about the CRAY’s of 10-15 years ago, telling that they have almost 4.5 GHz CPU power (cumulative of course, was it up to 64 CPU’s of 70MHz? Not sure… But the price tag was half a million to two! And if you got regular configuration, they usually were below 1.5GHz anyway…). Today we drive medium budget cars which can outperform the Nascar’s of 30 years ago, $5 watches that are more precise than the Swiss made jewels of 40 years ago and as you can guess, yes, we have the chance to carry laptops which humiliates the super-computers of our youth and childhood. Not to mention that they do much more than James Bond’s legendary carry on computers (they were not called laptops back then!)…

Acer Aspire One 100% fits this definition but with one catch, it also humiliates the other super portable laptops too. I’m serious. Of course there are faster, lighter, more capable models out there, but they usually cost almost 5-6 and sometimes 10 times more!

If you’re looking for an ultra portable, Aspire One is a great choice, since it’s a computer which can do almost 90% of the more expensive ultra portables can yet don’t hurt your wallet even close. At this point you have to ask yourself the question, does it really worth to pay that extra couple of thousands just to get that 10%? My answer is absolutely no! Today, computers have a usage life of 1 or maximum 2 years, and do you really want to invest that much of unnecessary expense for a computer which you’ll change in a year or two anyway?

Ultra portable customers usually expect the same things; conveniency, long battery life and ability to connect the web whenever and wherever they want. And that’s exactly what you get with Aspire One. To begin with, it’s really small –almost just a bit bigger than your first cell phone!- (6.7 x9.8x1.1 inches, 2.2 pounds). Usually, when I want to estimate the total weight of a laptop, I multiply it’s weight by 2 (to calculate the weight of the bag, charger, external mouse and etcetera…), but in this case, even it’s bag will probably be heavier than the laptop itself, so maybe you should make it 2.5 or 3 times! It’s battery supplies up to 5.5 hours of life and if that’s not enough for you, well, go buy a spare battery, it’ll probably be lighter than your Zippo! And unlike the usual fake promises made on the other laptops, you can really take this up to 5.5 hours seriously, since the whole machine spends it’s juice almost like a single led light.

I’m aware of the fact that –right at this point- you might be asking to yourself “what if I want to play games?” or “what if I need more CPU power?”… Well, you won’t… Trust me you won’t. Let’s face it, with the miniscule keyboard and small screen, no ultra portable is ergonomically correct for games. Not to mention that you will not be having a fancy graphics card no matter if you pay 400 or 4000 dollars to your ultra portable. On the other hand, if you’re an abandonware enthusiast like me and enjoy playing old games, then this computer will even do that too! And for CPU power, it’s more than enough for any Microsoft Office program (unless you’re planning to work on a million entry database using Excel and Access at the same time), video playing, online chatting or any other general task…

How about the cons? Doesn’t this netbook have any? Well, of course, but they’re not important when you compare it’s pros to cons… Like I’ve mentioned earlier, you have to forget about ergonomics. It is no good, especially the trackpad is terrible! It’s the worst that I’ve ever seen. It’s as small as a postage stamp (when’s the last time that you used a stamp anyway? I can not remember either!) and the buttons are at the sides! So at this point you face a problem; you either set your pointer scroll speed to very high (and loose your pointer constantly on the screen) in order to use the trackpad like a regular one, or keep the scroll speed at normal levels and find your fingers over the keyboard, desk, your lap or wherever they go, while you try to control the pointer. But then again let’s face it, this is a laptop (or a netbook as they say) that you will use as a complicated cell phone, that’s all. On the other hand, I found the keyboard of this computer somehow comfortable, or at least above my expectations. The keys are well laid, and although you don’t have much of a wrist room, which is a real trouble if you’re planning to write for hours, it’s still easy to use and hard to make mistakes and do overs, unlike other netbooks.

Another con is the display. 8.9 inch display sounds decent at first, but the visual quality of 1024x600 resolution with 262k color depth is still way behind actual “bigboy laptops”… Actually, if you’re planning to see Microsoft Word documents, the display works just fine (of course because of the 600 pixel height, most of the screen is covered with menus, start bar and etc.) but if you plan to use it to view some graphics , well, above mediocre is the correct word to define the performance. But let’s not be cruel here, Acer’s CrystalBrite technology performs much better than most TFT screens, clearer and more importantly –especially because of it’s small size- very economical on the battery! For video, the computer is powered with Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator 950 chipset, which shares the memory. Obviously, it’s not a card for 3D CAD/CAM designs, surface modeling or any other fancy stuff, but it’s more than enough for what you’d expect from a netbook.

Let’s go back to pro’s. The computer comes up with a 160GB harddisk, and believe it or not, I think that’s the best choice to have on such computer. Trust me, solid state drives are either too expensive (a 128 GB solid state drive would probably cost 2 times more than the computer itself anyway!) and since your other system component’s performances are limited (I don’t mean anything bad with this, but let’s face it, they are not a quad chip CPU or thousand dollar graphics card anyway), 5400rpm drive works just great. Here is another thing, if you are using a laptop that you’ve bought about 1 or 2 years ago –like me-, your current hard drive space is probably smaller than 160 GB anyway! (For example, I’m trying to work with a 60 GB, and somehow it’s the combination of two 30 GB partitions! Trust me, I’d trade mine in a heartbeat!) Rival HP comes with a solid state drive but it only has 16 GB of space (less than my cellular phone!) and after standard installed windows, there’s little space left to use (but here is an idea! You can use your ipod as an external hard drive to match with Acer Aspire One! But then again, an Acer Aspire One user can do that as well!).

As you can guess, there’s no CD/DVD drive present in this mini-giant as well (actually, again taking the risk of sounding like a geezer, my first CD-ROM drive was probably bigger than this computer!). If you ask me, that’s not a problem at all. The computer comes with wide variety of wireless and Ethernet connection options. Additionally, the prices of flash disks are really cheap these days, and for 20-30 Dollars, you can always get (unless you already have one!) a 4 GB or bigger flash disk for computer to computer data transfer –unless you don’t want to use wireless connection of course. If you’re still not convinced, this computer comes with a card reader which reads almost anything you can find today…

Connectivity options in this computer are just wonderful for it’s small size. First, you get wireless support for integrated 54g wireless LAN (Acer calls it “InviLink”) that's compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g networks. Like every other Acer notebook, Aspire One has Acer’s Signal Up technology too. This feature really boosts the efficiency of the computer’s wireless antenna and it really captures almost any signal from the air no matter what’s blocking it! Along with this wireless connection option, you also receive a RJ-45 Ethernet port, where you can connect via cable too. You may say “is it really worth to mention a RJ-45 Ethernet port?” but trust me, yes. There are many high-end laptop computers in the market today that lack RJ-45 Ethernet ports, and this little guy has it. For other means of connectivity, the computer comes up with 3 USB 2.0 ports (which you can use to hook up and charge your digital camera, MP-3 player, external mouse, printer, flash disk, external hard drive or CD/DVD drive) and VGA external monitor port. Best of all is the multi format supporting card reader, which is another kind of standard with Acer laptop computers, that supports almost any memory card that you can think of (Secure Digital, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO and XD Picture Cards). Last but certainly not least, a microphone jack along with a headphone jack, which turn this computer into a MP-3 player / internet phone!

As you can guess, the computer has a pair of internal speakers which don’t sound that good. This may sound weird to you, but that’s not important at all, after all, if you want to listen to music or watch movies from your hard drive, you’ll probably use the headphone jack –somehow!- anyway… The internal soundcard choice is an integrated sound card with Microsoft Direct Sound compatibility and performs well for what it offers.

As I’ve been hinting again and again from the start, I like to think this netbook as a very fancy communications device instead of a laptop computer. After all, unless you’re using a work station desktop or very high end 17” or bigger laptop, most laptop computers are just communication devices anyway! And the designers of Acer know this fact very good I assume. The computer comes with an integrated 1.3 MP webcam, which is really handy for visual chatting, and don’t be fooled, it’s performance is really good too!

When it comes to looks, this computer is a real beauty. It looks really sleek and multiple color choices make it attractive for most (white, black and sapphire blue!).

How about the speed? Well, the computer comes with one of the newest CPU family of Intel –Atom! It’s a 1.6GHz CPU (yes, faster than the CRAY I’ve mentioned at the beginning!) which performs incredible for this computer. It’s new circuitry technology (which is called hafnium-infused circuitry –a great geeky name for the technology!) really uses every spark of electricity for what’s needed, computing! This technology reduces the loss of energy through leakage in transistors and is also another important reason for it’s 5.5 hour battery life…

1 GB of RAM is standard with this netbook (512 MB onboard memory and one 512 MB DIMM, 533 MHz) and you always have the option to add another 512 MB and make it 1.5 GB’s… If you ask me, that’s a very good thing to do, which will ease the workload of the CPU and help battery life –if you’re planning to really use the computer of course, instead of leaving it idle for hours.
The computer comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home operating system, which is pretty stable –at least for a Microsoft product!- and works good with the components. The 1.6 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM is enough to run Windows XP, and you can always increase the RAM to 1.5 GB’s. If I were you, I’d definitely install another operating system as well, Linux probably, since this computer is the sweetest geek toy. Seriously, doesn’t it remind you the computer that Sean Connor uses at Terminator 2 to hack the bank’s ATM?

In Conclusion :
Acer Aspire One 8.9 Inch Netbook comes from the family which started the cheap netbook revolution, which showed us a proper laptop can be made cheap and fast enough to meet the demands of most daily computing tasks. Aspire One is a great buy in many aspects, as a communication device, first laptop, or a secondary alternate to your bigger, hard to carry around laptop. It’s great for you even if you’re a student who wants a computer with long battery life to carry it to school and take notes, a business man (or a business woman) who wants to be reached all the time or just a computer aficionado who want a compact and light alternate for the main speed crazy computer. This laptop does equal and most of the time more than it’s rivals with a much cheaper price and the best thing is that it looks no cheap at all!

Photos


Technical Information
• 1.6GHz Atom N270
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM
• 1.3 Megapixel camera, SDHC and multi-format media readers
• 802.11b/g, Ethernet, three USB 2.0, VGA, and 3.5mm audio out
• One free mini PCI slot for WWAN, 160GB hard drive (2.2 pounds)

Pros
+ Incredible price / performance ratio
+ Looks really good
+ 1.6 GHz Atom CPU is working like a real CPU should, this is not a toy like old examples
+ Ultra portability, light as a feather and very small
+ Long battery life
+ Somehow a good keyboard
+ Large variety of connectivity options

Cons
- The screen could be clearer
- The trackpad is the worst I’ve ever used

Value For Money

Our Rating

Best Value For Money
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