Acer Aspire One netbook

Submitted by RACinWNY on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 7:46pm

I have been watching the netbook scene since I first read about the Eee PC.  I waited as long as I could and then jumped in.  And I didn't buy the Eee PC either although I spent a lot of time with one at my local Best Buy.  I think that although Asus was the first out with a netbook they'll have to work hard to stay in the game. Acer has made a great splash with the Acer Aspire One and many, many other companies seem to be racing to get a netbook on the market ASAP.

I don't believe that a netbook of any flavor will push out the standard notebooks.  I do feel they have their place and for many people they will serve exceptionally well as their take along computer.  I purchased the Acer Aspire One and received it a week ago and love it. It will not be my primary computer nor did I intend it to be. In fact, I have had many notebook computers over the years and really enjoy my current one but it is no where near as handy and efficient as this great netbook. And why would it be? It has a 17" widescreen, oodles of HD space, 2 GB RAM, video card and a decent dual core proc (it's 2.5 years old) and it games well for me when I can't be at my desktop machine.

I DO believe that netbooks will become more and more popular. Especially if bundling with service contracts starts here in the US.  I almost bought the Asus Eee PC but waited to see what else would come along. I'm glad I did and I'm extremely pleased with this Acer Aspire One.I didn't buy it at WalMart but did notice they had one there behind glass when I was looking around for a suitable small case for my new netbook. The configuration of the one on display there had Linux, the 3 cell battery and a smaller HD (don't remember the exact size or even if it was the SSD or not).

Yes, the keyboard is small, yes, the touchpad is small and the buttons are on the side but for me neither of those things have become a problem. I touch type and although I'm a female I have large hands (I can't wear women's gloves..never could, for instance) I have no problems. It took me a few hours of use the first day to get used to the keyboard and my keyboard on my desktop computer is a very large Logitech G15 too. The touchpad, well I figured I'd hate it and was glad I had a small USB travel mouse kicking around. I've NEVER liked touchpads. But I decided last week when I opened this thing up I'd give the touchpad a go since the whole idea of a netbook, IMO, is to have something small and easy to grab and go. The buttons on the side, I've found, have actually become something I *LIKE* as long as I have to use a touchpad! 

As for an optical drive, which someone mentioned, again IMO the whole idea behind a netbook is something small and easy to grab and go. I can easily use an optical drive on my network if I must but so far I've not needed to. I also note that the price of external optical drives are going down and bet they'll continue to as the popularity of netbooks increase. But again, IMO, having to drag about an external optical drive defeats the idea of a computer you can grab and go with. Also, with 160GB of hard drive space I CAN encode DVDs of movies and TV shows and store them there if needed.

I am loving having something that I can just pick up and go with. Not even needing the AC brick and cords unless I'm going to be using it for more than 6.5 hours. I purchased mine w/the 6 cell battery and so far have been getting 6.5 hours of use on a single charge. I also went with XP Home, after a lot of thought since I'd originally accepted I'd have to go w/Linux on a netbook, and I'm glad I did. It is surprisingly snappy! 1 GB of RAM seems sufficient although I might pop it up to 1.5 GB at some point just because I can.  Right now 3G isn't a big deal for me but I know that if I'd waited I'd most likely be able to pick up a netbook with it built in, including this model, and even been able to get a bundle where I'd have paid less than the $399 I did for this one in my hands right now.  I've talked to several friends who live overseas and they have that type of deal. 

So although I feel that the Acer Aspire One is currently better than the Asus Eee PC I wouldn't say that Acer is going to always sit atop the growing heap of netbooks. They'll have to work hard to keep up with everything coming down the tube.  And when bundling with service contracts starts competition will only get more intense.  Oh, and I did consider the MSI Wind after reading the reviews in the current issue of Maximum PC but I felt I got more bang for my buck with the Acer plus I did have a small concern that the bigger screen would lower my battery life.  For me long battery life in a netbook is very important. I'm even considering picking up a second battery at some point soon.

 

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Acer has their abomination

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 5:26pm

Acer has their abomination of a laptop on store shelves at WalMart for $348bucks here in Arizona. I must say that it is cute but that is as close I'm going to come to actually considering buying one. The track pad is just too tiny.  They need to figure out how to integrate an optical drive of some sorts into the formfactor. It just doesn't work for me without an optical drive built in. They can make the whole contraption a half inch thicker if thats what it takes but I'm not getting one until they figure that out.

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well

Submitted by dc10ten on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 10:26am

acer has a lot of presence in the retail stores. Asus... not so much. So this doesn't come as a suprise.

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