I made myself a little purchase over the weekend, and I love that I did! I became the newest owner of an Acer Aspire One, just one of a growing number of “netbooks”, super-small but super-affordable laptops that have hit the market over the past few months, this one debuting just this month. At least in regards to the model that I bought, I think it’s a perfect fit.
THE GOOD
* The size … the trend lately for books like that of the Asus Eee have been to slowly work themself closer to the point of an actual notebook, which defeats the point of their existence. This machine at 2 pounds, and with a 9″ screen is perfect. Just as nice to carry as a DVD player would be and far more well rounded.
* Windows XP … this one is a personal preference, I understand, but for me, having a small machine with Windows XP on it works for my needs. I can run every program (including Firefox to write this blog entry) without any slowdowns or problems, and can port all of my data over from my existing environment without any effort. I see the market and reasons for having a mini-Linux version for someone who has no previous machine, but staying within platform is a nice perk.
* The Hard Drive and RAM … those Linux models? Their 512MB of RAM and 8GB (slow) Solid State Drive lock you in, no ability to play around and try anything else. Give me the 120GB hard drive and 1GB RAM of this model any day of the week, it’s XP performance is equal of our Sony Vaio laptops at work, and they are 1.6 Pentium M machines, and I know they weren’t no $350 when they came out!
* USB … 3 USB ports is awesome, it makes up for the couple of weaknesses I will mention. Something is wrong when my netbook has more USB ports than my M1330 work laptop does!
THE BAD
* Internal 3G … many of the netbooks coming up are toting this option, and it would have been nice to have onboard. I can see these being the primary way to get online with mobile broadband very soon, I am relegared to using a USB dongle for this.
* Internal Bluetooth … see the above reason, although low profile Bluetooth is a reality.
* No Recovery CD …. it’s all on the hard drive already, so I cannot recommend enough for users to do a hard drive backup before they fire this up the first time. Maybe my IT experience has made be sensitive to that and untrusting of even the eRecovery tools, but do your own backup dilligence first.
SOME OF BOTH
* The battery … the thing looks no bigger than 3 AA batteries, and that is because it isn’t! It runs on a 3-cell 2100 Mah battery, uses only 30 watts of juice with the super small charger box, and its tiny! It gets about 2.5 hours, which for my needs is not too bad. A lot of people have clamored about this though, and while it would be nice to have 5 hours of battery life, it would also weigh the machine down a bit and defeat some of the benefit of having a machine that small. I look forward to the battery and charger market heating up for this as companies will both offer cheaper standard ways to get juice into the machine (the 6-cell coming out? $100, I am passing) as well as ways to charge it up. I’ve already seen car chargers, I want more!
* Small keyboard … with small screens come small keyboards. You can’t change it, but it has its own advantages of disadvantages.
I expect to post more about my experiences with the laptop soon, but so far, I love the machine!
That’s pretty spiffy-sounding. Is it light? Might be a nice thing to carry around for note-taking and movie watching.
It’s a nice machine. I am surprised how fast it runs. I installed visual studio 2008 and it runs great. The touchpad is the one to hate. I wish it had some special keys for prev and next browsing and scrolling down pages when I am reading pdf ebooks.
The price is amazingly low at $349.99 with 1g memory and 120 g hard drive.
I am looking to buy a $40 leather case that fit the AA1 like a dream, but kind of pricey, but it’s on my wish list.
A bluetooth dongle to comm with my GPS receiver. I have Garmin nRoute installed.
Can it be? Scooter has defected from the Mac world? ;] Actually I have a 1st gen Iphone and im pretty happy with just using that for email and the intarwebs. I do like the idea of getting a netbook to read ebooks on but i’m waiting to see what tablet pcs are going to be priced at this Christmas. I did look at the kindle and Sony offerings but the price is too much. If the ebook readers were priced at 199 or less i’d be all over it.
For Nate: 2.19 pounds is the final tally. I stopped at the Apple Store on my vacation week awhile back and put it next to a Macbook Air to see what I thought of one over the other. The Macbook Air screen does circles around the Aspire One’s (even though it’s nice), but from a usability sense, I think I’d have to go with the Aspire One for $350 over a Macbook Air (which might be a tinge lighter) for $1,750. You need to get up here to see it!
For Jiang: I’m with you, the touchpad is annoying because I find myself having two fingers on it causing the browser fonts to grow and shrink. It is very responsive, but far from perfect. I agree on Bluetooth, having it built in WOULD make the machine more killer, but I do use a dongle that I had from previous machines (that’s a piece of shit, it’s been in the washer before), but works well enough for tethering with a GoPhone plan (cheap mobile broadband, I will clarify later)
For Doug: Heh, I have to live in both worlds for work soon, but there are only about five or six Macs left (all Intel now), and the G3 just got too old due to Leopard, so it got sold. I hope to get a Powerbook G4 soon from work as they’re now at end of life, and we have an extra Macbook Pro (initial run) to play with. I am toting around an iPhone 3G too, and love it!
I am curious to see too how all of these machines go for XMas. While I love the tablet concept and used one for a year at work, these netbook prices are so good that I can live without that touch screen, and if they go down to $299, or God forbid, $249, that’s your eBook reader right there with XP built on top of it!
What is your take on the Kindle?
Once my current laptop bites the dust, I might look at an ultraportable like this for school, seeing as I’m going to be there for another 3-5 years at least. It’d make it easier than lugging a 17″ screen around all the time. Of course, gaming in-between classes might not be that enjoyable