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!
This is Why You Don’t Trust Micro Center Salesmen
Maybe my days in retail of wanting to, you know, actually HELP a customer, have jaded me, but it means when I see a salesman who comes off as arrogant and tries to make the up-sell by insulting the customer’s knowledge, it really rubs me the wrong way. Today, that was my experience at Micro Center.
I want to preface this by saying I still love the store, but my experience there, like most places, is that you should do your research before getting there, get what you need, and get out before the vultures hit. Well, except for the floor manager, who seems very nice, and is also rather attractive!
I got to the store, helping someone I am working for on the side trying to find a good fit for a PC for them. Their goals were simple: good at web browsing, decent at still photos, does not have to be a powerhouse. As a result, I came across the Acer Aspire 3610. Cool “net top” form factor, enough power to be solid, 2 gigs of memory, and Windows 7. Thought it was out of stock, but their computer said they had three. When I got back to look at it with the two people I was with, their salesman shows up. He first ridicules my interest in the $329 nettop by calling it the same as a five-year old notebook.
Did I mention your $299 budget laptop that you pimp all the time actually had half the CPU that this Atom PC has?! Yeah, I did my research, and the numbers on a site like Passmark do not lie. Horribly inaccurate statement! He also said it was like a Pentium M, but this Atom has 20% more CPU power than the fastest most expensive Pentium M ever made, and it isn’t five years old. Also, off base.
I responded by kindly reminding him that I had done my research and the CPU was an upgrade from what they had (an Athlon 2800). He noted that the machine was horrible for video editing, I told him that this person did not NEED video editing, and that it had a NVidia Ion chip set inside to allow for video watching in HD. He obviously did not realize this, as he did not have a response for this. By this point, the conversation was very contentious.
He did point to the PC next to the Acer (the only good thing he did), which was a Quad Core Q8200 PC well outfitted for $449. This was indeed one hell of a good price, as every other PC that was even close to it in performance was over $500 by far. So, I had a legitimate option now. Pay a bit more, still get a more compact form factor and get massive performance (that may or may not be needed), or spend a little less, get the super-small form factor, but less processor. I ended up going with the $449 Acer instead.
This, unfortunately, means I had to talk to their crackpot salesman again to get one. Should have just walked over once I saw where they were! Anyways, he then asked what kind of anti-virus we used, obviously trying to up-sell me their NOD32 anti-virus, which I know is good, but I don’t feel like adding $50 to a sale that needs to be a budget one. I responded by saying that I’d typically use a free solution like AVG or avast. He begins to rant on about how they are no good, and I just smile, the kind of smile that said “I’m going to say no regardless of what you say, I do not want it, you are not listening.” He then proceeds to insult my intelligence by saying, and I quote, “I see you’re smiling, but AVG does only detect 30% of the viruses out there, avast is better, but you’re foolish to trust one of those”. I responded by saying we’d be fine, and walked away.
Oh yes, you dumb #$@#$@#$@ salesman, a recent article HERE notes that the ESET NOD32 does no better than AVG or AVAST in virus or malware removal, and in fact, my new free solution of choice, MS Security Essentials, does a better job. Panda Antivirus, a cloud AV solution, is supposed to be better too. Once again, dude was condescending in trying to get the up-sell and just made it worse.It all just leads me to two things. First, I’m going to file a complaint with Micro Center about him, his attitude to me was unacceptable, he asked no questions about what we actually needed, just trying to sluff off some machine on us to get his commission. Plus, he managed to insult an IT Pro by showing no common sense whatsoever! Micro Center ought to know that I find this unacceptible. The second is that I’m maintaining my normal attitude on any store like this. Know what you want ahead of time, find it yourself, and run like hell from anyone who wants to sell you something. I get needing to have commissions to help with sales, but help people get stuff they need, not just to line your pockets.
Micro Center, you got the sale, but you failed me on Saturday. Epic fail.