Acer Aspire One

Acer Aspire One Mini-Notebook

Aspire One Review, by Darren Gladstone, PC World August 8, 2008

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• Reviewed by:

  Strengths: Size, Connectivity, Linpus operating system, software, quiet, weight and of course price.

  Weaknesses: Battery life, and what you have to go through to upgrade the RAM

  Overall: Fantastic machine. I bought at this machine at Christmas for my daughter for school. This machine has surpassed all my expectations. In fact, my daughter has a hard time getting to use her own machine, because everyone else is trying to use it. This machine will be more than sufficient for the majority of users. Do yourself a favor and get one.

• Reviewed by: lorax1284

  Strengths: QUIET, light, compact, decent performance, decent price, good stand-in for a larger / heavier / more cumbersome notebook

  Weaknesses: Low-budget screen, slightly-smaller keyboard: DON'T expect miracles from such a small, low-cost machine

  Overall: I picked up one of these on boxing day for $299 WITH WINDOWS XP HOME PREINSTALLED! I believe there were 'perceived' performance issues with the WinXP / SSD combination, but I reformatted the drive as FAT32, with a clean / minimal WinXP Hom install, and the performance has been quite decent (under NTFS, it is too slow).I use it to write documents on my 1.5 hour subway / bus commute each way, and it lets me get good work done, even in close quarters (my 15" 6-year old Dell Pentium 4M performs better, but is too heavy and large for transit use).PROS: built in WiFi seals the deal: added a bluetooth micro dongle for $5 to complete its connectivity feature set... this little thing gives you a lot with so little (1 gig ram, 8 gig HD, tiny keyboard and 1024 x 600 screen, 3 USB ports, 2 SDHC slots, 100mbps ethernet, VGA port), but once you get used to the limitations, the performance is acceptable and the features usable for real document editing and 'net access purposes.

• Reviewed by:

  Strengths: Fast startup, >30 seconds,true 8G SSD drive, not a hybrid ssd/sd-ram,OS + apps take only 3.5G,expand user storage space w/sd-ram card,easy wi-fi connect, webcam OK, keyboard OK, not too cram

  Weaknesses: Per Acer, does *not* accept sdhc cards,battery life >3.5 hours w/dim screen,no network browsing,OS shell does not accept new apps, no desktop icons,system RAM upgrades must be done by Acer.

  Overall: The OS shell is both functional and lame. This netbook is very suitable for travel and easily running common apps, such as web, email, Open Office, some games and IM. Die-hard linux fans would probably override the native linpus linux with gnome or kde, but that is really not what this unit is designed for.The linpus OS is based on the Fedora 9 core. Fortunately, the file manager app has a backdoor link to terminal. From there, I was able to finetune some system settings, run package manager, and install rdesktop, samba, and a few other apps. A lot will not install, however, if it's dependent on a full gnome or kde environment.I was able to set up printing to a samba printer and a samba share on the unit itself. Strangely, outbound network browsing is disabled (no nautilus, sigh). I'm sure that I will figure it out soon.The firefox browser is installed, as is the t-bird email client, so it can do both pop and imap. Open Office suite is a big plus. The included game selection is pretty limited, and some of it is trialware (yuck).According to Acer support, the unit will not accept sdhc memory cards in either the storage expansion slot or the card reader. This is a big drawback, since hc capacity is much greater. I did install a fast, standard, 2G sd card in the storage expansion slot and did not perceive a performance hit.Biggest disappointment: mediocre battery life, despite all the hype pushing the atom processor. But the unit does start up fast and runs respectably fast, and the SSD hard drive performance is really awesome.All in all, I give this little guy a thumbs up, especially if you can snag one for under $300. It's fun to use, and I couldn't resist getting one. This netbook is the second acer purchase I have made this year, and in both cases the disappointments have been few.

• Reviewed by: hotsoupanyone

  Strengths: CPU 1.6GHZ for size it is great speed. Fast start 7 secs stock. SDHC 2 slots, good ram , perfect for school and work about 1 lbs

  Weaknesses: only thing i can think of is i dont know the OS well yet

  Overall: shopping for netbooks? get this one. I did my home work and for the price vs what you get this is 200$ better then others and even better then the msi wind