Acer Aspire One First Impression

I got this from Best Buy for $350 + tax. It has 1GB/120GB/XP Home/3 Cell.

Appearance:
This baby just looks pretty. When compare with Asus EEE PC 900 (the only other netbook I played with in person so far), this Acer wins hands down. It looks more like an expensive Sony VAIO then a cheap EEE PC or Everex. The frame around the LCD screen is kind of thick. I would like them to increase the LCD screen size a little bit while narrowing the width of the frame. It will be perfect if they can fit a 1280x720 16:9 10" screen on this netbook, which should have enough room to do it, without increase the overall dimension at all. I don't like the big Acer logo on the top left corner of the LCD frame. I would like them to put in on the bottom of the frame. The power brick is very small, I wish all notebook's power bricks are this small. One think I don't like is the 3-prong power plug. For such a small notebook, I don't know why they need a 3-prong power plug.

Features:
Just enough for what I will use most of the time. 3 USB ports, one on the left and two on the right. For those two on the right, there is enough room between these two ports that I can probably fit some thicker USB devices like thumb drive and TV tuner side by side. This is a big plus. For a lot of notebook, while the feature 3 or 4 USB ports, a lot of time, the are stacking on each other, which will make it only fit a regular USB cable, nothing more. For example, Dell 1525 has 4 USB ports, but they are stacking on each other, unless using USB extension cables, I can use two USB ports at one time. This acer has no Firewire nor eSATA. That's OK with me. I would like HDMI over VGA port though. Not that I will hook up the LCD most of the time, but if I hook it up, I just want one cable, HDMI, instead of VGA + audio cable. That's more for convenience than quality purpose. This netbook has one dedicated SD card slot and one multi-card reader. For me, I would trade the SD card slot for a ExpressCard slot. I think it is only a good idea to have two memory card slot if it has a small SSD drive, like the EEE PC. This netbook has 120GB HDD, which is more than enough for this type of computer. I only test the web cam briefly. Not an important feature for me. Touchpad is OK, and I get used to the awkward touchpad buttons very quickly. Since I will use a USB mouse 90% of time, this is not going to bother me very much. Keyboard is of course smaller than a regular sized keyboard, but way way better than EEE PC 900. One of the reason is that this Acer is a little bit wider than EEE PC 900. I can live with it.

Performance:
From off to reach Windows XP desktop, it takes about one minute. It is a little slow. However, once inside Windows, everything feels quite snappy. I do web browing most of the time with this netbook. So far, it doesn't feel any slower than my old Athlon 2500+ desktop computer. Youtube and ESPN360 are working without any hiccup. I also tested this machine with a USB HDTV tuner. Wow, to my surprise, I can watch the Olympics closing ceremony in HD without any problem on this netbook. I haven't tested any HD video play back yet. For WiFi, I got either good or excellent signal. No signal dropping at all. And connection is instant.

Battery:
I only got about 1.5hr from the 3 cells battery. I was doing the Windows Update stuff during that time period, so there is a constant download and installation. Screen brightness was set to the lowest. Of course, I am not impressed by this 3 cells battery. I am afraid that a 6 cell battery life may not be able to give me 3 hours of heavy internet usage.

Noise:
Unfortunately, the A1 I got has a constant fan noise. I may try the utility that somebody posting in another forum. In a quite room, I definitely can hear it. Next to a Dell 1525, Dell is near silent. I have downloaded a utility to control the fan depending on CPU temp. This really help the reduce the noise level to near silent when the fan is not spinning. I don't know if it will hurt the Atom processor or not though.


After less than one day of usage, this machine impress me very much, and it is definitely a keeper. I also accidentally dropped this netbook from a bar chair to the floor (non-carpeted). Luckily, no damage at all. This is a well-built machine.

I was planning to get the MSI Wind. However, the price of Acer Aspire One is just too good right now. Also, even the MSI has a 10" screen, the resolution is still the same. For me, smaller size does matter. Unless those 10" netbooks offer higher resolution, I will stick with the smaller size right now. I think the pixel size on this display is comparable to those 1440x900 15.4" LCD. I may be wrong, and it may be closer to those 1920x1200 15.4" LCD. A simple calculation should yield a correct comparison.

 

Thank you for the review. I am seriously considering getting one of these to lug around between work, school, and home. I would just use my dv5z as my "desktop."

 

In my village they call this as " you had a mountain in size, luck "


Your title is a bit confusing ... " Aspire one " should be united



Well i am pleased also , by getting my laptop, from EBAY for 240€ .


Luckily the previews owner was well taking care of , other than some minor scratches on the top cover. ( i ordered one skin for it .. Black dragon. )

I knew from the start that this model was totally an INTEL child , so stability and performance was warrantied .
The screen is clear and shinny , i like the screen allot , after woods i found that under the hood its a Samsung

ACER does good choices , about futures and ergonomics, but not always .
I have three USB at the right side & one at the back.
The most pleasant are the CPU vent at the rear side .

My model , i could say , that it haves the best design - location of ports and CPU vent , than any other.

And also i have many identical laptops with deferent names , that shares parts with my .
Acer TravelMate 2410, Aspire 3610 and Extensa 2600

A large family indeed

I wish all the best with your model .
There is no air-bag for laptops
So be careful !!
.

 

How is the battery life? Acer's estimates say 3-4 hours but some real world numbers would mean a lot more.

 

thanks for this ....

can you tell me, is it noisy? does it have a fan that kicks in? i am looking at getting one of these, but i want somethig that is completely silent ....

 

The 3-cell battery lasts around 2.30 h to 3 h. If this isn't enough, Acer also has a 6-cell battery available which lasts up to 7 hours with max performance and LCD brightness on the lowest(which isn't very dark at all).
As for the fan issue. Some unfortunate people have Aspire Ones with noisy fans, but most people have nearly noiseless fans. However, one of the One users created a program to turn on the fan only when the temperature gets too hot. All of these issues have already been resolved for the one.
Check out our Aspire One community: Aspire One User//www.aspireoneuser.com

 

The slow boot can be fix by removeing mcafree it realy does sucks

I am runing vista on mine and run great upgrade ram to 1.5 but even with out it still pretty good with vista

 

How easy is it to completely format the hard drive? I'm thinking about getting the Linux version to save some $ and then reformatting with an XP disc I have. Can it be done from the BIOS?

 

i got 2 of a1 2 weeks ago.. but returned for noisy/alway on fan.

but yesterday i got another 2 a1 because a utility/program that should solve fan problem.

the program to give some control over fan/ temp threshhold table so that fat is is not *on* all the time. but it is still in beta stage..

average temp i see is arund 60C with web surfing, typing etc..
bottom of the a1 gets warm but not too hot..
after installing the program, i see about 20~30 min increase in battery life as well. (fan does not kick in as often)

best thing i like a1 was its price $349 and 2nd best was its nice glossy screen.

i have not opend my 2nd a1 yet, testing first one througly but so far so good

 

I have updated the battery and noise issue in my original post. Thanks

 

Can you explain a little about how to install Vista on A1? Did you wipe out the system recovery partition? Or just the XP partition? Did you get all the drivers for all the components of A1?

I plan to do a dual boot of XP and Vista. I would like to use the XP license that comes with A1. I want to know if the system recovery tool can let me select the size of the XP partition.

Thanks

 

I just did upgrade to vista on it useing demon tool iso file i made

I pretty sure recovery partion does not let you pick the size you cound problay use util like partion magic to resize current partion and then install vista unpartioned spaced

mine 150 model it had xp on with 120 gig and 1 gig ram

I think can do same but from what i hear way better to pay and get the model with hard disk the ssd is not that impressive from what i hear

I also got 6 cell great battery life plus is not that much more money for xp version

 

I got one of these yesturday, with an 8GB ssd. Very nice laptop but once I had xp installed the ssd severly limited performance making it very slow to use and you get these occasional freezes, and this was with nothing installed. Took it back this morning and swapped for the £30 more expensive 120gb version like the OPs and its a LOT better. Runs xp very well and everything is nice and snappy. The machine is also fantasticly well built and a joy to use. Should prove very useful for studying with. I think acer have the perfect price point as you get a lot more for your money than you would with MSI (or Advent in the UK) and the asus eee. Well reccomended 5 star product.

 

J400uk, try formatting the SSD as FAT32 and then install XP.

 

I did, and it was the faster samsung ssd too but I found that it was just too slow so hence I returned the SSD model and got the hard drive one which is fab.

 

I had both the SSD (returned to CC after BB got the HDD versions in for $30 less) and HDD versions and both are wonderful.
Here are just some things I noticed:

1- The SSD version with Linpus Linux boots faster hands down. FYI I have replaced McAfee with Blink Personal and I have disabled everything unnecessary from starting up via msconfig.
2- The HDD model is heavier.
3- Although I don't think it's the OS the SSD model had a quieter fan. Maybe I got one of those noisy ones everyone is talking about but it doesn't seem as bad as some have suggested.
4- Battery life seems just a tad better in XP ~2:45 vs ~2:30 but that's no more than a subjective observation without any scientific merit. Just surfing, email etc.

I was going to replace WinXP with either openSUSE 11 or Fedora 9 but after using it for the last couple of days I must admit that XP suits it just fine.
Performance on with IE 7 is snappy and the general feel is that of a pretty responsive system as long as you don't have too many things running at once. It appears to be very well suited to take on vacation to keep up with your email, do some light work, surf the net and use it to download and store the pictures from your digital camera. This probably is the best netbook from a price/perforce stand point. In closing adding the extra ram in this baby is truly a pain in the a**

 

Have you guys had any wireless connection issues? A lot of people on the Aspire One User forums are complaining about the Atheros card.

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/

 

lower the power saving option in the driver pages

 

I feel the same way. I had the 1000H and I sold it soon after at not much of a lost (sold it for $520 vs the $550 I paid for it).

The Aspire is priced just right. I couldn't justify $550 for a machine I used just to surf the web and listen to mp3's. At $350, I'm quite pleased.

 

I finally decide to pick one of these up and Best Buy is sold out both online and at all the retail locations for 200 miles around

 

Wow, either their stock was low or these babies are flying out the door

I got my blue sapphire last Sunday (wanted the red, they didn't have any). and have been happy so far.

cassi

 

Probably a little of both

 

Any idea about when the 6-cell, 160GB model will be available?

 

is there any way that Acer would release the 6 cell battery so you could purchase a lesser spacious hard drive model and have the upgraded battery? i think 120 gig is more than enough space on the netbook.