Acer Aspire One First Look

No. The 1.6 GHz Atom's performance is equivalent of a 900-1000 MHz mobile Pentium III.

 

I think it's too easy to get caught up in 'What's more powerful' and 'What has the best benchmarks'. The reality with this class of notebook is it doesn't matter as long as it's not your primary computer and it does all the light stuff you need to do while on the go such as email, web surfing, word processing, light Photoshop and Dreamweaver work or watching movies and listening to music.

The Aspire One does all of this with no lag and is extremely portable. I suspect your computer would be the same. When I need to do some heavy lifting (video encoding, gaming, etc.), I go to my desktop.

 

You might have a benchmark saying so from somewhere, but I recently sold a PIII-M / 933 laptop and I am using the Aspire One now - I can tell you that the Atom beats the heck out of the PIII. Watching a Youtube video is barely possible on a PIII-M.

So far the system feels at least as snappy (if not slightly more so) than my Centrino 1.73 that I recently retired.

 

http://www.computerbase.de/news/har...8/maerz/erster_benchmark_intels_silverthorne/

 

Hmm ... even if it is indeed generally about the speed of a P3 1 ghz that isn't so bad, even with XP Pro and SP3.

I still have one of those around the office here (in an IBM T23) that is used by one of the folks for the same purposes as a netbook generally is touted to be: i.e. simple web browsing, email, docs, etc.

It's not a speed demon by any stretch of the imagination but it does fine for light tasks. Just fine.

 

i read the review and was very surprised to see the benchmark score.

but i suppose that all other Atom based netbooks will have a similar score?

im in the process of searching for upgrade after i sold my eee 701 (after working for too long with it my eyes hurt, everything was perfect but the screen was too small)

so will AAO lose the current lead position to Dell Mini Inspiron 910?

 

Hmm... it doesn't look like it. I was anxiously awaiting the Dell Mini, but now I'm planning to go to my local Bestbuy and picking up an Aspire One this afternoon. Dell's specs are a bit weak, and the prices are a bit strong - not a good combo.