Mini VS Aspire One - See Pic's

Finally picked up the Aspire One... sold out before I could grab one from Costco and more came in today --- I expect the ones they got in will be gone by this afternoon.

I think there will be lots of folks who are dissapointed with the "NetBook" craze this christmas. I see folks buying these things that are just looking at the $300 price point thinking they are getting a full up laptop. Spoke to a middle age man who thought he would load the Aspire one with Office 2k7 and do his quick-books etc...

Costco Spec's (From what I have seen Costco's got 1 flavor of the Aspire One... some folks claimed they also had the 180GB/6Cell but not in my market).

P/N LU.S050B18283924A162535
CPU Intel Atom N270
Ram 1GB
Storage 120GB
XP Home
$349

In any event here are some quick Pic's - plan to take both the Mini and Aspire on the road next week so should have a pretty good handle on the differences.

First Impression - I think I'm as impressed with the small size of the "netbook" boxes as I am with the netbooks themselves.

Aspire has a fan and it RUNS -unlike the Mini 16GB which is slient.

Aspire one has a usable keyboard - unlike the Mini 16GB ( I know you can re-map etc...but just first imprssion's out of the box).

Aspire looks like a miniaturized lapotp whereas the Mini looks more like a flip top dvd player.

Aspire touch pad buttons location is a PITA - but I think I'd rather live with this versus the Mini's non standard keyboard layout.

 

yes i definately like the aspire one's design.. dell looks very OEM.. they need to get back to the drawing board.. and i sell HP DELL and ACER all three netbooks.. the ACER is a flyer.. for price and design.

 

nice job give us more pictures please also,I still love my eee 1000h

 

I don't really like either one of them. They do seem somehow a little too "laptop". I like the gadgety look of the EEE's at the moment. The Acer looks like it actually has a brighter / better screen. Is that true?

 

Tell me what kind of pics you want to see and I'll post them.

I figured with the Costco warranty (they double mfg warranty) the Aspire one was a no brainer.

 

You did a great job! Kudo's

This should really be moved over to the *Notebook News and Reviews* Section of the forum..So *all* can see the great job you did

I want more pics too, please


Cin

 

one on other...size comparison...also,couple of screen pictures @ max brightness

 

Screen on the Aspire one is better hands down at max bright. The pics above are max on both. The Mini screen looks good on its own but there is no comparison when you set it next to the Aspire. The Aspire has a deeper, brighter display with an almost '3d' look. Viewing angle is better and there is much less light bleed from the bottom. Will look at my other Mini's to see how they compare... More pic's to come with some nice side/side (inverted) to see how much wider the Aspire is.

 

I'd love see the same thing Doc, is asking for ^^^

Cool! Can't wait to see. Can you show the backsides of them? please.

Cin

 

Pic's and more Pic's.

Cin - here is the back shot - I decided to make it a bit more dramatic (called the Stacking/Back Shot). I liked the Black but I must say the Blue is actually pretty nice. See mention of AC Adapter and Sleeve in next post.

 

Well that should cover all of the possible Pic Requests

I think it is interesting to see how much wider the Aspire is - the stacked picture does a good job of showing this. When you type on the Aspire you feel the "room" and its very nice.

I like the AC adapter on the Mini a bit more since it combines the AC Adapter with the plug whereas the Aspire has a more traditional laptop style (AC on a String).

The Aspire sleeve is a nice touch and may be all someone needs if they are going to toss their netbook into a larger bag. I think Dell could afford to put something like this into the Mini package.

 

That thing looks so cool. I've been looking into getting one of these for my girlfriend but after playing around with one yesterday I couldn't believe how utterly useless I found it to be lol

I felt like I was gonna break the **** thing just by my hands being on it. What's the point of these things? Just to go online?

 

Which one were you playing with? The Mini is built like a tank and the Aspire is not far behind.

These netbooks are all about light weight computing. Set your expectations and you might find that you can't live with out one.... or you may find that you can't live with one

My travel strategy is to take the netbook's into the client site/meetings and leave the SLI laptop back at the hotel. I have yet to find a middle of the road laptop that can do what I want it to do (high frame rates on latest DX10/9 games). When you have something that is sub 2 lbs its somewhat of an afterthought to throw into your laptop bag.

I use mine mainly to run exchange rpc over https and office 2k7 stuff (word,ppt etc...) - works like a champ especially with 2megs on Mini. I plan to load up the Aspire post haste to see how it fares.

 

Sadly im a fan of the acer too. I wanted to like the dell so much, but the acer is better. The keyboard and hard drive wins me over.

 

download a1ctl, it gives you better control over the fan and you can have the fan off if you like, you set the temperature, though it can get a little toasty with it off.

 

I played with both Asus eee PCs, the 8.9" and 10" but I was planning on purchasing an MSI wind for my girlfriend. But after messing around with the Asus netbooks, I just found them to be terribly inconvenient. It's size was really appealing to me in pictures but as soon as I started playing with it I found it way too small for me. I can't imagine typing fast (or typing at all for that matter) during my class lectures.

And these things don't have disc drives so how do you even load stuff in there?

 

You Rock! These are great pic's....Thank you very much..it helps me out alot! I just cant decide which one I like better! It's also the color thing for me, you know! yeah. lulz.


Cin

 

I can type pretty good on the One. I have big hands and fingers (not sausage fingers, but larger than average for a man) so I'm surprised at how usable the keyboard is. The keyboard is awkward until you spend an hour or so getting used to it.
I would have purchase the EEE as I preferred it for the touchpad layout and just generally liked it except for the shift key on EEE.
Most of the time I use a bluetooth mouse i/o the touchpad, however, I'm used to the layout of the One touchpad also.

I have Office Enterprise 2007 loaded on my One. Runs fine.
This is not my primary computer, or even my primary laptop, though I'm finding myself spending more and more time on One and less on my 15" laptop.

Negatives so far are the lack of bluetooth (I added a bluetooth adapter), a Acer support I'm not too impressed with. (Does ANYONE have good support anymore?)

 

I love the idea of large HD's on these things but honestly don't know what I'll do with the 120 on the Aspire -- music is all I can think of. 16GB is about all I need on something this size other than perhaps music. I will be using the One a bunch on travel for the next couple of weeks and from the limited amount of typing I have done the keyboard is very nice and I love the dedicated F keys.
No need to be sad The Acer combined with the Costco warranty is a hard combo to beat.

So far the fan has not been too bad but just in comparison to a 100% silent PC it stands out. I plan to load the battery meter and will look at the fan software as well.

Cin' - glad the pic's helped! I really liked the "BROWN" Aspire One - if Costco had that option I would have picked that one. The blue is quite nice as well.

Have BT on my Mini's but probably will never use it. I did not even realize the Aspire One did not have BT... kinda assume all current computers have it. Perhaps I'll use BT for netmeeting type stuff in the future... I had one of the original
EEE's and was not blown away. I think the current crop is a bit better.

 

Aspire One seems to be more responsive than the Mini in all regards. Mini has 2GB Aspire one has 1GB both running XP. Processor is the same so I did not expect to see any real performance difference.

Battery Meter - The Aspire One by default shows time left on the battery. I'm stll looking for a good battery meter for the Mini - anyone know why the standard meter in XP does not report time left on the MINI?

After a full day of Aspire One use the Screen is still significantly brighter than the Mini - I actually turn it down a few notches under certain lighting conditions.