Still a Good Buy

"Netbooks", which is now becoming a buzzword for small light, but affordable laptops using the Intel Atom CPU, is a hot seller these days.  Asus was famous for being the first one to have a deviced with the coined term (the EEE PC).  However, Acer made their first debut with a slightly larger body that allows for a more comfortable keyboard.

Not much changed after that.  The only real difference nowadays is that the screens have gone larger.  From the original 8.9" to the now 10" screens.  However, most netbooks with the larger screens still have the same 1024x600 resolution, and they all still use Intel's power-sipping Atom processor.

This particular Acer Aspire One (AOA150) is still the same 8.9" screen I own. My brother had $300 burning in his pocket, and inquired me about it.  We later found that Best Buy was selling this model for $275.  The difference?

Not much, actually.  While my Acer Aspire One (A150) sports a 120 GB HDD and a 6-cell battery, my brother's is suppose to have a 120 GB HDD and a 3-cell battery.  I say "suppose to have", because on the box and documentation, the A150 is suppose to have a 120 GB HDD as well.  However, upon closer inspection, the drive inside is 160 GB in capacity!  We got an extra 40 GB!  We looked at the box again, and it says in black and white "120 GB".

It still have the same 1 GB of RAM installed, but his was white in color (mine is the orignal dark blue).

Design
The design of the AOA150 hasn't changed at all from the A150.  It's still sleek and cute. The one I bought is dark blue, while my brother bought this particular one in white.  Everything is white, a well as the keyboard.  The color is more pearl in color, giving a shiney car-like paint look.  The lid is glossy so it attracts a lot of finger prints.  The screen benzel on the inside is black, however.   A web cam sits on the top center of the bezel, while the mic is situated just to the left of it.

The keyboard is still one of the more comfortable ones to use.  While netbooks with 10.1" screens naturally have larger keyboards, those that have the 8.9" screens like the AOA150 still have cramped and uncomfortable keyboards.  This make the Acer Aspire One one of the few netbooks with a decent keyboard with the smaller 8.9" screen.

Because there was no redesign, the AOA150 still inherits the akward touchpad.  While the touchpad itself isn't bad (good sensitivity), it still a bit on the small side, and the buttons are located on both sides instead of underneath the touchpad.  You do get used to it (I did), and it took a while for my brother to do just that.

Like mine, my brother's Acer Aspire One also have the dual card readers.  One allows the SD card to sit flush once installed (was meant for the Linux/SSD version of the netbook to expand on storage), while the other sticks out even after installing the SD card.  However, the hard drive versions of the Acer Aspire Ones have Windows XP Home Edition preinstalled, so the "expansion slot" acts just like another card reader.

There are 3 USB ports (one on the left, two on the right), which isn't too bad. All of them are USB 2.0, so they are indeed high speed. A standard 15-pin VGA connector flanks the left side along with an Ethernet port that sports a Realtek RTL-8102 10/00 Mbit chip that sits on a PCI-E bus (very important to know if you make bootable Symantec Ghost network disks). The jack for the AC Adapter also resides on the same side. The cooling vent is also located on this side (man, this side gets pretty busy!)

On the right side, the mic and headphone jacks live with the other USB ports and card reader. A Kingston security slot hole is also located on this side, close to the lid hinge.

The screen is clear and sharp. The resolution is perfect for the size (1024x600), since fonts are not too small nor too big. Unfortunately, if you do a lot of Remote Desktop or VNC accessing, you'll hate it, since most people will have a higher resolution than you. This means a lot of scrolling around the remote desktop to do your job. I also found that some media players insist on playing videos at 100%, causing some videos to push controls and title bars of the player off screen.

Performance
The Intel Atom N270 is simply adequate for web surfing and typing up reports. You won't be playing much video games on the Aspire One. If the odd screen resolution didn't prevent you from playing, the integrated Intel GMA950 might. While the GMA950 is powerful enough for Vista's Aero Glass, it is limited to less demanding games such as World of Warcraft. However, being paired up with the Atom means that some games may still run slow even though the graphics is not the bottleneck. Plus, you can forget about running Vista unless you are a very patient person.

Honestly, though, with a speedy 160 GB HDD (much faster than the 8GB SSD offered on the Linux version) and a gig of RAM, the Intel Atom is perfectly matched up with Windows XP for some real productive work. Don't forget that the sizable keyboard is perfect for... um... work. :)

We did not perceive any lag or slowness while surfing with IE7, or Firefox. The included trial version MS Office 2007 takes a bit longer to load, but once up and running, I have no problems using it.
My brother basically uses it for watching streaming videos.  This includes YouTube, and streaming the NBA games.  He can watch the game in several angles at one time, giving him a better experience than watching it on TV.  That's good, since I'm not a sports fan, and that frees the TV up for me!  Thanks, bro!

The Acer Aspire One chokes on some YouTube videos in HQ mode, and can never play high-def Hulu streams smoothly.  Both YouTube and Hulu videos play just fine in the standard mode.

He also plays a bit of Starcraft.  The widescreen does stretch the game's graphics a bit since it was never made with widescreen in mind, but the gameplay is smooth and silky.  Then again, this game was made when computers were running on Pentium IIs.

In Use
As stated before, the keyboard is one of the best out of all the netbooks I've used. There is a small complaint - lack of a dedicated Home and End keys (which is important if you do a lot of word processing such as writing ePinion reviews). The touchpad, however, is a mixed bag. The buttons are awkwardly placed, but the touchpad itself is gravy. The screen is bright, clear, and sharp, but the strange resolution mean that some games may not run, and it also mean that you will have to scroll around a lot if you do a lot of remote desktop accessing.

The speakers of the Acer Aspire One isn't that great, but that is to be expected. It can get pretty loud, but it will distort badly. When adjusting for the loudest setting without distortion, I must say that it sounds as good as (and as loud as) most cell speakers playing an MP3 or ring tone.

The web cam may be of a low resolution, but light sensitivity is excellent. In a dark room, you can still see yourself clearly lit by the 8.9” screen! Audio pick up from the mic isn't so great, however. You can hear a bit of static, and it doesn't help that the fan from the CPU cooler can be heard.

Of course, that's yet another complaint. While the fan isn't that particularly loud, it is always on and can drive you nuts in a quiet room. The low hum can't really be heard in most environments though.  There are free utilities made by AAO (Acer Aspire One) enthusiests availbe for download that can fix this issue, but they only work under the Windows enviroment.

A lack of an optical drive also mean that rolling your own OS may prove to be difficult. You can get around this by purchasing an external optical drive such as the LG External LightScribe Slim DVD Burner. The other way around it is create a bootable USB flash drive that has a copy of the installation files, but it's a lot of hard work and googling.

Okay, I see that it's starting to feel negative in here, so I'll end it on a high note: battery life. The Aspire One last around 3 hours with the included 3-cell battery on Windows XP while surfing on the web and watching a few XviD and YouTube videos. This also mean that the WiFi radio was on the whole time. The screen brightness was turned down as low as it can go (which is still easily legible).  If you recall, my AAO with the 6-cell battery last about 6 hours when new (it's about 5 hours now).

Upgrading
My brother did not upgrade anything on his AOA150, but since it's the same as my A150, I'll write about my experience with upgrading mine.
I was afraid to crack open the Aspire One. Afterall, they packed a lot in there! The only accessable panel is to access a mini-PCIE slot. Even a simple memory upgrade or hard drive replacement requires you to take the entire unit apart.

It's sounds worse than it is, though. The Acer Aspire One is relatively easy to take apart once you get started. While I admit there are a lot of screws, I didn't end up with any "spares" after putting it back together. There are videos and photos documenting the process on the internet everywhere! Get comfortable by watching others do it!

Once inside, Acer makes it even harder on you by placing the only available DIMM slot on the bottom side, which means you have to take the motherboard out of the chassis! By the time you get to the memory slot and the hard drive, you will be looking at an empty plastic shell.

There is 512 MB of DDR2-533 RAM soldered on the board (on the top side of the motherboard). While it seems contrary to common sense, I understand why Acer did this. A DIMM slot on top would protrude into the area where the keyboard would reside. The maximum the Intel chipset would recognize is 2GB of RAM. Since there is no 1.5 GB stick of RAM, the most you can put in the single available slot is a 1GB stick, making the maximum memory size 1.5 GB. I was able to perform this upgrade myself.

The Hitachi 120 GB 5400 RPM hard drive uses a standard SATA connector, so that means upgrading the hard drive would be easy. I had an Hitachi 160 GB 5400 RPM SATA drive already on hand, so I decided to shove it in. Easy as pie - just need a few screws here and there.

While it is more cumbersome than most laptops to upgrade, if you get inside of the Aspire One even once, you'll feel comfortable doing it again. I've been inside many times now.

Conclusion
I still think the Acer Aspire One wit the 8.9" screen is the best choice, despite the new competition.  We now have Dell and HP in the foray, as well as MSI and Sony.  There are many who is moving onto the 10" screens.  I personally love the smaller screen, and while the 10" isn't much bigger, it still adds to the heft.

As for comparing my brother's AAO to mine, I have to say that the 3-cell battery makes his unit feel much smaller and lighter than mine!  If I have held the 3-cell and the 6-cell on the day I bought mine, I may have had a harder decision - light weight or more battery life.
Still, the 6-cell battery isn't that bad (not even noticable unless you get to hold the 3-cell version side by side).  3 hours is respectable for the size, and is very portable.

My brother loves it, using it more than his desktop or his huge 17" gaming laptop.  This proves that a netbook can be your main PC if all you do is surf the net and watch streaming video (standard def stuff, of course), and a more powerful one with a larger screen (and higher resolution) can be used for more demanding tasks.