Acer Aspire One AOA150 1553 8 9 Inch Onyx Black Netbook 6 Cell Battery
Weighing in at just over 2 and 3/4 pounds, the Aspire one Mobile Internet device is the ideal traveling companion that lets you take the Internet on the road. Communicate with friends and family and enjoy a variety of entertainment in a small portable design that keeps you connected on the go. The Intel Atom Processor combines performance, power and efficiency to explore the Internet and stay connected while on the go. Enjoy reliable on-line access with 802.11b/g Wireless to explore the Internet and view photos or Video clips and listen to Music in a comfortable browsing environment on the Acer CrystalBrite display. Windows XP Home Edition lets you surf the Internet, edit documents and photos, read email, and enjoy the webcam to chat online with or take still photos smoothly and reliably right out-of-the-box at a great price. Store all of your Digital albums, music libraries and documents on the high-speed 160GB hard drive. Sufficient Storage that’s easy to upgrade, just pop in an external SD card. Whether you are a first time user or just want a second computing device to easily check E-mail and surf the Internet, the Aspire one was designed for simplicity with a intuitive Desktop design, widescreen display and easy-typing keyboard. 8.9 diagonal WSVGA (1024 x 600) CrystalBrite TFT LCD Display Integrated Crystal Eye Webcam Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 Built-in Stereo Speakers Acer InviLink 802.11b/g Wireless 10/100 Ethernet LAN Multi-in-1 Card Reader – SD, MMC, RS-MMC, MS, MS Pro, and xD 3 x USB 2.0, Headphone/Speaker/Line-Out, Microphone-in, VGA, RJ-45 (LAN) Approximate Unit Dimensions – 9.8 (W) x 6.7 (D) x 1.14 (H) Approximate Unit Weight – 2.78 Pounds
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Small enough to carry everywhere, but not a toy
I am thrilled with my Aspire One. I got in in black back when that didn’t cost extra. I am using in place of a 15″ business-grade HP laptop. The HP didn’t break or anything, I just got tired of lugging it around.
THE PROS:
The hardware is surprisingly adequate. It feels a lot like a high-end notebook from four years ago. The analog video out works as well as analog ever does, which I have confirmed with both 20″ (1600×1200) and 23″ (2048×1152) monitors. It can drive one of these AND its own screen without a hiccup. The screen resolution of 1024×600 works well for a browser, especially if you go full-screen on the pages, and the pixel density is crazy (bad for “old eyes” who may want the 10″ version instead, good for the 20-somethings and 30-somethings). It has enough speed to run MS Office acceptably, though the screen really isn’t big enough to do anything serious — but I say the same thing about the HP notebook. It’s not great at anything, but it has no glaring weaknesses either.
It has JUST enough CPU and graphics muscle to run eyecandy like Milkdrop on the built-in screen, though you’ll have to compromise (settings and/or frame rate) a bit to drive a larger screen.
Audio quality is excellent using external speakers.
Battery life with the three-cell is two to three hours depending what I’m doing with it. Playing a movie would probably drain it in two hours, but that’s generally long enough for a movie. The six-cell option does double this capacity if two to three hours just isn’t enough, but it also sticks out of the back in somewhat of an odd manner and adds weight, which is why I decided against it.
The keyboard is laid out in a manner that avoids the annoyances of so many other netbooks — namely, CTRL and the right SHIFT are exactly where you’d expect them to be, and the arrow keys are small but well-placed. The keyboard is quite usable for being 89% size, and does not feel cheap or flimsy.
It has three USB ports, WiFi, VGA, a 100mbit Ethernet port, and TWO memory card slots. The left one is SD/SDHC only, the right supports a few other card types as well as SD/SDHC.
Due to the modest power demands, the brick is fairly small and light compared to most notebook bricks. The brick and cords, the mini-mouse, and the Aspire One all fit in a lunch-size cooler bag… with lunch still in it.
It looks really cool, once all the fingerprints are wiped off.
It gets warm in use, but not enough to be worrisome or even particularly uncomfortable. It runs much cooler than the HP.
This little computer is not a toy, and it doesn’t fit in your pocket (unless you wear cargo pants, I don’t), but it’s quite easy to take along for whatever purpose. I often go to lunch with the Aspire One in my hand and a mini-mouse in my pocket, or streamcast a game when I’m cooking or in the bathroom or anywhere else I can’t stare at a fixed TV.
THE CONS:
In the few months I’ve had it, I’ve had ONE problem: it started shutting itself off, either while booting up or shortly after. I did a bit of googling and found this is due to the CPU fan not turning on, and the machine shuts off to protect itself. However, there is a fairly simple procedure to fix it: unplug it and remove the battery, hold the power button for 20 seconds, reattach the power but not the battery, start it up — it may shut off one more time — then put the battery back in. It should work fine after that. Apparently I’d been tossing it around a bit TOO casually and may have caused this, but it’s fixed.
I had to update the WiFi driver. It was flaky out of the box, but it works much better after the update.
The lid and screen are REALLY glossy, and are thus complete fingerprint magnets. The built-in screen is only 16-bit color. It took me quite a while to notice the difference so this is not a major problem, and external monitors are not limited to 16-bit color.
No optical drive. Deal, it’s a netbook.
The built-in speakers suck. See above point.
The trackpad is mediocre, and the buttons are on the sides (undoubtedly to save precious front-to-back space), but it works, especially once it breaks in. It starts out requiring a lot of pressure, but this eases fairly quickly. I’ve never gotten comfortable with ANY trackpad, so I do not consider this a serious flaw.
SUMMARY:
If you are looking for a small, affordable, and all-around useful replacement for a regular notebook, and don’t need blazing speed, this will fit the bill. If you expect to add a bunch of extra plug-in hardware when you get to work, it will still fit the bill. It will mostly just work out of the box but could use a bit of tweaking to perform optimally.
2 Stars Buyer Beware
I have read many reviews extolling the virtues of this computer and after having it for a few days the glitter quickly dimmed.
{1} It’s much slower than people would lead you to believe and I’m not talking about the usual lag time for a XP to boot up, I’m saying it take longer for programs like Chrome to boot and when it does it takes it much longer for it to complete a page. I didn’t expect a super fast computer but from reading many of these misleading reviews my expectations were quickly a little higher than what is delivered.
{2}Of course you could always upgrade your memory to speed things up a bit. That is until you have to completely disassemble the enire computer and I mean take it apart, not just remove a cover or a back, do a search and watch a video on what you have to do to replace the memory, this alone will make you think about buying this netbook.
5 Stars Everything I wanted
Opened this and it worked just the way it should right from the start! Only had it a few days so far, and for the price I’m dazzled. Only regret is the Mac doesn’t make something this small for a small price. I bought this, not because I needed it, but for the price it was too good to not experiment with and enjoy the extreme practicality of all it does.
5 Stars Packs a whole lot of functionality; and performance is v.g.
I bought the white 8.9″, HDD XP version, 6-cell (pretty much what’s on this page) for my son’s 12th birthday. I had done a lot of research, and in fact, actually bought the Vaio lifestyle pc and returned it after very poor performance/speed. I did not have great expectations for this little guy, but it was worth experimenting. Well, much to our surprise, this is an amazing machine with a very comfortable keyboard, bright screen (that you’ll probably want to adjust down), and pretty darn fast!! At first, when you set it up, it seems slow to get to the desktop, but that’s only for the set-up. We also loaded Skype, and within 10 minutes, we were calling each other with full video, etc. I had heard that with the Linux version of this machine, there is trouble with the built-in recorder, but not on the XP version — it worked “out of the box”. And, I thought I had to buy a microphone, but no, it’s right there, bult in on the side. I just can’t say enough about this machine.
4 Stars LOVE IT!!! LOVE IT!!! LOVE IT!!!
I love this lil’ notebook… Easy to tote around, easy to get on line, easy to understand and use… Love the large hard drive, can store lots of movies on the notebook alone, because the only down side is there’s no c.d. drive… But save all your stuff on the 160gb hard drive or get a portable drive, and it’s just as good as anything else… Thank you to my BF who actually LISTENS to WHAT I WANT…
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