Acer Aspire One: A Wallet-Friendly Netbook For The Budget-Conscious
March 8, 2009 by Jeffrey L. Wilson
When I was just a young’un in the mid ‘80s, I was a precocious tyke. If there was trouble to be found, I had an extraordinary sense that enabled me to sniff it out, by either performing daredevil stunts (such as bus or train surfing) or total landing into it by accident (I’ve broken more than my fair share of windows playing baseball with the crew).
Oft times, my parental would give me a valuable life lesson in lieu of a good ol’ fashioned strapping, which would involve stimulating moral lessons that, even as a pre-teen, I somehow got. These lessons were often direct and to the point (Mama Wilson wasn’t one for fluff), but on odd occasions she provided examples of the appropriate course of action by demonstrating what not to do. Which is exactly what I’m to do here.
I cover the consumer electronics space in one of my other gigs, and I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in the field. So when dear Mama Wilson, the sage of my childhood, performed a major, major purchasing blunder, I was shocked and appalled. This 50+ year old woman, who does nothing PC related other than checking her AOL Mail, bought a PC that cost over $2,500. $2,500 just to forward me photos of puppies frolicking in meadows. That just wasn’t right.
After a small chastisement, I realized that it wasn’t her fault entirely; she was probably a victim of an upsell by a blue shirt. Still, the idea of my mom owning a machine that video editors or hardcore gamers would drool over was more than a little bit hilarious—and quite a bit of overkill for her needs.
This rather long (but hopefully insightful) intro was crafted to demonstrate that blind purchases where one doesn’t analyze the usefulness of a product, and cost you big bucks. Mama Wilson could have made due with a netbook, a low-cost, lightweight mini-notebook designed for anywhere web access. We’ve touched upon netbooks in previous post, but never delved into their fruits. Consider that oversight rectified as we’re going to take a look at the new $349 10-inch Acer Aspire One. I know what you’re probably thinking—a PC under $400 has to be crap, right? Slow down, cowpoke. The Acer Aspire One is a kickin’ little netbook, and show we’ll show you why the vast majority of PC users in the hunt for a new computer need some of this slickness in their lives. The Acer Aspire One doesn’t have the mind-blowing specs of other computers, but chances are the “meager” specs are all that you need. Let’s break it down.
Design: For a computer that’s remarkably cheap, the Acer Aspire One is a pretty sharp looking device. It comes in four colors (black, white, red, blue), and features nice touches like a brushed metal palmrest, glossy bezel that surrounds the 10-inch display, and sweet-looking tear-drop shaped Acer logo built into the hinge. In other words it’s full of pimposity. The 10.1-inch display is very bright, and you even get a webcam for videochatting with buds. The touchpad is a bit small, but its no dealbreaker.
1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor: Without getting all uber-nerdy on you, I’ll say that the CPU powering the Acer Aspire One is more than sufficient for working in documents, checking out photos, and blaring tunes from your music folder without any lag our hiccups. Plus, with many applications living on the web instead of on your PC, all you need is a decent Wi-Fi connection to check out the YouTubes, the Gmails, and the Slackers. In short, you have enough horsepower in the engine to handle your typical day to day computing tasks.
1GB of RAM: The majority of new PCs run Windows Vists, which is a notorious resource hog, but the Acer Aspire One is powered by Windows XP, a far lighter operating system that can run smoothly on 1GB of RAM. You can expect smooth performance while working and playing.
160GB Hard Drive: Although the Acer Aspire One has a $349 price tag, it comes packed with chunky 160GB hard drive, which is more than enough real estate for photos, music, video, docs, and other files (that’s more storage than on my 60Gb Mac Mini desktop). Considering that most users won’t be editing HD clips or gaming on the device (it does, after all, have only a 10 inch display and a fairly pedestrian graphics card), you’ll have plenty of space for your goodies.
6-Cell Battery: Included with purchase is a 6-cell battery, which provided over 5 hours of juice with the power management settings positioned for maximum battery efficiency, and with the screen dimmed (with the screen at its brightest, we saw 4.5 hours of endurance).
So is the Acer Aspire One worth the coin? You betcha. It’s lightweight (2.8 pounds), attractive, and gives users access to the Web, which, in the modern PC age, is pretty much all that’s needed for a more than satisfying computing experience. It doesn’t feature a CD or DVD drive, but in the era of Amazon MP3, Hulu, and software downloads, you can get virtually anything you need as soon as you connect to the Web. In short, the Acer Aspire One is pound for pound one of the best bang for your buck netbooks on the planet.
Related posts:
Interesting post!…
This story was just shared with our readers on SweetHype!! Follow this link to hype up this article and get more people to read it: http://www.sweethype.com/node/2384...