Truemors
This is a mini-review of the Acer Aspire One above.
Bought this mini-lappy a few days ago and just finished installing most of the stuff I had planned to use on the go. It's an Acer Aspire One A150 with pre-installed WinXP SP3 on a spinny 120GB 2,5" HDD. The setup is decent for use with Photoshop CS3 with as large files as 12MP from the Nikon D300 but Adobe Camera RAW is lacking because of the low resolution screen (8,9" @ 1024x600). With a bit of patience it'll work pretty well. Installed FastStone Viewer for fast preview of all image material from the cammys, even NEF and CR2 RAW-files! Outlook 2007 works like a charm. Added bluetooth via the disappearingly small Kensington BT 2.0+EDR dongle, for wireless internet with the HTC Touch Diamond. Using a USB-cable to the phone adds a little extra speed for the broadband though since the BT would be a bit of a bottleneck at 7,2Mbits/s HSDPA.
Battery life on this jewel is roughly 2.5 hours running XP and having some tasks going. The stock battery is a 3-cell 24W piece. It's on the low side but there is an ugly but practical 6-cell battery in pipeline for this model as well with up to 7 hours of mobility. It's running on the new Intel Atom N270 HyperThreading CPU with a core speed at 1.6GHz and 533MHz FSB, fitted with 1GB of DDR2. The performance is remarkable for its low power consumption. Reports say that it's fully possible to run Vista with Aero enabled on this machine.
What hooked me to this mini-laptop was the brilliant, LED-backlit, CrystalBright screen with glossy surface. Although it may impose unwanted reflections in bright sunlight, the backlight is by far brighter than any of the Eee's and therefore outdoor usability is probably on par with the Eee PCs with matte display, despite the glare of the One. Photo colours come out brilliant on this screen and it also works decent with Spyder2Express monitor calibration tool.
Considering the large HDD capacity and humble price, it's a good alternative to a photo backup solution such as the EPSON and other similar card backup / viewers out there. I also use the machine for backing up photos taken on the run by using the photo download plugin within Adobe Bridge.
Among the negatives would be the inability to boot from either of the two built-in SDHC card readers, which would otherwise be excellent to boot a second OS like TinyVista from. Especially since there's a dedicated "Storage Expansion" SD-reader on the left side, mainly used in the Linux versions for extra added SSD-capacity. Still there's always the possibility to dualboot from the large HDD, or attaching a USB-stick or drive for experiments with other OS.
Pricetag landed on 3990 SEK when I purchased this One at Inet in Gothenburg. The Linux version is about a 1000 SEK cheaper but also has only 512MB fitted DDR2 and not enough internal space for a 2,5" HDD, and then there's the included XP Home license on top of that.
Highly recommended gear! www.acer.com/aspireone/
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 12:11 on October 17th, 2008
It's been a good while now with my Acer Aspire One A150 in the camera backpacker, using it extensively each and every day in my widely varying business assignments.
I must say that the initial thrill hasn't left me the slightest bit. I'm running Adobe Bridge CS3 and Photoshop CS3 on it, evaluating my photo work on-site. It handles the 12MP RAW-images stunningly well for a netbook that size.
I find it very convenient to tag pictures on it, especially when working with many different places and objects during the day, it really saves a lot of headache.
Pricing is about the same as one of these Epson image backup/viewer units plus you get to surf at broadband speeds and use it like an ultra-portable desktop extension at work!