Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 696-699 of 699
 Others should Aspire to this"One" October 1, 2008
Gadget Guy (Atlanta, GA)
34 out of 36 found this review helpful
I've spent 30 some years traveling for a living and also just for fun! Always took a laptop along for biz, and occasionally took a small Winbook on personal trips. I found the Acer Aspire One while looking for something else. My unit has the 3 cell battery which will only go approx 2 hours at best. But for travel it's great! It's light, sturdy and the XP software is faster than Vista. Startup time is just about a minute! I can't say enough good things about this unit. Be prepared to buy a portable cd/dvd for down loadning movies, programs etc... I recently found a very compact Sony drive for $100. In this case my total expenditure was $450 for both.
If your looking for a unit to take along on trips - this is it! No need to spend $800 to $1000 for HP or others - this one fills the bill!
 Great little gadget September 29, 2008
Dave (Pa)
568 out of 576 found this review helpful
I've had mine for 3 days now, and it's been really hard to put down and walk away from. Obviously the poratability of it is a big reason, but also because the 6 cell battery lasts so long that I feel like I can just leave it on for a while without feeling the need to keep powering it down or charging it all the time. Also, boot up and shutdown times are a lot faster than my regular laptop.
The build is very solid. There is no flex in the screen or keyboard. I'm not sure how it would hold up if dropped on a hard surface, though. I hope I never have to find out. Keyboard response is nice. The keys don't feel cheap or like they would snap off if more than a little pressure is placed on them. Keys are close to regular size so typing on it doesn't take much getting used to, if at all. The screen is highly reflective and the outer coating has a glossy finish, which I don't prefer because it leaves fingerprints too easily and makes it difficult to see the screen in the daylight. But I'm willing to live with this simply because the computer has so much else going for it.
This computer uses the 1.6 GHZ atom, which is the standard processor included with most ultraportables right now. I've noticed that I can run some moderately intensive software on it, but not smoothly for long periods of time. I tried loading some music software for which a 1.4 GHZ processor is recommended (Native Instruments Absynth 4), just to see how well it would run. I found that it was capable of operating, but it was easy to make the CPU spike if I played more than a few notes at once. Not that I was planning on using this a a music production tool, but I was interested in seeing what I could get away with in case I find myself stuck on an airplane or car trip with my Aspire One and a pair of headphones and want to play around with sounds a little bit. Native Instruments FM8 wasn't so processor intensive and operated much more smoothly. In short, I got about the best response I could have hoped for with the processor and soundcard included. Fairly functional for light doodling.
Windows Media Player 9 was included in the software bundle, so I decided to upgrade it to Windows Media Player 11. I don't know if this was such a smart move, as version 11 may be more resource hungry. I was playing some mp3's while simultaneously updating my music library and the program started hanging on me after about 20-30 minutes. I closed and reopened the program and resumed what I was doing and after 5 minutes, the program again started to hang. By this point, I decided I had been testing the limits of this system for quite a while and the processor was running pretty hot by this point, so I decided to turn it off and put it down for a while.
RAM-wise, it comes with 1 GB and is only expandable to 1.5. I've heard that it is difficult to reach the RAM slot and that it involves taking the computer apart, so I've decided that the marginal increase in memory is not worth the hassle, particularly since the limited processor would not allow you to run much, if any, software that would require more memory than you already have pre-installed in this little thing, so it seems like a moot point to add memory.
The 160 GB hard drive is probably the largest capacity hard drive currently shipping pre-installed in the world of ultraportable PCs, and so far i've only seen it in the latest Aspire Ones. It's the traditional 5400 rpm HDD notebook drive. I like the higher capacity because it means that this computer can double as an additional storage drive to back up files, music, photos, etc. I would not have this luxury if I bought one of the other models on the market with low capacity solid state drives.
I've read reviews of the older Aspire One model and it seems a lot of people had difficulty with the Wi Fi not finding an internet connection and also bios problems. I don't know if Acer addressed these issues in this newer model, but I have not experienced any problems with either so far. If I do, I'll update my review later. So far, this has been a great little toy. You just have to remember that it was not built for intensive computing or high performance, and manage your expectations accordingly.
great for the road! September 5, 2008
Henry Kim (New Jersey)
13 out of 24 found this review helpful
Just got this little guy not too long ago. I have to admit that the Intel Atom processor is far faster than i thoought it was going to be. I am running XP just fine and have had absolutely no issues with speed when running MS and Open Office, IE7, etc. I'm even watching movies from Netflix with absolutely no problems! I upgraded the RAM to 1.5G however as another reviewer mentioned, it's not as easy as Acer should have made it. It required me dissasembling the entire case and fully exposing the circuit board. Typing is OK,but not great. The keyboard is tight but I can still manage to enter in text relatively quickly. Two main con's, there is no bluetooth and the supplied battery is only a 3 cell, with just over a 2hr life wtih screen backlight turned down all the way. Waiting for some longer battery life options, hoping to find some third party vendors selling soon! Otherwise, I am very happy with this purchase. I am finding that I am using it much more than I anticipated daily. At $350, plus the $25 for the extra RAM, its absolutely a BARGIN!
Great little laptop for the money and Windows XP over Vista is a huge plus September 3, 2008
Jason Ellis (Warsaw, IN)
86 out of 90 found this review helpful
This little gem is perfect for travel, or just taking from room to room of the house. My wife and I keep ours almost exclusively on our couch or under our bed for access pretty much at our fingertips. The weight of this thing is incredible. I find the boot time to be plenty fast (use MSCONFIG to reduce some of the startup applications). We also discovered that although it doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, you can install CD-ROM based programs by networking another computer with this, so you can then access the CD-ROM drive of another computer using the Acer Aspire One. You'll have to "share" the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive of the other computer. After that, just insert the software disc and access it through the Acer. Presto, you can then install all your software on CD's without actually having to buy an external drive.
My ONLY complaint about this thing is that it is extremely difficult to upgrade the RAM from 1GB to 1.5GB. You actually have to remove the keyboard, facia, to get to the bottom side of the motherboard. A huge pain. There are about 3 videos on YouTube that actually show tutorials of people replacing the 512GB removeable memory chip, with a 1GB chip. It isn't easy, and unless you have some background in computer upgrades, I might forget about this upgrade altogether. That is the ONLY reason this computer didn't get 5 stars. Why Acer didn't do like every other laptop I've ever seen, and put a door for easy access to the memory slot is beyond me.
Showing reviews 696-699 of 699
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