Acer Aspire One (10-inch)

By late last year, the Acer Aspire One had beat out ASUS's combined offerings to become the top-selling netbook—or so market research firm DisplaySearch concluded. The One's primacy has been confirmed by Amazon.com—which ranked it as its best seller over the Christmas holiday—as well as other sites that monitor laptop sales. The One reached this pinnacle despite a smaller-than-average (8.9-inch) screen and a pair of awkwardly placed mouse buttons, because it was (and still is) the most aggressively priced netbook around. The Acer Aspire One (10-inch) ($350 street) is the long-overdue update, and as its name implies, the screen size has finally caught up with its 10-inch peers. The mouse buttons, furthermore, have been relocated to their correct positions—beneath the touchpad. It's not the best-equipped netbook, now that the ASUS EeePC 1000HE has landed. But that shouldn't affect the One's blistering sales pace, because Acer addresses the most crucial part of a netbook: price.
Design isn't one of the One's strengths. The glossy top and a touch of sapphire blue won't contend with the metallic likes of the HP Mini 2140 and the ASUS EeePC 1002HA. The new One is as thick as its predecessor (9.8 by 6.7 by 1.1 inches) but longer and wider, measuring 10.3 by 7.4 by 1.1 inches because of its bigger screen. The Samsung NC10-14GB (10.3 by 7.3 by 1 inches) and the ASUS EeePC 1000HE (10.3 by 7.3 by 1.1 inches) have similar dimensions to those of the One (10-inch), while the HP Mini 1000 (10.3 by 6.6 by 0.9 inches) is one of the thinnest of the 10-inch netbooks. If you factor in the 58-Wh battery (six-cell), which sticks out about an extra inch from the back, the One spans deeper than 7.4 inches. The 1000HE does a better job of masking this gawky side effect by designing the frame around the extended battery.

By increasing the screen size (from 8.9 to 10 inches) and standardizing on a six-cell battery (instead of a three-cell), the One has gained weight: It now weighs 2.9 pounds, so it is no longer the lightest in its class. It weighs as much as the Samsung NC10-14GB, but it's still not as heavy as the ASUS 1000HE (3.2 pounds). Practically every netbook has transitioned to a 10-inch widescreen, so the One has basically caught up with the times. And like almost every other netbook, it has a resolution of 1,024 by 600. (Among the few exceptions: HP is purportedly offering a 1,366-by-768 option in its Mini 2140, and the Dell Inspiron Mini 12—a 12-inch netbook—has a 1,280-by-800 resolution.)

Another reason the One's depth has increased is the relocated mouse buttons. Rather than placing them on each side of the touchpad, where they are on the original One, they are now below the pad. Still, the buttons are tiny and difficult to press; I had a bit of thumb strain after spending only about 15 minutes navigating with them. The 1000HE, on the other hand, has its mouse buttons wrapped around the bezel, widening the pinch between your thumb and index finger when you're surfing. The One's keyboard, at 89 percent of full size, hasn't yet caught up with those of its peers; it feels cramped, even compared with the 92 percent ones of the ASUS 1000HE, the HP 2140, and the MSI Wind. (Samsung takes it up a smidge by offering a 93 percent keyboard with its NC10-14GB.) In summary, the One's typing and navigating experience can still use a lot of work.

Not much has changed in features. Like its predecessor, the One (10-inch) has three USB ports, VGA-out, an Ethernet port, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and a 4-in-1 card reader. The One (10-inch) has gotten rid of the extra SD card slot (for storage expansion), since the 160GB hard drive is spacious enough for most file types. No other netbook offers more hard drive capacity, some even have less. The 1000HE has a couple of extras, such as overclocking features and 802.11n support, while netbooks like the HP 2140 and the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 have ExpressCard slots. Given that the original One offers built-in mobile broadband, the One (10-inch) is likely to have this feature soon.

There's really no such thing as raw horsepower in a netbook. However, the One (10-inch) didn't perform worse than any other netbook, given that it uses the same components—a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of memory, and Intel integrated graphics. The 1000HE is the first netbook to use a newer N280 Atom processor and a new memory controller (front-side bus), but these upgrades didn't give much of a performance edge, either.

Battery life was somewhat of a conundrum, in a fantastic, home-run-hit sort of way. The six-cell battery capacity (59 Wh) is less than that of the 1000HE (63Wh), but it somehow produced 8 hours 46 minutes of battery life, when netbooks with similar battery capacities are getting around 6 hours and change. The One (10-inch) seemed to conserve power better than any of the other netbooks, and I even ran MobileMark 2007, a battery test, several times as a sanity check. I'd still like to hear what other users are getting with their six-cell batteries, though.

Editor's Note: We just got word from Acer that there's a shortage of the 63WH battery, so the miraculous 8 hours of battery life can only be experienced by a select few. The actual battery will be rated at 45WH, which is still a 6-cell but you won't get anywhere near 8 hours.

At this price point, the updated Aspire One (10-inch) proves that Acer is still the master of the netbook recession special. Although the 10-inch widescreen and rearranged mouse buttons were more necessities than innovation, the price that goes with these updates, not to mention the phenomenal battery life, is better than those of its peers, and it is what makes the One so special. If you worry that the inferior typing and navigating experience could be a deal breaker, spend $50 more for the ASUS EeePC 1000HE, the current Editors' Choice for netbooks.

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By increasing the screen size (from 8.9 to 10 inches) and standardizing on a six-cell battery (instead of a three-cell), the One has gained weight: It now weighs 2.9 pounds, so it is no longer the lightest in its class. It weighs as much as the Samsung NC10-14GB, but it's still not as heavy as the ASUS 1000HE (3.2 pounds). Practically every netbook has transitioned to a 10-inch widescreen, so the One has basically caught up with the times. And like almost every other netbook, it has a resolution of 1,024 by 600. (Among the few exceptions: HP is purportedly offering a 1,366-by-768 option in its Mini 2140, and the Dell Inspiron Mini 12—a 12-inch netbook—has a 1,280-by-800 resolution.)

Another reason the One's depth has increased is the relocated mouse buttons. Rather than placing them on each side of the touchpad, where they are on the original One, they are now below the pad. Still, the buttons are tiny and difficult to press; I had a bit of thumb strain after spending only about 15 minutes navigating with them. The 1000HE, on the other hand, has its mouse buttons wrapped around the bezel, widening the pinch between your thumb and index finger when you're surfing. The One's keyboard, at 89 percent of full size, hasn't yet caught up with those of its peers; it feels cramped, even compared with the 92 percent ones of the ASUS 1000HE, the HP 2140, and the MSI Wind. (Samsung takes it up a smidge by offering a 93 percent keyboard with its NC10-14GB.) In summary, the One's typing and navigating experience can still use a lot of work.

Not much has changed in features. Like its predecessor, the One (10-inch) has three USB ports, VGA-out, an Ethernet port, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and a 4-in-1 card reader. The One (10-inch) has gotten rid of the extra SD card slot (for storage expansion), since the 160GB hard drive is spacious enough for most file types. No other netbook offers more hard drive capacity, some even have less. The 1000HE has a couple of extras, such as overclocking features and 802.11n support, while netbooks like the HP 2140 and the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 have ExpressCard slots. Given that the original One offers built-in mobile broadband, the One (10-inch) is likely to have this feature soon.

There's really no such thing as raw horsepower in a netbook. However, the One (10-inch) didn't perform worse than any other netbook, given that it uses the same components—a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of memory, and Intel integrated graphics. The 1000HE is the first netbook to use a newer N280 Atom processor and a new memory controller (front-side bus), but these upgrades didn't give much of a performance edge, either.

Battery life was somewhat of a conundrum, in a fantastic, home-run-hit sort of way. The six-cell battery capacity (59 Wh) is less than that of the 1000HE (63Wh), but it somehow produced 8 hours 46 minutes of battery life, when netbooks with similar battery capacities are getting around 6 hours and change. The One (10-inch) seemed to conserve power better than any of the other netbooks, and I even ran MobileMark 2007, a battery test, several times as a sanity check. I'd still like to hear what other users are getting with their six-cell batteries, though.

Editor's Note: We just got word from Acer that there's a shortage of the 63WH battery, so the miraculous 8 hours of battery life can only be experienced by a select few. The actual battery will be rated at 45WH, which is still a 6-cell but you won't get anywhere near 8 hours.

At this price point, the updated Aspire One (10-inch) proves that Acer is still the master of the netbook recession special. Although the 10-inch widescreen and rearranged mouse buttons were more necessities than innovation, the price that goes with these updates, not to mention the phenomenal battery life, is better than those of its peers, and it is what makes the One so special. If you worry that the inferior typing and navigating experience could be a deal breaker, spend $50 more for the ASUS EeePC 1000HE, the current Editors' Choice for netbooks.

Source : www.blogger.com