Quote:
Originally Posted by mtravellerh
I have an Acer Aspire One with one gb of memory, 160 gb HD, XP, and a decent sized keyboard. Yes; I read on it (like it, too), but it's just that tiny bit too big too be entirely portable, screen glares, too.
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This is what I have, too (the 8.9" model). It's a surprisingly capable machine. Certainly faster than my old Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop circa 2004. I did consider getting the 10" version, but I settled for the smaller one since I wanted the portability. I have a fairly thin & light Toshiba laptop (13.3") but lugging it around for hours still gives me a backache so I got something even smaller. Keyboard feels pretty cramped, even with my small hands, but I guess that has more to do with the fact that I'm used to touch-typing on the Toshiba's keyboard. My brother who has bigger hands than I do has no problem typing on the Acer Aspire One. One questionable design choice they did make was putting the left and right "mouse" buttons on either side of the touchpad. It feels pretty awkward but I guess, as with most things, it'll be fine once you get used to it. At least Acer included a USB mouse in the package.
Quote:
Originally Posted by =X=
It comes with WindowsXP and is a full fledged PC. First thing I did though is install firefox and openoffice.
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What he said. It's a full-fledged PC and while slow (performance would probably be abysmal for heavy Photoshopping and you can expect a lot of stutters if watching Blu-ray rips), it can do everything a full PC can. One of the first things I did (once Windows was done with all the updates) is install Firefox. I opted for MS Office 2003, though, instead of OpenOffice. When I first installed OpenOffice (v2?) on my other computers, I found it to be slower than MS Office. Well, at least opening programs seemed to take forever compared to almost instantaneous with MS Office. Things have probably improved since then, but I've still got a license free (Student & Teacher version) for MS Office so I'm using those up first.
Quote:
Originally Posted by =X=
One recommendation is I would buy a DVD/CD-ROM USB drive and the 6 cell battery over the 3 cell this will double your batter life from 2.5 to 5 hrs.
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I also got the one with the 6-cell battery. It's a bit heavier than the 3-cell version and the battery protrudes from the back, but the 5-hour battery life is very useful when you're on the go. I didn't buy a portable USB DVD/CD-ROM drive for mine as I find I don't really need it on the go. I barely use the optical drive on my current laptops. Since I'm somewhat prone to losing CDs, I keep a disc image of install discs, etc, on my desktop's hard drive. I've got Virtual CloneDrive installed on the netbook so in case I need to install something from a CD, I just open the disc image with Virtual CloneDrive, and presto, instant optical drive. Besides, I have one of those Xbox 360 HD-DVD player add-ons that I can connect to the Acer Aspire One in a pinch.