Acer Aspire One A110
The Eee-beater to beat
Review It was all so simple at the start of the year. You wanted a Small, Cheap Computer™, you bought an Asus EeePC 701. Now we have a plethora of SCCs to choose from - and Dell has still to get in on the act.
Thankfully, Acer has taken a slightly more restrained view of what constitutes an SCC. Its Aspire One is available in just three basic flavours: 8GB SSD and Linux; 120GB HDD with Linux; and 120GB HDD with Windows XP. On the desk in front of us, we have the least expensive, most basic model, the 8GB in MacBook-envy white, the most pure iteration of the SCC concept to date, in our opinion.
Acer's Aspire One: stylish
Out of the box, the AA1 - as fans call it - is a petite 249 x 170 x 29mm and weighs in at a correspondingly featherweight 995g (2.19lbs). So the portability box is well and truly ticked.
It's wider than the Eee: about 25mm more than the Eee 900, for example. That's to accommodate the AA1's larger keyboard, which Acer claims is 85 per cent of the size of a full laptop keyboard - larger and less cramped than the one on the Asus and, consequently, easier for bigger hands to use.
Overall, the AA1's build quality is excellent. The keyboard is well laid out, firm and responsive, the screen hinge is solid, and the fan is never intrusive once it fires up to cool things down. It has a decent colour scheme as well, the black screen surround nicely setting off the white of the lower half of the device, though we're not entirely sure what the red rims on the lid hinge are all about. There's a pleasing lack of stickers too, with only the Intel Atom label besmirching the palmrest area.
COMMENTS
Re: A few points
"-- The HP 2133 has this thing beaten on all fronts, even comes with a 'standard' Linux: SuSE."
Yeah, except for the fact the 2133 is slow as hell, runs as hot as hell and has a similar battery life! Check your facts before posting please.
Integrated storage slot
@ W
The integrated storage SD slot (accepts SDHC) is used by the file system as it gets mounted into your home directory, which is itself in the /mnt directory. It's a *nix thing that M$ pinched in Win 2000 btw.
I bought the 150 L last week and I'm using it for nearly everything although you will definitely want to change the default twit-proof interface to something more flexible - acerguy will tell you how.
The 120GB holds my MP3 collection (60gb) and still has space for a few movies for the kids although you really want a power socket for movies.
For the record, everyone who has seen this has asked if it is a "real" pc, they are quite surprised when I tell them that it is.
Will buy an aftermarket battery when they come down in price, unless I can source some good quality li-ion cells and build one myself.
Run on alkalines, not very green is it! Now a solar case lid, that would be funky.
J.
On sale at PC WOrld for £199
Just to let you know that PC World are now selling them at £199. If you can pick up the bigger battery, flog the old one, then it's not that bad a price. Linky here: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/705895#productInformationSection
Aspire One with extended battery available
For me the whole point about SCCs (or netbooks) is portability, quick boot up, long battery life and low cost. The Eee 901 almost got it right except for the price, hence why the version of the Aspire One that I bought included the 6 cell battery, 1Gb RAM, 8Gb SSD and Linpus Linux... and it's awesome.
Cost from FutureShop.ca in Canada was CAD$449. After taxes that still comes to only 250 in "real money". Boot time from cold to surfing is 30 seconds. I get between 5-6 hours of use with the 6 cell battery and that includes constant wireless and much video streaming usage. The keyboard is also remarkably usable and the extra "storage slot", as mentioned in the review, is very novel.
Side note: The supplied slip cover does not fit when the 6 cell battery is used, though apparently Acer are planning free replacements.
256 bits per pixel?
»Ermm, that'll be 2048x1366x256 = 716177408 (+ some header info, EXIF info etc) bits
Is that 256 bits per pixel?
Ermm, I rather thought that 24 (or 32 if you have an alpha channel) would be more usual.
