There's no question, we'd have rated the AA1 more highly, matching the MSI Wind, if it hadn't been for the battery life.
Of course, the optional six-cell battery will effectively double that, but add over 300g to the AA1's weight. It will probably also set you back a substantial percentage of the basic machine's initial purchase price.
Nice look, shame about the battery life
Speaking of the price, the basic AA1 comes in at around £220, rising to about £230 with the 120GB HDD instead of the 8GB SSD. That's handy if you want to take lots of media content around with you, but for an SCC it seems overkill. £250 will buy you a 120GB model with 1GB of memory, and a further £30 gets you the Windows XP instead of Linux, albeit with 512MB of memory. The version with 1GB of memory costs £300.
Some will argue that's too expensive for an SCC, not without some justification. Go for the basic model, though it's a real shame Acer couldn't bring in out under £200, as it originally promised. It'll make a great secondary machine that you can take with you when you don't need the performance - or fancy carrying the bulk - of your main notebook.
Verdict
The Aspire One is everything a Small, Cheap, Computer should be. The build quality is excellent, the feature list is not half bad, and it certainly looks and feels the part. Indeed, it's the best-looking SCC we've seen. On the down side, the standard battery is poor and - with the Linux versions at least - getting online using a 3G network isn't straightforward.
Of course, the really great thing about the AA1 is that you can tuck it under your arm, go our and feel far less of a tit than if you were carrying a MacBook Air. Worth buying for that alone, if you ask us.
Acer Aspire One A110
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.
