Acer Aspire One - Netbook

I recently laid my hands on the Acer Aspire One netbook, like they call it now. I have to say I was impressed. Had heard and read a lot about the Aspire One on the net, but it never got me interested because of Linux, 512MB Ram and it had 8GB SSD and not HDD. Though SSD drives respond and perform faster then HDD, but what use is it when there isn't much memory space for you to utilize.

However, the One that I got a chance to try, came with Windows XP Home, had a 1GB Ram and 80GB HDD. Now that sounded good. I anyways never expected for these netbooks to have a dual core processor, not so soon atleast. Maybe we would have them soon on these netbooks. But the Atom 1.6Ghz processor thats loaded on One, was very impressive. It responded well and could handle multiple applications at the same time without much of a problem. I was running some documents and spreadsheets while I was downloading from the net via WiFi and playing music as well. All at the same time and seriously,  I would say that the responsiveness of One was impressive.

Harcore gaming ofcourse is not something you can get from One, so I wouldn't suggest gamers to think about buying One, rather any netbooks for that matter. But if you are someone who needs to be connected most of the times and who travels a lot, I would advice One over any other netbooks currently. I have checked EEE Pc, Wind and even the most recent HP Mini-Note but One gets a two thumbs up when comared to the others.

Audio output on the internal speakiers is fair for the kind of device One is, and ofcourse if you want better, you have the Audio Out jacks on the side. Playing movies from the hard drive or from an external Memory card was no issues at all. It was smooth and clear without any kind of jerks in the frames.

Acer claims the battery life to be about 3 hours on the 3 cell battery. Well, it lasted me just over 2 hours. That could possibly be because I had a lot of things running at the same time. But none-the-less, that was fair. Acer claims that the 6 cell battery which is available for One (optional) gives a 6 hour life. I would love that kind of battery life but I will still stick to the 3 cell battery. Simply because the 6 cell battery makes One a little too heavy and its a little too protruding from the back. It makes it a little incovinient.

One thing that One misses out on is Bluetooth. I don't know why was that difficult for Acer to have a Bluetooth added to One.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with Aspire One and its performance over the other netbooks I have laid my hands on.

GOOD:

Looks, size, weight, Windows XP, 1 GB Ram and 80GB HDD, 2 memory card slots, more economical then other netbooks, webcam.

BAD:

No Bluetooth, fair battery life.

Comments are very much appreciated.