Acer Aspire One Netbook

I just got this netbook yesterday and it was supposed to be a Christmas present from my boyfriend, but I just couldn’t wait to open it. I haven’t put it down since!

It’s small and compact, and is pretty quick. In the item description, it states that the hard drive is 160 GB. When I got the computer, I read the box and it states that the actual formatted capacity is less and may vary depending on preloaded materials and operating environment. When I actually looked at my computer’s hard drive, it was 133 GB. I just wanted to share that because I know that some people will use this for pictures, video and music. I am using it almostly exclusively for surfing the internet, emails, and Microsoft Word.

The keyboard is 93% of a normal sized keyboard. Yesterday it was pretty difficult to type because I wasn’t used to it, but today I’m doing a lot better! The only problem with my typing is that I keep forgetting that you can’t put your wrists down on the touchpad because that moves the cursor and I end up typing where I don’t want to type. I did purchase a wireless mouse, which works great, but unfortunately you cannot disable the touchpad built into the notebook.

The battery life is approximately 4 hours, give or take. I would like to have a 6 cell lithium ion battery instead of the 3 cell, but I don’t know if they have 6 cell available for this particular netbook.

The one downside is that you have the choice of small print or medium print. If you choose to use the small print, it is so small that your eyes need to rest after about an hour. Besides that, when on the internet, you cannot read a lot of the words because the letters actually blend into one another. So, I use medium print. However, it makes it much more difficult to navigate the internet because not only do I have to scroll down, but I also have to scroll over to see the entire page.

It’s thin, compact and portable. It works great for what I need it for! My daughter has an iPod touch 8GB new generation, and now she wishes that she had one of these netbooks instead!

I bought this gift for my wife a couple of weeks ago from another online site.
So far it has been an excellent investment.

Pros: Lightweight, easy to install, faster than Vista. Mine boots in under a minute. Price was excellent. According to some reviews online this is the first Acer Aspire netbook to come out with a dual core Intel Atom processor. It was released in Oct of 2010.

Cons: A little bogged down with pre-installed software. No optical drive (DVD/CD). Initial install setup time is around 20-30 mins, you cannot simply turn it on and use it.

Other Thoughts: Ok, only had it for two weeks now, but will change this if necessary. First I uninstalled Mcafee, Norton, and Office trial. Googled Windows 7 apps, read reviews and installed: Google Chrome Browser, AbiWord, Gnumeric Spreadsheet, VLC Media Player, Panda Antivirus, Paint.net, 7 zip, foxit pdf reader. These programs were recommended for a faster experience on Windows 7 Starter and they certainly deliver. Using Chrome is comfortable and fast. Foxit is faster than Adobe. Also consider installing enhancemyse7ven to keep your new pc optimized. This pc is still new but it seems reliable so far. It’s probably as fast as XP which came out 8 years ago. The battery seems to last long. It boots up in about 57 seconds (at least mine does). I originally was going to install a Linux OS like Ubuntu but after seeing how well Win 7 starter was working, I decided to keep it. If anything changes I will update this review.

I got this little netbook to replace my four year old Acer laptop. It is perfect for me because I only use computers for my online classes and to watch movies/shows. It has about 3 hours of battery life and takes about an hour to charge completely. The webcam works perfectly if you do not have a lot of stuff running. I would suggest this netbook to my friends if they wanted it mainly for surfing the internet but not for gaming. It is light weight and compact, I just worry about placing it in my bag with all of my text books. I would suggest buying a mouse because the touchpad is extremely sensitive.

This is my second Acer Aspire. It’s the perfect travel size laptop. It has all the ports I need and a built in camera for Skyping. This is my first pc w/Win7. I love Win7 and wish all my computers had it. Love this netbook!

Okay, It’s Mar 2013. It Still Works like new. Used daily, A LOT. Don’t you hate it when something just keeps working perfectly and doesn’t allow you to buy the latest greatest that’s really not much better? With the extended life battery I put in 2yrs ago that is still allowing 8+hrs of play time, I say WoW. When it dies, or if it will die … I’m buying Acer again. Acer Aspire One is #1.
Actually my powerful HP desk top has occasional “challenges” and while I’m trying to get it going again I use the little Acer. After 4yrs 9months the Acer’s number of problems are now at Zero. Nothing. It always works. Sure I could wish for a near instant start up laptop rather than waiting 45 seconds, but I appreciate reliability most of all and I like my long lasting battery. I give it 5 stars. And I’ll buy another shiny new one … if it dies

2011. I bought this little critter as a backup to my desktop. I put my business on both. I have a backup hard drive mounted on it using vecro… I don’t trust any electronics. But when the desktop has problems, the Acer rescues me. This Acer has been in a day pack and jammed into a kayak floating down the Amazon for 21 days, it’s been in a backpack for 5 weeks walkinghiking in Peru. It’s just returned from 3 weeks of trekking in Nepal (micro dust, snow storm, jarring drops, constant jiggling), a week in India and China. It gets put into my briefcase nearly daily and tossed into the car or tied the back of a motorcycle. It’s been camping in Yellowstone and Yosemite 3x … blah blah and it’s still working. Runs a little slow… hey, it’s a $300 machine what do you expect? If you want speed and a real key board spend $300 more and get a 15″ machine. It’s not fun to type on all day either. But if you wish to check email, do some smaller word.doc’s, give a powerpoint presentation, then this little less than 3 pound machine does it. Now I did buy at the start a 2 gig ram chip. Took out the one gig, but in a two gig. Did it myself and I don’t know what I’m doing, so it must not be that hard. Supposedly this increased my speed by 18% or so, don’t know that I notice it much. Hard to tell the difference between a 2second and a 1.5 second delay. One thing about these customer reviews is that they’re always recent, I thought it would be nice to see a longer term review. I gave it 4 stars because as other have said “it’s a little slow”, but gosh, it’s otherwise doing really well. My Acer was purchased June 30 2009. I’d buy another one if a yak broke it or an elephant stepped on it. Enjoy the day, R

Really like this little bugger! Got it for $179 at Target with Windows XP installed. Face it, this ain’t no gaming machine. But if you are a traveler who likes to keep connected and are tired, as I was, of schleping a seven pound laptop around, you’re gonna love this thing! Kill off the Norton and Mcafee that comes with it, Install Avast anti-virus and free Zone Alarm firewall. Then install Mozilla Fire Fox and Thunderbird. Presto! You’re set. Also has a functional web cam and a so-so built-in mic. I’m using a USB mouse…hate touch pads. Keyboard is somewhat cramped at first being 93 percent full size but you’ll easily get used to it. Battery life with the three-cell pack is adequate and re-charge is pretty quick. Shiny finish on the outer top shows fingerprints like crazy but so what? It’ll never be your main computer but it wasn’t meant to be. This little guy does what it was intended to do and does it very well.

I’ve had this netbook for about a week or so, and so far I’m pretty happy with my purchase. I’m not one to throw around 5 stars, but I think 4.5 wouldn’t be completely unjustified.

Only complaints

-Keyboard is a little cramped: The first few days were a little annoying, but my fingers have gotten used to not moving as far to hit the right buttons. The backspace button and navigation buttons are still a little trying

-Screen resolution: If it could have a ? x 800 screen, it would probably be ideal for many programs, because 800 is almost always the minimum height requirement.

-Preinstalled programs: Like virtually every PC, I uninstalled about 80% of the preinstalled programs within an hour of unboxing.

-Recharge time: From <10% to a full charge, you are looking at a few hours (at least 2) to get back to 100%. But, from 100% I have about 3-5 hours worth of use, or maybe like 6-8 hours of standby time.

Aside from those complaints, it does everything I need it to. For people considering a netbook, I think evaluating your needs before you buy one is probably the key to a happy ending. This is not a performance machine by any stretch of the imagination — forget Photoshop and 720p. I did install GIMP, and it does run, but it’s almost exclusively for novelty purposes only. The first start took about 4-5 min to config itself.

It works great for the web (shocking, right? — streams standard def video better than I expected), word processing, watching video (standard def), listening to music, etc. If you need something to type on between your home/work/school computer, and don’t feel like cramming your fingers on a smartphone screen, this is a pretty good buy. Downside: This can’t fit in most pockets.

There are a few things worth uninstalling and disabling to get better performance (and battery life). The biggest bang for your buck will probably be disabling Windows Aero interface, so it looks like “Classic” Windows. If you can stand waiting, I bet the dual-core/DDR3/6-cell battery version of this will be available early this year with this one’s price point, and I’m sure that baby will be cookin’. Speaking of cookin’, I have read reviews about the loud fan? Either I haven’t stress-tested this thing enough, or that issue has been ironed out, because I haven’t heard a fan since I bought it. But maybe they’re all broken? Time will tell.

Overall, I’m happy so far, and would recommend it. But be ready to retrain your fingers.

My 22 year old grand-daughter, for whom I bought this, says it’s “awesome” and since she seemed to have spent all of her awake spare time with her old, now-deceased computer, this is high praise from one who should know. I have my own Acer which I use as a laptop and I like it almost as much as my two desktops.