Acer Aspire One review

Average user rating

7.8

very good

Average user rating from 8 users

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Acer Aspire One user reviews

July 30, 2009

Posted by: Roope Aaltonen

"Hotter than a heatwave"

What I like:

Size & weight, quality of monitor, keyboard (size & feel), looks, performance

What I don't like:

Shallow trackpad, battery life, glossy display, memory upgrade nigh-on impossible!

Review:

This really is a sweet little netbook! I love just about everything it has to offer, and am very impressed by its quality and overall design, especially given the low price point. The display quality is awesome. The keyboard is comfortable even for proper touch typing (although had it been any smaller it probably wouldn't have been). The touchpad gets a lot of flak for the way the 'mouse' buttons are placed on either side, but even that I find a doddle; have to admit, though, that the pad could be bigger, especially depth-wise, as it now doesn't leave a lot of room for finger movements.

The three niggles I have are as follows:

1) The battery life really is quite short, borderline useless. Either you need to make sure you carry a charger with you at all times and try to hog the seat next to the power socket, or you need a spare battery. Probably both.

2) The version I bought came with 1GB RAM and I immediately got myself some extra memory to max it out to the 1.5GB it supports. Only I wasn't expecting the upgrade to be so ridiculously difficult!! I'm fairly comfortable rummaging around th internal organs of most desktops and laptops, but I've never seen anything that comes even close to this in terms of sheer difficulty and hassle - you basically have to pull out everything and disconnect just about every connector there is, and even then it's a nightmare! So my advice is, buy a version with enough memory, and then just be happy with it, no point even contemplating an upgrade (plus that a DIY one voids your warranty in any case)!

3) The display, although really nice and crisp and generally high-quality, is quite glossy which means you get a bit too much reflection for my liking. I know glossy is meant to be 'in', but I think ergonomics and usability should really trump looks here.

OK, in true Monty Python fashion, I guess my 4th and final complaint has to do with the user documentation which is pretty useless.

Incidentally, I bought the Linux version and dropped Win XP Pro into it myself (a process made rather convoluted by having to use a USB drive since this like most netbooks don't have an internal CD/DVD drive, and I don't happen to have an external one kicking around either), and I'm pleasantly surprised by how quickly it all runs even with just 1GB memory.

All in all, a great little netbook as long as you can live with the couple of weaknesses - and don't have any memory upgrade aspirations!