Acer Aspire One user reviews
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User reviews11
John Pryck 31 August 2011
Good: Good build quality, brilliant screen
Bad: Constantly freezes, dies after 9 months use.
Comment: I bought this model in the UK (TechnoWorld) in November 2010. I liked everything about it except for its infuriating tendency to Giovani freeze", whether working offline or online. In August 2011 it seized up completely, with the message "A disc read error occurred." The machine also became very hot to the touch. None of the suggested fixes worked.
It looks like my chances of getting it fixed under guarantee in the Philipines, where I am currently staying, are zero. I am not impressed, and having tried to get help from Technoworld and from Acer, I would not recommend either company. I have bought a Lenovo Idea Pad as a replacement netbook.
Angie Lee 25 July 2011
Good: it boots up fast
Bad: memory life and rubish screensaver for a kid
Comment: when you want to get rid of it you can't
because theres not any places that would buy it for the price you paid
its a bit of a rip off but its good for a kid from the age of 6-11 cus it has all what they need to have a perfect laptop you cant really install or download much ass it wont let you
my advice if you get this laptop for a carry around dont get linux it dosent sell easy or for much get windows xp as you can doo more on it and its more better but for a kid linux is okay and if not get acer aspire one happy any difefrent colours more better and grown up
Samuel David Lickiss 2 May 2011
Good: Price, battery life, size, weight, keyboard, overall design.
Bad: Crashes all the time, slow to do anything, poor build quality, speakers, overheats easily.
Comment: The machine looks good, I purchased mine with the battery upgrade giving it around six hours with light use.
I purchased it to replace an aging laptop which I'd used for years and still works now but it doesn't have wireless internet, which I really need now. I travel a lot so wanted this to take abroad/on trains etc.
The problems came almost immediately. It crashes ALL the time even with just light internet use or word processing. Sometimes it crashes if you just leave it doing nothing for five minutes while making a coffee.
Booting up and doing anything like opening OpenOffice, the internet or iTunes takes ages.
The rubber pads on the bottom started falling out after about a month. For a while this meant that the computer wasn't even balanced so wobbled as I typed; the final one has fallen out too now.
Speakers are rubbish and distorts anything over around halfway on the main volume control.
I will say that if it wasn't for the crashing and speed I would be very happy with it. The crashing is infuriating and I actually now spend time wondering whether to do stuff like download a file because it will crash while doing it. It took five attempts to defrag the disk because it crashed while doing it.
Not a good purchase but now stuck with it. Also, if you buy it off "Simply Acer" and it goes wrong don't expect them to help you because they are useless as well.
Graysnell 9 October 2009
Good: Boots up quickly, great design
Bad: Short battery life
Comment: I have had my Aspire One for a month now and I am very pleased with it. It's a nice looking bit of kit, I have the blue version, and everybody seems to want one the minute they see it. It boots up very quickly and is usually up and ready to use in about 30 seconds or so. Connection to the net via a G3 dongle is quick and easy and, because the Aspire is so portable, going online in my local coffee shop is a breeze. The touchpad is a touch small however and the left and right click buttons are set to either side which is a bit odd so it takes a bit of getting used to. The only real let down is the battery life. So far i have only managed to get 2hrs 5 mins out of a full charge so carrying around the charger and cable is a must unless you buy a spare battery. Overall though it's a nice machine and, unless you want to spend hours on the web at a time, will be adequate for most uses when you are on the move.
shirleym 31 July 2009
Good: the look of it, the speed of it, the weight of it
Bad: it's crashed and died after 4 months, and the recovery disk is faulty
Comment: I loved this machine on sight. I was recommended the Linux version and I wanted to avoid Microsoft if possible, so went for it happily. It connects almost instantly to my wifi, it is a delight to handle, it's very stylish, a beautiful shiny blue colour, extremely portable - I even made a special padded case for it so it didn't get bumped or scratched.
I bought it on 30 March 2009, and it crashed fatally on 30 July 2009. PC World, from whom I purchased it, say the fault is a software one and therefore not covered by my warranty. The recovery disc, which I took with me to PC World when I returned the machine, is non-functioning, and will have to be replaced by acer - which takes 2 weeks.
Recovery is nowhere near as simple as with Windows operating systems, and my Aspire doesn't have a disk drive, which further complicates the recovery process for a Linux beginner like me.
I feel I have lost my £200, because neither PC World nor acer accept responsibility for fixing it. I am hugely disappointed and feel betrayed. I don't think I can run through the complex recovery process myself like I have done in the past with Windows PCs.
Reading the acer/linux forums and the problems on them, it seems that faulty recovery disks are common and that problems with SD drives in the acer are also common. I was viewing my photos from the acer's SD drive the day before it crashed.
Don't touch it unless you are prepared to have it die on you with no recourse to the seller or the manufacturer.
Roope Aaltonen 30 July 2009
Good: Size & weight, quality of monitor, keyboard (size & feel), looks, performance
Bad: Shallow trackpad, battery life, glossy display, memory upgrade nigh-on impossible!
Comment: 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!
Hannu 11 June 2009
Good: Price, size, colour (I got the blue one!)
Bad: The Linpus (Linux) OS
Comment: The preinstalled Linpus OS is great if you just want web/mail access. If you want more of a 'mini-laptop' then it is a bit restrictive. I tried delving beyond the GUI after less than a week but managed to stuff-up the OS (I am new to LINUX!). Have now installed KUBUNTU 9.04 and various other bits of software. This little machine is now the dog's danglies!
Didge 30 May 2009
Good: Portability
Bad: Small screen size
Comment: I got my Aspire One in January 2009, mine came pre-loaded with Windows XP 160GB hard drive and 1GB of Ram. It is great, I take it on the Train and everywhere I go really its so small and light. Sometime I wish the screen was a inch or two bigger but it is fine for internet browsing and witting word documents. It certainly isn't a gaming PC with only 1GB of RAM and the Intel Atom processor only being a slightly pathetic 1.6GHz although its much better than my old Toshiba Satellite Pro L10-333 which had Intel Celeron M which was 1.4GHz and it only had 512MB of RAM so my Aspire One is much better equipped.
mandi 19 March 2009
Good: Small, Cute, Cheap
Bad: Battery could last longer but its ok
Comment: Bought one of these little gadgets so I could used the internet anywhere. Turns out its more than just a little gadet for browsing. Bought form the online store Okobe Uk for a bargin price. Want to buy my daughter one soon for taking around with her. Thank you.
rain845 31 December 2008
Good: Great features, lightweight, more than I expected
Bad: Wish it had Bluetooth
Comment: I bought this unit in November 2008 at my local computer parts store. Mine came with Windows XP SP3, 160 GB hard drive, 6-cell battery. Battery life is great, even when I'm playing my music videos I still get over 5 hours of time on this unit. Keyboard is great. Had to remember to reach a little further for the ENTER key, however I'm typing on this like a full keyboard without mistakes, my speed about 35 wpm typing. I do use a wireless moush however I discovered the touchpad has one unique feature. You can TAP. The side keys are too thin on the touchpad but because you can tap the main touchpad, I'm finding the taping working really well as the alternative. I did have to read the manual to discover that feature. Lol. Screen is EXCELLENT. It's LED backlit, clear coating so my music videos actually look better than on my gaming LCD monitor which is the Samsung 931C.
Even with the 6-cell battery, I can't believe how light this unit is. I think it's rated at under 1.3 kg.
This netbook also has pretty decent spearkers. I can hear my music videos with pretty good sound. When I'm at home I do plug in a pair of Bose speakers and they audio sounds even better. When I'm traveling, the internal speaker I would rate as a 6.5 compared to Bose at a 9.
I was debating on whether to choose the blue model or the all black version. Since I really like black devices I picked black and was glad I did. It looks pretty sharp and the cover is a nice glossy cool black.
The web cam you can only adjust when you actually use it to
chat but that's fine. I'll probably buy the trial version of MS office that it came with. Also came with McFee which I may buy after a year. I think I have a free year. It came loaded with Media Player 9 and then it upgraded to 11 by itself. Even better I can now play .mkv music video files on it.
And finally, even though it doesn't have a cd player, haven't really missed not having one. Did force me to find software that I could load direct from the internet such as Logitech for mouse software, and paint.net for graphics editing. Also some other media players as well.
Oh yes, wireless works great. I'm not noticing a speed issue even though it is only "g" and not "n." In terms of speed, I am surprised how fast it transfers data from my USB drive to the C drive. In some cases it's doing it 3 times faster than it took to load the date from my desktop.
Overall i'm really really happy with this netbook. Viktor.