Acer Aspire One

Acer has developed a reputation for selling inexpensive systems worldwide, so it's only natural that it would come up with its own affordable netbook (or UMPC). Pressure from the ASUS EeePC and the HP 2133 Mini-Note made the company realize that it had to be on the same gravy train. The Acer Aspire One ($319 street) enters a quickly expanding field of miniature laptops, in a race to see who can out-shrink one another while staying within a strict budget. It has the performance potential to surpass the competition and a $319 entry point is just as cheap as the Asus EeePC, but the typing and navigating experience is not on a par with its competitors.

The consensus among UMPC makers is that a white-clad laptop is fun and thrifty, or at least that's my take. The Lenovo Ideapad S10, the EeePC 900, and the MSI Wind use a matted finish, while the Aspire One adds a shiny coat over its white exterior. The HP 2133 Mini-Note, on the other hand, drapes its shell with anodized aluminum, making it appealing for both work and play. The Aspire One weighs 2.1 pounds, over half a pound lighter than the Wind (2.6 lbs) and the S10 (2.7 lbs), but keep in mind that One's screen is not as big.Buzz up!
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The One's 8.9-inch screen is smaller than the 10-inch ones on the Wind and the S10. And judging by the dimensions of the unit (6.7 by 9.8 by .75 inches), Acer had room for a bigger screen. The thick black trim around the screen gives the impression of a brighter screen, and to some extent, the screen appears brighter than the 900 and the Mini-Note.

The typing experience, though, is disappointing. It's as if the Aspire One emulated the worst qualities of the S10 and the Mini-Note. Its 89 percent keyboard is the same size as the S10's and Dell Inspiron Mini 9's and felt just as cramped. Both the Mini-Note and the Wind have bigger 92% keyboards, thus their typing experiences are better. Its mouse button and touchpad layout is similar to the Mini-Note's, and just as problematic. The left and right mouse buttons are placed on each side of the touchpad rather than below it, so you have to surf with two hands. On top of that, the mouse buttons are hard to press and make annoying clicking noises.

The feature set has improved since I last visited the One. I was delighted to see three USB ports and a 5-in-1 card reader (SD, xD, MMC, MS, MS Pro). It even has a second SD slot for storage expansion, paired with a unique feature called Smart File Manager. This feature allows any storage space from the SD card to merge with the primary SSD, appearing as a single drive rather than two separate ones. After trying this out with a 4GB SD card filled with photos, the disk utility immediately displayed the capacities of the SD card and SSD as a single disk, and files appeared in the file manager instantaneously. You're not getting any speed benefits from this merge, though, as the SD drive is a separate entity. To prove this, I timed how long it took for 160 thumbnails to load from the SD card, the SSD drive, and for curiosity's sake, a 1GB USB thumb drive. The SD card and the USB drive finished loading in 12 seconds, while the SSD drive finished in 9 seconds. Still, the secondary SD slot will come in handy because an 8GB SSD is all you get for this configuration (a 160GB HDD version is now available at numerous e-tailers). At least Acer addressed its storage problems with a specialized SD slot and options for HDDs, whereas the Dell Mini 9 is sticking with 8GB and 16GB SSD options.

The Wind, the S10, and the HP Mini-Note have more storage options and are more conducive for say, dual-booting Windows and Linux. The verdict is still out on whether the Aspire One can handle a dual boot configuration with its SD expansion technology. An ExpressCard slot, like the one on the Mini-Note and the S10, would've been a nice addition. The system lacks an internal cellular modem (rumor has it that one's on the way), but it does have built-in 802.11g Wi-Fi and an Ethernet port. A webcam is also situated above the screen.

The Aspire One runs a customized Linux operating system called Linpus Linux Lite, which is basically a stripped-down version of Fedora. The user experience is divided into four areas, where each one has a preview of icons that represent an application or Web link. All four areas, as well as a portion of their icons, can be seen upon boot-up, as opposed to a single area, separated by tabs, on the ASUS EeePC 900. The "Connect" area consists of Firefox, a custom e-mail client, and several useful Web links like Wikipedia and Hotmail. The "Work" area is made of OpenOffice 2.3, a PDF reader, and a calculator. You have an assortment of games in the "Fun" section, while the "File" section lets you manage all your music, image, and video files. Because everything is intuitively laid out, it's easy to find your way around this interface.

As usual, I treated this system as if it were my own Windows Vista laptop. OpenOffice 2.3 recognized all of my Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. However, it wasn't able to read the XML format (.docx) in Office 2007. The system handled PDF files, an assortment of image extensions, movie files, and zip files beautifully. Despite using a speedier Intel Atom processor, DVD movies and audio CDs running off of an external optical drive were laggard. The same could be said for running movie files off of an external USB drive. The included RSS reader didn't have any problems picking up feeds, though many of the links were broken. I suspect a software update would fix this problem.

Performance is promising because it runs an Intel Atom processor, which is rated at 1.6GHz. This processor can also be found on the Wind, the Mini 9, the Asus eeePC 1000H (review coming shortly), and the S10. The One is configured with 512MB RAM, which is more than enough to run a Linux operating system. Had this been Windows XP, Acer would've had to bump the memory to 1GB to keep up with its competitors. Unfortunately, all of my tests are Windows based, so I can't report numbers until I can get a Windows XP system. From my daily experiences, though, the One is able to easily multitask.

The 24Wh, 3-cell battery is slightly smaller than the ones on the S10, the Wind, and the Mini 9. If the latter trio's battery scores were any indication, the One should easily get over 2 hours of battery life. Unlike the S10 and the Mini 9, though, the One has an option for an extended 6-cell battery.

If anyone can pull off an inexpensive UMPC, it would be Acer—a company that is notorious for selling laptops at low prices. The Acer Aspire One is banking that performance will shine with an Intel Atom processor, while the customized Linpus Linux configuration is solid and intuitive. Since my preview, configurations with Windows XP Home, a 6-cell battery, and a 160GB hard drive are already available through various online retailers, making the One as desirable as the Wind and the S10. The true test, however, is to see if customers can put up with the frustrating typing and navigating experience.