Preview: The Acer Aspire One – The Marmite Situation

Overview

With the ASUS Eee and the MSI Wind offering users affordable and easy access to not only the Internet but a bog standard office PC it's no wonder that Acer has joined the battle. Introducing their Acer Aspire One, it's aiming to knock ASUS and MSI off the apple tree and take pride of place in the market. But is it just a bad apple wanting to ruin the batch?

Review

The main thing about these laptops or 'mini-laptops' (due to their size and weight) is it's approximately 25mm wider than an Eee PC 901 but still very slim for a mini laptop.

Its also 1.1kg lighter than the Eee 901, although I do have an inkling that it might have something to do with its 2200mAh battery which is rather lighter compared to the Eee 901’s 6600mAh.

When it comes to style, it’s more like the Marmite situation; either you’ll love it or hate it. The exterior offers curved edges and glossy blue finish, but it may not be sleek enough for some of you style concious people out there. Don’t get me wrong though, it is a definitely better looking than the ASUS Eee’s kiddie like features, however my advice is to take a good look at it before you buy it.

A new way Acer have renovated the design of this mini-laptop is by making the chassis wider than the others, and by doing this they have been able to build-in a keyboard that’s 95 per cent the size of a full laptop keyboard. The only thing people might have a problem with is the Enter button as it's rather smaller than most but this is just a thing that can be worked around.

It comes with the usual affair of three USB ports in total, a D-Sub video output port, Ethernet port and mic and headphone ports, however in a different move by Acer there are two SD card readers, one on either side. This is so you can use one for a more permanent storage option like a SDHC card while the other can be used for the usual purpose of MMC, xD and Memory Stick Pro etc cards. It also comes with an 8.9″, 1,024×600-pixel display and a 1.3 megapixel webcam built above the screen.

Now onto the more technical aspects of this mini-laptop, it comes in two distinct options, you can either have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of NAND flash memory. This comes with Linux installed, or you can go for the Windows XP machine which comes with a whole 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive instead. Despite these differences it can also be seen in the price, the XP option will cost you around £100 more.

Now where this mini-laptop loses out to the Eee in a big way is the wireless technology it uses, for one there is no Bluetooth and the wireless card itself is a rather slower version that used 802.11b/g which allow connection speeds of up to 54MB while the Eee machine offers a 802.11b/g/n with the /n offering a connection speed of 300MB’s but your current equipment needs to support this option to feel the benefit.

Does the Acer manage to make up for this mistake? Well it offers the user the option of using its 3G/HSDPA adaptor which allows you to plug in your 3G SIM for go-anywhere Internet access, so no more hunting the streets for a wireless spot with this mini-laptop.

The Gaj-It Verdict

Design 8/10
Usability: 10/10
Features: 7/10
Value: 8/10

We Say

Think long and hard about getting this laptop, while it offers the user a more adult look to these mini-laptops it does not offer one of the major features, Bluetooth capabilities of its competitors, if you need this then it may make sense to stick with the Eee but with the 3G SIM option available on this it may make up with its true wireless roaming.

Full System Spec

• Intel® Diamondville-SC Single Core mobile processor N270 (1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 cache)
• 8.9″ WSVGA high-brightness (typical 180-nit)TFT LCD, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution
• Integrated Acer Crystal Eye Webcam, supporting 0.3 megapixel resolution
• WLAN : Acer InviLink 802.11b/g Wi-Fi CERTIFIED network connection, supporting Acer SignalUp wireless technology
• LAN : 10/100 mbps Fast Ethernet
• 8GB SSD or 80GB
• 512MB or 1GB
• Linux or Windows XP Home
• 5-in-1 card reader (SDâ„¢, MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD)
• 3 USB 2.0 ports
• External display (VGA) port

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