Cool Stuffs Review

Up side: I bought this nice little netbook for my wife and we both love it. We got the diamond black version and both of us love the charcoal color of the hand rest. The built-in microphone, webcam and speakers make chatting on Skype an easy, enjoyable experience. For me, 3 USB ports is much better than 2 because I always have a USB mouse and USB flash drive hooked up. Great portability for making presentations. We use the netbook on the desk most of the time (not on the lap), but it doesn't overheat like some other computers do. The 10" screen, to me, is significantly better/larger than the 8.9" screen. I don't have large hands but I find the 85% keyboard usable (but not so much for the 8.9" versions). The hinge for changing the angle of the screen is surprisingly sturdy. The 802.11g Wi Fi is very fast. Firefox runs well and smooth despite taking up 200-300 MB of RAM sometimes. Although I have not used the first Aspire One, the AOD150 seems to be an improvement over the first edition.

Down side: the keyboard does feel a little flimsy. It's a netbook, so obviously it doesn't have an internal DVD/CD drive. But since that I've put it on a wireless router network, I have been able to share the DVD/CD drives on my desktop computer and run CDs and DVDs on the Aspire One remotely. The screen is glossy and so it does create reflections depending on the angle. For indoor viewing I don't have a problem with the glossiness. The trackpad, however, is not the most responsiveand so we use a mouse instead.

Comparison to the Lenovo S10: I seriously considered the Lenovo S10 netbook because they have very similar specs. Both have 10" screens, 160 GB HD, 1 GB RAM. But the Aspire One AOD150 has 3 USB ports and a 6-cell battery. We have not test-driven the battery enough to say anything, but a 6-cell battery should outperform a 3-cell battery (Lenovo S10).

Trivial: I also bought the Crucial 2GB 667 Mhz for $24 but have not installed it because so far the machine is running sufficiently well with 1GB RAM and that changing components on the computer may void the warranty. So maybe I'll install it after the warranty has expired.

Overall: Excellent little computer for $350 that contains almost everything that you need (except for internal drive). Acer has done a great job in creating a netbook that is both functional and portable at the same time. Get more detail about Acer Aspire One AOD150-1920 10.1-Inch Ruby Red Netbook - 6.5 Hour Battery Life.