Cool Stuffs Review

I took delivery of my Acer about a week ago. I am compelled to write this review because prior to buying this I had owned two other netbooks. The original ASUS 701, and then later the HP2133. Both of which were great for varying reasons. But I want to focus on this netbook.

There are several import features any netbook user will soon realize have great value. First, it needs to be reasonably powerful. It needs to have a reasonable keyboard layout. And it needs a good battery life. When you choose what is best for you, take my word for it. If any of those three items are not up to your expectations, you're not going to be happy with your choice.

Let's cover the powerful part first.

This particular ASUS has 1 GB of RAM, and it's a single SO-DIMM which you can replace very easily with nothing more than one screw and a Philip's screw driver. The cost of the DIMM at the time I purchased mine was $25 for a single 2 GB SO-DIMM. And just like that, I went from 1 GB to 2 Gbs for the Windows XP Service pack 3 install on this netbook. You'll want to do the same. Jumping from 1 GB to 2 Gbs changes the whole experience and it's not a lot of money. Just do it. You'll be glad you did. Or more to the point, you'll not be as happy as you could be if you don't.

Next is the processor. This one uses the Atom 1.6 GHz CPU from Intel. On battery it scales back to 1.0 GHz and extends the life of the battery. On AC it jumps up to 1.6 GHz. Even at 1.0 GHz, I didn't realize it reduced in speed at all. My use of Open Office on this felt as it always feels.

The battery

The battery life remaining time indicator ranged from 6.5 hours to a whopping 9.4 hours. I have yet to even see the battery die because I have not had the opportunity to use it on battery long enough to actually kill the battery. It just lasts and lasts. Virtually every single laptop or netbook I have owned doesn't come even remotely close to the battery life of this thing. And I have to tell I have been disappointed many times in the past over this single issue. I need a laptop that can last a while on battery, otherwise I am lugging something around for no real reason and I don't like that. You will get plenty of battery time on this.

The keyboard

I hate to say this, but the keyboards on the ASUS line are the worst. And this ACER and the HP netbooks out there are superior. Both the HP2133 and this ACER have 92% sized keyboards. But just as important as close to full size is, it's not the total. It's the keys themselves. You simply must have a right shift key under the enter key and it must be larger than the enter key. Why? Because that's the muscle memory you have when you type. All keyboards have always been this way until the dawn of the netbook when vendors such as ASUS changed that. And it makes the eeePC difficult to work with. Some keyboards put the UP key right under the Enter key. And you will intend to shift, but instead will cursor up and start inserting text into a previously finished sentence. This will drive you crazy. Always look at the images of the keyboard layout before you buy a mini. This Acer has the proper layout.

Some notes on other netbooks.

You should know that many netbooks have just 1 GB and are not expandable. Do not assume you can drop 2 Gbs into any netbook. You'd be wrong in that assumption. Do not assume that SSD is always better. I happen to own an SSD drive, and I paid a fair amount of money for it. It's not so much better than a hard drive at this point. Not until the lower cost ones dump the old JMICRON controller which causes stutters in loading is resolved. The more expensive ones use an Intel controller but cost more than this netbook does. And JMICRON only recently announced a new controller that resolves this issue. For now, a cheap 2.5" standard laptop hard drive is still a better bet for the money. Be sure your netbook can use a standard 2.5" laptop drive. They are so cheap these days. You should easily have 160 to 250 Gbs of storage. Many believe less is fine, but we all say things like that early on, and then demand more and more from our purchase as time goes forward. So just go for something spacious to begin with and you future-proof yourself. This particular ACER has a nice 160 GB hard drive.

The Mouse Pad and button

I read many reviews that talk about the mouse pad and button. They all scared me by being so very negative about it. Claiming it has a life of its own, etc. And how hard the button is to press. I am sorry to say I think those reviews are written by, shall we say people with no brains, or something. The single button is really two buttons. You press the left side of the single button to do a left mouse, and you press the right side to press a right mouse click. The center is the rocker bridge. If you press the center, nothing is going to happen. Like a teader todder, the center is what is holding the button in place. You are not meant to press there. You are meant to press the left side and the right side. Sorry but, dah. How dense are people not to realize this. And the mouse pad itself. I have nothing short of perfect results with it. I am happy to discover this after I bought it, but those who wrote such poor reviews of it need to stop drinking or smocking whatever they are abusing so early in the morning. These must be the same people who think that tray on a CD drive is a coffee cup holder.

Screen real estate. This Acer has 1024 x 600. A web page as wide as the Wall Street Journal will have no problem at all. From left to right, you see the width at 100% without problem. But the up and down resolution of just 600, a common size in most netbooks is really the minimum. Some newer gen netbooks are starting to offer higher resolution. My HP2133 does 1280 x 768 in an 8.9" screen. It's too tiny in my opinion, but you get used to it. Problem is, my HP2133 uses a VIA processor, not an Atom. The Atom is by far the better CPU for these minis. A 10.1" screen at 1024 x 600 is large. You will be able to read the screen easily. You just don't have a lot of top to bottom real estate. So limit things like tool bars so you leave enough room for the content itself.

I paid a total of $365 for mine with shipping and the cost of changing the memory to 2 Gbs. I feel like I got much more than I paid for. So much so I gave my HP2133 away to a friend in need of a netbook. This is my 3rd purchase of a netbook, and so far I finally feel like I got it right.

Alex AlexzanderGet more detail about Acer Aspire One AOD150-1920 10.1-Inch Ruby Red Netbook - 6.5 Hour Battery Life.