Physical aspects - Continued | Acer Aspire One – One to Desire | Subnotes

Acer Aspire One – One to Desire - Physical aspects - Continued

Thursday, 09 October 2008 21:20 Nikolaj Grundtvig

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/laptop-review.eu/public_html/administrator/components/com_sh404sef/sh404sef.class.php on line 2914

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/laptop-review.eu/public_html/administrator/components/com_sh404sef/sh404sef.class.php on line 2915

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/laptop-review.eu/public_html/administrator/components/com_sh404sef/sh404sef.class.php on line 2914

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/laptop-review.eu/public_html/administrator/components/com_sh404sef/sh404sef.class.php on line 2915

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/laptop-review.eu/public_html/administrator/components/com_sh404sef/sh404sef.class.php on line 2914

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/laptop-review.eu/public_html/administrator/components/com_sh404sef/sh404sef.class.php on line 2915

Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/laptop-review.eu/public_html/components/com_sh404sef/sef_ext/com_content.php on line 39

Article Index
Acer Aspire One – One to Desire
Specifications
Package contents
Physical aspects
Physical aspects - Continued
Benchmark
Benchmark - Continued
3DMark and PCMark05
Gaming
Conclusion
All Pages

Page 5 of 10

The right side:

From the right, there’s a slot for a Kensington lock, then a multi-in-1 card reader that supports most available flash drives, two out of the three USB ports, headphones out, and microphone in.

The A150 comes with a 120GB hard drive, which is more than enough for standard netbook use; it’s a 5400rpm hard drive by the way, so you won’t be short on performance. There’s still the possibility of expanding capacity through flash RAM and USB hard drives, should you require it.

The left side:

From the left, there’s the power outlet and then a VGA port. Acer does not list a maximum resolution, but I tested the VGA port at 1920x1200, and the display was razor sharp. After the VGA port there’s a vent; at normal use and even at full load during movies or whatnot you’ll hardly notice the heat. Don’t cover the vents though! Next, there’s an RJ-45 Ethernet port that runs at 10/100Mbit. After that, there’s another USB port, totalling three which is decent for a netbook of this magnitude. You can never get too many USB ports...Last but not least there’s an SD slot; I didn’t have SD flash RAM at home, but I’ll test this out in part two of the review where I’ll also look at the Aspire One’s potential as a multimedia laptop.

The A150 has lots of expansionary possibilities via USB; one might miss an HDMI or DVI port, but the picture quality on for example a 24” screen is quite okay via the VGA port. Some of you are probably thinking “Yeah, that’s all fine and dandy, but what about my installation media?” The majority of programs most users will need on a netbook can be downloaded; for example, I installed WOW on the Aspire One via a shared DVD drive. In other words, you can easily do without an optical drive, though there are plenty of slim products on the market that would fit nicely with the Aspire One.

Diodes and buttons:

At the top left there are four diodes that show the status of battery, hard drive, Num Lock, and Caps Lock respectively.

At the right side, there’s a power button, the only other button on the Aspire One besides the button to enable/disable wireless networking.

At the lower right, there’s a diode showing the status for wireless networking.

Keyboard and touchpad:

With an inner width of 24 cm, there isn’t space for anything fancy. Acer has managed to fit a normal keyboard with six rows of keys into the Aspire One somehow though.

The keys are comfortable to type with, and are not susceptible to greasy fingers like the cabinet. The keys make a nice sound and even I – with my large fingers – can easily type with them. You can forget about full-size though.

The touchpad with buttons at the side was a tad harder to get used to. I have to admit that I wouldn’t want to make do without a good mouse, even though the touchpad works like it should. The touchpad itself is 5x3cm, and the buttons are just 0.8x3cm. Acer’s standard software for the touchpad includes a zoom function, which is actually pretty handy.

Despite the keyboard’s apparent resistance to grime and how the display is lowered compared to the keyboard, the keys actually left prints on the display, which I found puzzling.

The display:

The display is blank, which can be a disadvantage when lit directly. The colours were really sharp though. The A150 comes with a resolution of 1024x600, which might seem low to some. Personally, I find it well-balanced with the 8.9” size of the display; it’s nice to be able to see the desktop icons after all...

Rotation is a way to take advantage of the resolution, but you get used to the size of the display pretty fast, and when you’re at the office or at home, you can always use an external display via USB and the VGA port.

At the top of the screen there’s a webcam and integrated microphone. Both work as they should; the Crystal Eye webcam gives a pretty good picture for a 0.3MP webcam. Netbooks are useful for video conferences, and the Aspire One is highly recommended in this regard.

Noise, heat, and power usage:

The power supply included is quite compact, and we take a closer look at the power usage below.

The reason I mentioned the power cable is because I tested the laptop with an Eee 1000HD. The Eee comes with an ultra short power cable, and while the netbook is compact, the power outlet is far away – Asus could definitely learn something from Acer here.

I would describe the noise level from the fans on the A150 as low, even when gaming or running more demanding programs.

It’s time to take a look at how the insides of the Acer Aspire One A150 perform. In the benchmark section we assess the performance of the processor, display adapter, RAM, hard drive, and battery.

<< Prev - Next >>

Add your comments

Comments (3)

I agree - nice review!!

Super nice review and cool new site

For those looking to replace the XP with a linux system there are some options:

Ubuntu for Acer Aspire One: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

One Linux Ubuntu Build: http://onelinux.org/