Acer Aspire One A150 - first impressions of a netbook

[Antithesis]

There was some discussion about the Asus Eeepc 701 a while back and it sort of sparked my interest in netbooks. I was initially turned off by the tiny screen and tinier keyboard, so I took it as a gimmick and sort of forgot about it.

After some good old competitive marketing, there has been a flood of the little computers on the market and it seemed like a good idea to have another look. After some research, I opted for an Aspire One from Acer. I have access to a MacPro with a 24" monitor at work for larger tasks, so it just needed to get me on the internet and travel. Oh, and it cost me just under $400 shipped. Yep, you read it right, $400.

First Impressions:

These little things have come a long way. It weighs like 2 lbs, it's the size of a paperback novel and is relatively fast. It's actually about as fast as my old Macbook that was three times as expensive when I picked it up two years ago. It even feels a bit more rugged as well.

The specs:

-1.6GHz intel atom cpu that downclocks to about 1GHz when it's not plugged in to save power
-1 gig of ram (up to 1.5)
-120gb Hitachi 5400 rpm HDD
-8.9" screen with a resolution of 1024x600

The screen is actually not bad to look at, but I wouldn't want to do anything too intensive. Overall, the screen is very good and has a really wide viewing angle. It's definetely usable for some minor photoshopping and lightroom stuff, but I'm not sure how well it would calibrate. The keyboard might be tough for someone with large hands, but it's not that much smaller than a normal laptop (Macs excluded, it's about 89% the size of a normal laptop keyboard according to Acer). I'm able to touch type on it without too many typos.

Overall, it runs pretty quick and smooth with Windows XP on it, and I'm happy with the performance. I'm going to try running some games on it for the hell of it, but I don't have my hopes too high. I'm really looking forward to using it to shoot tethered on location for some commercial stuff I have coming up and see how she does. It fits easily in my camera bag with the rest of my gear, heh.

I just wanted to tell people about this little thing, cause you can't beat the value.

 

[Antithesis]

There are also other models, the cheapest being the A110 with an 8GB solid state drive, 512mb of RAM and linux, at about $320.

 

[poopingfish]

I was going to go for one of these but was afraid the screen was too small, picked up a 14" lappy.

Aww, on a photo forum and no pictures? Are you mad, sir?

 

[Antithesis]

I was going to go for one of these but was afraid the screen was too small, picked up a 14" lappy.

Aww, on a photo forum and no pictures? Are you mad, sir?

No, just lazy

Here's a product photo courtesy of google images:

And another photo (courtesy again of google images) for a frame of reference of size:

Oh, and the screen size really isn't all that bad. Everything is definitely a tad smaller, but I don't really notice it. I'll mostly be using this for web images anyways (and occasionally a little more), so you can reduce the size of your jpeg to 600x800 and call it a day. Considering I've lugged my old macbook all around central america and southeast asia, this thing will be a godsend.

 

[noorulla_417]

There was some discussion about the Asus Eeepc 701 a while back and it sort of sparked my interest in netbooks. I was initially turned off by the tiny screen and tinier keyboard, so I took it as a gimmick and sort of forgot about it.

After some good old competitive marketing, there has been a flood of the little computers on the market and it seemed like a good idea to have another look. After some research, I opted for an Aspire One from Acer. I have access to a MacPro with a 24" monitor at work for larger tasks, so it just needed to get me on the internet and travel. Oh, and it cost me just under $400 shipped. Yep, you read it right, $400.

First Impressions:

These little things have come a long way. It weighs like 2 lbs, it's the size of a paperback novel and is relatively fast. It's actually about as fast as my old Macbook that was three times as expensive when I picked it up two years ago. It even feels a bit more rugged as well.

The specs:

-1.6GHz intel atom cpu that downclocks to about 1GHz when it's not plugged in to save power
-1 gig of ram (up to 1.5)
-120gb Hitachi 5400 rpm HDD
-8.9" screen with a resolution of 1024x600

The screen is actually not bad to look at, but I wouldn't want to do anything too intensive. Overall, the screen is very good and has a really wide viewing angle. It's definetely usable for some minor photoshopping and lightroom stuff, but I'm not sure how well it would calibrate. The keyboard might be tough for someone with large hands, but it's not that much smaller than a normal laptop (Macs excluded, it's about 89% the size of a normal laptop keyboard according to Acer). I'm able to touch type on it without too many typos.

Overall, it runs pretty quick and smooth with Windows XP on it, and I'm happy with the performance. I'm going to try running some games on it for the hell of it, but I don't have my hopes too high. I'm really looking forward to using it to shoot tethered on location for some commercial stuff I have coming up and see how she does. It fits easily in my camera bag with the rest of my gear, heh.

I just wanted to tell people about this little thing, cause you can't beat the value.

Here are Acer Aspire 1 A150 Models

http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_Aspire_1_A150_White_LU.S040A.105.htm
http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_Aspire_1_A150_Blue_LU.S040A.105.htm
http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_Aspire_1_A150_Blue_LU.S050B.072.htm
http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_Aspire_1_A150_White_LU.S040A.074.htm
http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_Aspire_1_A150_White_LU.S040B.073.htm
http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_TravelMate_5720_LX.TKD0Z.232.htm
http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_TravelMate_6292_LX.TG60Z.778.htm
http://www.technoworld.com/laptops/Acer_TravelMate_5720_LX.TKD0Z.331.htm

 

[Bifurcator]

I just wanted to tell people about this little thing, cause you can't beat the value.

Killer!!! Now all you need to do is find a bracket that will mount it and your camera for handheld operation, tether it in firewire, and you'll have an 9 inch LCD with a 130 gig "memory card" - not to mention extended functions like time sequences or event driven shutter releases.

Sweet!