Acer Aspire

[felix8406]

I ordered the following mini notebook from Amazon for $391.00US: Acer Aspire One 8.9-inch Mini Laptop (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery). I travel nine months out of a year so it will be easier to carry around than my Dell Inspiron.

It comes with Windows XP Home edition installed, but I’ll probably install Vista. I wonder if anyone here in this forum has had any experience with this notebook. More specifically, has anyone tried to install Vista in this machine.

[CrowdAds]

[SeungRi]

yepp, its a nice little laptop but the new asus one is so nice



Asus S101 Eee PC review review | T3.com

around (750 dollars)

[felix8406]

I received my Aspire One today. It’s small and weights just a little over 2-pounds, but run faster than my current 2-year-old Dell Inspiron. It came with Win XP Home, Office 2007 60-day Trial, McCafee Suite Trial and other software. I got rid of everything, except WinXP and esential software. I then installed Office 2007 Pro, ThreatFire Antivirus/Spyware protection, Auslogics Defrag Home Edition, Microsoft PC Advisor, Uniblu Registry Booster, Google Chrome and Windows Live Beta.

The HD had only one partition, so I created a 20GB partitions to store my documents using EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition and pointed My Document to use that partition.

This notebook does not have a CD/DVD drive, but has an SD Storage Expansion in which I inserted an 8GB SDHC; it holds eight high quality movies. I ripped the movies to my PC using Magic DVD Ripper and then trasnferred then to the card. There’s also an all-in-one built-in card reader that can be used for additional storage as well.

So far, I have not try Vista on this mini. I’ve been trying to find out if anyone else has attempted this so I can get a better idea of what to expect. I may try installing Vista later on, but for now I want to keep experiencing this mini. So far, so good.

[felix8406]

Ram Vista Upgrade Advisor and it reccommends Vista Basic, but I’m sure it can run any Vista edition.
Here are the details:

• No DVD: Not really an issue as I can install Vista from External DVD or Virtual CD/DVD Drive.
• CPU: No issues. Intel® Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz
• RAM: No issues. 1GB and be upgraded to 1.5GB
• According to the report “There’s no compatibility data for the following devices: JMB38X SD/MMC Host Controller, MS Host Controller and xD Host Controller, and Realtek High Definition Audio.
• Mobile Intel® 945 Express Chipset Family – Upgrade driver available from Microsoft
• All other devicess will work just fine; this is according to the report.
• No programs issues.

So for what I can tell, this mini will run Vista just fine.

[crabby]

I agree, should be a lovely Vista runner!

I want a mini notebook

crabby

[felix8406]

The Acer One is a nice little notebook indeed. There are others of course: MSI Wind, EASUS Eee PC, HP 2133, Dell Inspiron Mini and others. However, I think that Acer One beats them all in price and specifications. Some of these minis don’t offer a large capacity spinning hard drive, opting for a solid-state drive (SSD) instead. Solid hard drives are fast, but lack the capacity needed to run full-flesh programs.

I like the fact that the Acer One comes with an SD storage bay and a 5-in-one card reader. When the card is inserted in the SD storage slot, it goes all the way in, out of sight and out of mind. Like I mentioned before, I do a lot of traveling and can use the card to take some movies with me…8 of them. I just ordered a 32GB SDHC, which I’ll be using to store more movies and perhaps use it as Vista ReadyBoost…if I decide to install Vista later on.

The one complaint I have is with the touch pad “Tap” feature. It’s too sensitive and becomes a pain in the neck when navigating a webpage. Often, it kept reducing or increasing the size of the page as I tried to navigate it. It only took me two days before I decided to un-able that feature.

I will be really testing this PC this week. I will be traveling to Phoenix, Arizona tomorrow, then come back to San Antonio, Texas on Wednesday. Then will be flying to Massachusetts on Saturday, returning on Monday. That’ll be plenty of traveling to know whether or not it can take it. I’m most curious about the 6-cell battery; how long it can last on a single charge. Also, about Wi-Fi connectivity; how well it can handle Wi-Fi spots.

[felix8406]

Just arrived at San Antonio Airport, waiting for my flight to Phenix, Arizona. The first thing one realizes about this mini is its weight. A just over two pounds, it’s so easy to carry around. The second thing is the full scale keyboard, which is easy to type. It does get hot, so instead of placing it directly on my lap, I used a notebook cooler instead. I did not connect the cooler to the USB port becuase I know it will drain the battery very quickly, but it provides the notebook with run to breath.

Connection to the Internet through Wi-Fi was fast and simple, no issues at all. So far I continue to be a very satisfied owner of this mini.

[felix8406]

Just arrived at Phoenix Airport, returning to San Antonio. I used my Acer One at the San Antonio airport to access the internet, then to watch a movie during my flight to Phoenix and at the hotel to access the internet, check on my return flight, business expenses and so forth.

Battery life seemed to be very good; over half hour connecting to the internet, doing some word processing, and about 90 minutes watching a movie and still had 50% of its power left. The LCD is clear, though there are some glares. Since the notebook is so small, I used a magazine to block the light from the LCD.

Wi-Fi connection, both at the hotel and at Phoenix airport is great; no issues at all. At the hotel, I downloaded all drivers from the Acer website, including a 230MB CD formatter ISO at over 3Mbps. I also used JustVOIP to make calls using the headphone/microphone lines in; no issues there either. This mini also has three USB 2.0 connections, so I can connect the laptop cooler, my cell phone and a USB flash drive with ease.

I arrived at the airport early, trying to get into an early flight, but by the time I arrived, it was too late. So now I must wait for a few hours before my original flight departs. Plenty of time to sit back, watch a movie and relax. I’m still debating whether or not to install Vista on this mini; it’s working so great that I’ll have to think about some more.

[crabby]

Sounds lovely!

I guess the reason for installing Vista would be that you would like some of it's features on the laptop.

No doubt the battery life will suffer with the Aero desktop environment, but performance shouldn't decease too much.

I am starting to really want one

crabby

[felix8406]

I do recommend it Crabby, it’s a nice/useful toy. I’m sure Vista will run fine; the only thing I’ll be concern about would be Hibernation. I’ve had issues with other PCs before using Vista’s new sleep mode. In this mini, hibernation works great, allowing the mini to start really fast; I’m not sure if it’ll function as well under Vista.

Anyway, we’ll find out soon as I already downloaded Disc-Wizard from Seagate to create an image of my hard drive to a USB external hard drive. I’ve already ran Vista Upgrade Advisor and downloaded all drivers. I will be traveling today, so perhaps by tomorrow I’ll have everything setup and ready to try Vista.

Concerning the price for this mini; I paid a little more because I opted for the 160GB HD instead of the 120GB. But the price difference between the two is about $50.00US, enough to buy an external HD or a 16GB SDHC. An external HD or an SDHC card comes on handy because of the lack of CD/DVD drive.

[felix8406]

Tried Vista Business; things did not go as well as I expected. I booted Vista from an external USB CD/DVD Rom and the installation was completed as fast as with a regular PC. The Windows Experience was "1" because of the graphics card driver; the Win XP driver I downloaded from Acer did not work with Vista. However, the following drivers did not work either, LAN, Wireless and WebCam. The eNet Management for Vista requires an additional program from Acer in order to work and I could not find it in Acer website.

To be honest, I didn't try too hard to make Vista work with this mini; I'm very satisfy with Win XP, plus for now I just don't have the time needed to mess around with it. I did reinstalled XP from a regular CD instead of using Acer recovery software. The advantage of doing this type of installation is that you can select exactly what you need and the installation took about 5GB instead of about 10GB when using the Acer recovery utility; this after installing all drivers, utilities and software updates, including Win XP's.

Note 1: Disc Wizard from Seagate, by Acronins, does not create images on non-seagate drives.
Note 2: The DiskFormatter I downloaded from Acer formats the HD to get it ready for Acer software installation; it does not install Win XP as believed by some online users. If installing OS from a regular Windows CD, the DiskFormatter is not required.
Note 3: Acer One, as with other computers, come with a recovery partition. D2D (Disc-To-Disc Recovery) is a recovery process that will reinstalled the software as it was when shipped to user; must be enable in BIOS. If you install the OS from a OS installation disk, it will replace the MBR; this action will make D2D unworkable. However, there are ways to overcome this...more on that later, including backing up the recovery partition.

[felix8406]

I will be going back to Arizona this coming Monday; this time to Mohave Valley and for about three or four weeks. That will be plenty of time to really test this Acer mini. For my birthday I received a BestBuy gift card, so I got myself a Signature Mini 250GB portable hard drive. I have ripped over 60 movies to my PC, so this HD will come on handy to take the movies with me. This HD comes with a USB cable that has a mini connector and an extra regular USB connector, so I don't loose a USB port while the drive is connected, also, the drive is really small and compact. Will let you know how it goes.

Concerning shoulder bags for this mini; I do not recommend purchasing a a notebook bag, instead get a portable DVD carry case. Perfect for this mini, room to carry accessories and well padded.

[crabby]

I am shocked that so many drivers failed! :scared:

I suppose XP should be fine for it though (I doubt you'll need dx10 ). The external hard drive sound nice too!

crabby

[shufei6923561]

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[felix8406]

I’m satisfied with XP on this mini. This is not a gamer by any means; but it provides almost everything a traveler user needs, e.g. wired/wireless internet connectivity, plenty of USB port connections, storage bay using SD/MMC, five-in-one card reader, headphone/microphone connection, a fast CPU, 1GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive, which is plenty of room to install office programs and more, and to save your data.

I do recommend downloading the drivers from the Acer website and then doing a clean installation of Win XP…the product key is listed on the bottom of the notebook. Doing a clean installation clears all the non-essential programs and utilities. Before doing a reinstallation of Windows, partition the drive first and download all drivers to the new partition, that way you don’t deleted when installing Windows. Also, if you prefer, make an image of the recovery partition in case is needed for future use. Use the free programs I described in the Best Free Vista Application thread to partition, make an image and protect your files.

I backed up the recovery partition and then deleted the partition and merged it to the C drive. I don’t need the recovery partition and can use the extra space for something more useful.