Brian Jarvis, UMPC Geek

I’ve now owned the Acer Aspire One for almost three weeks and I have been capturing some of my experience with the device over that time. I have had a number of readers ask me for a full review though, so here it is. I have made no attempt at brevity and have included pictures where appropriate.

Tour of the Acer Aspire One
On the left side of the device, you find the power port, a VGA port, Ethernet connection, one USB port, and an SD card reader.

On the front of the device, the only feature is the hardware control switch for the wireless radio. The speakers are also in the front, but are located on the bottom edge so that they are not visible in this picture.

On the right side, the Aspire One has a Kensington-type lock hole, a multi card reader, two USB ports, a headphone jack, and a microphone jack.

The back of the unit features nothing but the battery so I have not included a picture. The bottom of the device features one removable panel, but interestingly enough, it does not open to reveal anything that is upgradeable. I have no idea what prompted the engineers at Acer to put it there.

Specifications (as it came from Acer’s product page - I have changed the wireless card and added some additional RAM)

Processor/speed: Intel Atom processor N270 (1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 cache)
Chipset: Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset
RAM: 512 MB onboard DDR2 533 MHz SDRAM single channel with onboard SDRAM and one soDIMM slot Upgradeable to 1 GB/1.5 GB using one 512 MB/1 GB soDIMM module
Video Subsystem: Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Hard drive: 120GB 2.5″
Battery: 24 W 2200 mAh 3-cell Li-ion battery pack
Sound Subsystem: High-definition audio support, two built-in stereo speakers MS-Sound compatible, Built-in digital microphone
Storage Expansion: SD^TM Card reader and Multi-in-1 card reader: Supporting Secure Digital^TM (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Reduced-Size Multimedia Card (RS-MMC), Memory Stick® (MS), Memory Stick PRO^TM (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card^TM (xD)
Pointing Device: Touchpad
Peripheral Subsystem: 3 USB 2.0, 1 VGA, 1 Headphone/speaker/line-out jack 1 Microphone-in jack Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam, supporting 0.3 megapixel resolution
Wi-Fi: (dual-band quad-mode 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N) Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® network connection, featuring MIMO technology
LAN: 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet

Performance
There have been a number of features about the Apsire One that have pleasantly surprised me, but none has done so more than the performance of this little system. The Intel Atom processor inside the device is perfectly capable of carrying out the everyday tasks that people use laptop computers for: email, web, document reviewing/editing, music, videos, etc. With the 1.5 GB of RAM that I have installed, I never find myself waiting on the Aspire One. It is true that applications don’t open as fast as they do on my gaming system, but the delay is completely acceptable. Admittedly, Pixar is not going to be using an Aspire One to render their next blockbuster hit, but this device is plenty capable for 99% of what the average user does every day (and I don’t even know that the other 1% would be).

Keyboard and touchpad
The keyboard was a very important decision criteria for me when I was making my netbook decision. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time with several netbooks before I purchased this one and the Aspire One has the best keyboard by far (I have heard very good things about the MSI Wind keyboard as well, but haven’t had a chance to try one yet). All of the keys are appropriately placed and the size is close enough to 100% that I am able to touch type without any issues at all. This luxury is an extension of the wide screen format and the thick bezel around the display which provides more room on the chassis than other 8.9″ screens without the bezel.

The keys themselves are a bit softer than the keys on my Lenovo T61, but have about the same travel. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I can type on it for extended periods without any discomfort and I don’t suffer from a reduction in speed or accuracy. Overall, I am very pleased with the keyboard on the device.

I have written a full post about the touchpad on this device and will not repeat that content here other than to say there has been a lot written about the less-than-conventional design, but I got used to it in about 10 seconds.  Read more here.

Screen
The LED backlit screen on the Aspire One is very pleasant to use. It is incredibly sharp and more than bright enough. I find that if I am working in a darkened room, I have to turn the display brightness down most of the way because it is just too bright in these conditions. The saturation is excellent, but I have noticed that I have to have the screen angle adjusted correctly to get full saturation. It seems that the vertical viewing angle is not as large as the horizontal.

The screen is a glossy screen and some people do not care for that option. I personally love it as I think that the colors they produce are superior. The only time the glossy screen bothers me at all is when I am working outside in direct sunlight and can see myself in the reflection. This is easy enough to overcome by focusing on the document instead of the reflection, but it is something I notice once in a while.

I think the resolution choice was a brilliant design decision. The 1024 horizontal pixels are perfect for viewing web sites without being too wide. The 600 vertical pixels are adequate for most everythingm but I find myself doing a lot of scrolling in longer documents and web pages.  I prefer to use full screen mode or  minimal toolbars  when possible to make the most use of vertical screen real estate. I have not felt the need to hide the taskbar though - a sign of good balance to me.

Connectivity and wireless
The wireless performance of the Aspire One is rock solid. I am able to get a wireless signal anywhere my other laptop can and have never had any issues with the network dropping out. The only issue with the wireless hardware is the switch for enabling and disabling wireless seems a bit cheap to me. It uses a slider that doesn’t provide enough feedback to the user and feels like you could break it without trying too hard.

This device does not currently come with a Bluetooth option from Acer. There is a hardware mod from tnkgrl that will add this functionality, but I’m not personally interested because I never use Bluetooth. I suppose that it would be nice to be able to link up a phone or PDA with the Aspire One via Bluetooth, but my experience is that Bluetooth is too slow, so I use a USB cable for that purpose. This was not a deal breaker for me when I was making my purchase decision, but individual preference varies here.

Audio
The speakers on the unit work better than I feared they would. I played with an Aspire One at both Best Buy and Circuit City before I purchased mine and was concerned that the speakers were underpowered. The truth is…they are, but not by as much as I thought. The gold standard for mobile speakers for me is the performance I get out of my Samsung Q1 . That UMPC has the ability to be used as a mobile jukebox because the sound is loud and surprisingly clear. The Aspire One, well…not so much. The speakers are adequate for some background music, system feedback, YouTube videos, etc, but you aren’t going to be hosting any block parties with this device.

There is a headphone jack that produces excellent sound and a microphone jack that I assume works (I keep meaning to test that). I prefer to use the headphone jack for listening to music while I work and have even hooked it up to the stereo in my car for listening to some music while I waited for my son’s football practice to finish.

Heat and noise
Here comes by biggest gripe about the Aspire One: Out of the box, the #&@!% system fan runs all of the time and it is high pitched enough to drive a person absolutely insane when working in a quiet environment. I thought that perhaps I had a faulty unit and even called Acer about the issue. I was told (by someone obviously very new by the number of times she had to put me on hold), that “the fan just runs a little louder on the Aspire One.”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not going to wake the neighbors or anything. I don’t even hear it when I am working in front of the television or if there is ambient noise at all. That changes when I work somewhere really quiet though and I become hyper aware of the noise the fan creates. It runs about as loud as the fan on my Lenovo, but the pitch is just annoying enough that I had to do something about it.

Thank heavens for the efforts of the developer(s) at Computersystems who wrote an application that overrides the system fan control. It basically allows you to set the temperature at which the fan should come on and shut off at. When I set the fan to come on at 64 degrees and to turn back off at 57 degrees, I find that it behaves very nicely and most of the time the fan stays off. The device doesn’t really heat up at these settings and it has become my standard working environment. The thing that drives me nuts is that Acer could easily change the BIOS to provide this experience for everyone and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they haven’t.

Battery Life
I purchased the Aspire One with the 3 cell battery and honestly, it’s not quite enough. I wish I would have purchased the 6 cell device because I will end up purchasing the larger capacity battery anyway. The battery life with my setup is just more than two hours and the four plus hours a 6 cell battery would provide would make the device more usable. It is nice that my system is so light, but I would personally trade that for battery life in an instant.

Conclusion
So there you have it. I absolutely love this netbook and I am using it more than I thought I would. It is a perfect solution for getting work done while on the go or while sitting on the sofa at home. It is plenty capable of the everyday usage scenarios that most of us use computers for every day and it is a joy to use. After having played with several sub-notebooks and a handful of different netbooks, the Acer Aspire One is very high on my recommended list.

Pros
Performance is surprisingly good
Screen is bright and very usable
Keyboard is among the best available for touch typists
The portability of the Apsire One is fantastic

Cons
Wireless hardware switch is cheap
Poor battery life at around 2 hours with 3 cell battery
Loud cooling fan requires 3rd party app to control

File this under public service announcement.

For the last few days, I haven’t been able to get my most used mobile device:  My Windows Mobile Smartphone to sync with the Exchange server.  I kept getting error 0×86000107.  The way I fixed it this morning was to deselect the calendar from the Exchange Server sync options, let it sync, and then add it back.  Voila - now I’m back in the saddle with my Smartphone!  I’m posting this here because although I found a few options for troubleshooting through seaching Google, nothing else worked for me.  Maybe this will help someone else one day.

I haven’t seen anyone write about this (maybe I’ve been under a rock and just missed it), but some time in the last couple weeks, Google Docs has added support for mobile browsers.  Every time I have tried to access my Google Spreadsheets in the past via my Smartphone or my Touch, I’ve received an error, but today it’s working.   You still can’t edit the documents, but at least you can view them.   I love the continual development that this and all of the Google apps are always under.

I have pretty much settled on purchasing an Acer Asire One, but have been frustrated with the lack of supply.  I have been keeping an eye on Amazon because I have some gift certificates from work for that particular vendor.  This morning I received a notice that they have the Aspire One (XP version) back in stock, but was shocked by the price:  $499. 

You don’t need to be a MBA grad to understand that tight supply lends itself to pricing premiums, but $150 over MSRP???  I am sorry, but I’m not purchasing one of these netbooks for $499 - I would definitely go with the MSI Wind (or heaven forbid a full laptop) for only a few dollars more.  I guess this is a testament to the fact that these netbooks are HOT!

I was talking to one of our mobility marketing managers at work the other day about wanting a small form factor laptop and told him that I was considering buying a Netbook. He suggested that I check out one of our Classmate PC’s from the lab to give the small form factor a test drive. “awesome” was my response and I ran off to the lab before he changed his mind. :^)

I’ve been playing with it today a bit and have some first impressions to share. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, but wanted to break down what I have experienced into four buckets: Things I love, things I like, things I’m not crazy about, and things I don’t like.

Things I love

• The portability of the device is phenomenal due to its light weight and compact dimensions
• This may be a sub-point, but this was the first notebook I have ever been able to use in the cramped space an airline seat provides (or doesn’t)
• The screen is wonderfully bright even at its lowest levels

Things I like

• The fact that I can touch type on it
• The keyboard has great travel and makes very little noise
• The performance of the Celeron processor in the Classmate is surprisingly capable
• Battery life is pretty good
• Web cam quality is at least as good as my Thinkpad
• The trackpad is large and very responsive
• The included microphone port is a nice touch
• Speaker quality is pretty darn good (not as good as the Q1, but better than a lot of small notebooks I have used)

Things I’m not crazy about

• The screen resolution is natively 800×480 and that is not high enough (my same gripe with my Samsung Q1)
• The handle is convenient, but a bit goofy

Things I don’t like

• The quotation mark key is in the wrong location
• Smaller shift and backspace keys are tough to get used to
• There is no option for an extended battery

Next steps for me will be to get my children’s impressions (since I am obviously not the primary audience for this particular device), and then to write up a more comprehensive review after a few days with the device. If there is something specific you would like to know about the Classmate, let me know in the next few days before I have to return it.

I have created a photo set for the Classmate on Flickr you can check out here.

When was the last time you backed up your critical data? My laptop hard drive experienced a spectacular failure Thursday night that wiped out most of my data.  I had a few files like PST’s and OneNote data files that were always in use when my backup ran that are now gone forever.  Learn from my mistake and go backup that crtical data today!

I had a junior high principal with handwriting so remarkable that I would ask him to write something just so I could appreciate his penmanship.  It was art.  When was the last time you saw someone with beautiful handwriting?  I think it’s becoming a lost art because of the digital environment we live in.

I love to write, but I have found myself struggling to do so well lately.  I’ve spent some time thinking about contributing environmental factors that could change forever how we think about well written text.  They include the following:

• Small keyboards translate into cool gadgets, but very inefficient input devices that encourage brevity. (Have you tried to type anything other than a brief response on an iPhone?)
• SMS, Twitter, and other services limit responses and encourage abbreviations and shortcuts (although I will admit that it makes you think twice about your writing).
• Due to the volume of material we are exposed to every day, communication has to be quickly digestible (giving way to bullet points and executive summaries).
• Instant messaging encourages the ultimate lazy writing where capitalization and punctuation are often omitted.  Sometimes I wonder if my12 year old could type a normal sentence. 

If there really is a change happening because of these factors, where is it taking us?  Will the talented authors of tomorrow be ones that type novels 140 characters at a time or will there always be room for the Tom Clancy’s of the world with their descriptive imagery?  I believe things are changing, but would love to know what other people think.

For the last few days, I’ve been trying to make the new Evernote Beta work for me. I absolutely love the idea of using the internet to keep my laptop and UMPC notes in sync. Plus, the concept of having them web accessible through any web browser is absolutely brilliant! I’ve just run into a few too many problems.

The formatting options are terribly limited in Evernote. First, the fact that I can’t mix ink and text is not a deal breaker, but I do this regularly enough that it’s a feature I would miss. Second, there is no support for dragging and dropping text within a note (I use this function all of the time in OneNote for indenting, organizing my thoughts, etc). And third, Evernote appears to use HTML formatting and so it does things I think are really ugly - as one example, it places unnaturally large breaks between body text and bullets. I’ve included a small portion of a screen shot (to avoid sensitive data) that illustrates the bullet issue.

This last complaint may seem like nitpicking, but I use spacing and formatting in my notes to provide structure, context, and meaning. Believe me, I’ve tried to be forgiving and make it work because I really like a lot of the other features of the software. OneNote is a very feature-rich application though and it looks like I will be sticking with it for now. Maybe some developer could write an interface for OneNote that emulates the tape and allows for the web functionality of the new version of Evernote.

I spent the weekend (not-so-successfully) fighting the flu, and found some relief in distracting myself with reading. I downloaded the latest in a series I’m reading from Fictionwise in Microsoft Reader format and had the book on both my UMPC and my Pocket PC.

I have read dozens of books on different PDA’s and enjoy the format a good deal. This time, I read about 80% of the book on my UMPC because the I was able to consume more text on each screen and found that it was just easier on my eyes. I have included screen shots of the same text from my UMPC and the Pocket PC for comparison.

You should probably check out the full UMPC image here to get a real feel for what the text actually looks like on the device (since I had to scale it down to a reasonable width for the post).

I couldn’t stop wondering how well my Samsung Q1 would drive my new 23 inch monitor at work. So this afternoon, I hooked it up and took it for a test drive.

For business applications, it worked very smoothly and could easily be used for daily use. My guess is that the graphics engine on a 915GM chipset could easily be overwhelmed with this many pixels to drive. I didn’t try killing it, but suspect that you probably could with a couple of videos playing on a display this large.

If Samsung made a docking station for the Q1, I would use my UMPC even more than I do now (perhaps as my primary computer). It’s just a bit too much work to connect the VGA cable, USB keyboard and mouse, etc every time I get to my desk. The computer is very capable and I would love to do it, but I would need some sort of docking solution for it to be practical. So today’s experiment really falls into the W?BIC! category.