UMPC + Geek = Blogging from almost anywhere!
If it’s not clear from my posts lately, I absolutely love my new netbook. I have owned it two weeks now and am pleasently surprised with the capability of the Atom processor and everything it enables me to do. Today at work, I came across this amazing photo of an Atom processor (that hasn’t been packaged out of course) next to a grain of rice. It just blew me away that so much capability is enabled by such a tiny processor.
Photo used with permission from Walden Kirsch
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.
Yesterday, I made a Ghost image of my Aspire One hard drive and today I did a little surgery on the device. Following one of the several guides on how to upgrade the RAM in the netbook, I took it apart and not only added more RAM, but also installed an OS X-friendly wireless card. Now it’s time to play.
I am installing Vista on one partition right now and will be installing OS X on another at a later date. I really want to see what the platform is capable of. My long term plan is to run Vista and Ubuntu with a third partition in the middle with my personal data on it. I’ll post updates here.
I know that a full review of my Acer Aspire One is getting overdue and I have had a few people ping me on it now. Rest assured that it’s something I am working on, but I have to ask for patience as the workload from my day job is nearly overwhelming me. As an element of that larger review, I thought I would post my thoughts on the touchpad in response to a reader’s question.
Honestly, this was something I was quite concerned about when I ordered the device. There were two things that were the cause for concern: the unconventional button placement and the finish of the pad. Let me address these separately.
I personally use the tap functionality of the touchpad for my 95% of my left-click needs. I find that it’s much faster and more natural than hitting a separate button when I use the touchpad on any laptop. That having been said, the left-click button is not an issue to me. The only time I ever use it is when I am dragging a window or scrollbar for more than a short distance (I use the tap and hold feature for short drags). Reaching to the side instead of the bottom actually feels more natural for me when doing this because I tend to use my left hand for the button and the right hand for movement.
That only leaves right-clicking as a concern and I made the adjustment to the side button in about a tenth of a second. It makes absolutely no difference to me. My only complaint is that the buttons are a little on the loud side when you click. This isn’t an issue in most circumstances, but in very quiet environments is something that I have noticed.
Enough about the button placement, let me share what I thought was going to be a bigger deal for me: the surface finish of the touchpad. Unlike most laptop manufacturers, Acer decided to paint the touchpad with the same paint used for the casing. It is a high gloss paint that you tend to stick to instead of glide over. At first, it bugged me a good deal, but either the “stickiness” is wearing off or I am getting used to it since it no longer bothers me in the least.
Like most touchpads today, it features vertical scrolling functionality by dragging your finger along the right side of the pad and horizontal scrolling by dragging along the bottom. When scrolling, the mouse cursor changes to a unique icon that looks something like the top view of a mouse pointer being pulled into a tornado. The driver has way more options than the driver on my Lenovo laptop which allow adjustment for the scroll zones, sensitivity, tap and drag functionality, and lots more (I have included a screen shot of all the options here). There is an option for what they call “coasting” where you can start a long document scrolling and it will continue to scroll even after you have lifted your finger off the touchpad (and until you tap the pad again) that is surprisingly useful for web browsing. Overall, I am pleased with the options Acer provides for their touchpad.
In summary, neither of the two concerns I had about the touchpad when I purchased the unit have turned out to be issues at all. The reality is that the Acer Aspire One is a very usable device and the touchpad is no exception to that observation. And there you have it – more than I thought I would ever write about the touchpad on a mobile computer. If there is anything you would like to know that I didn’t cover here, simply leave a comment or shoot me an email and I’ll gladly fill you in!
As I was “moving in” to the Aspire One, I was quite impressed with the capability of the system. One of the first applications I installed was Daemon Tools so that I could mount ISO images of DVD’s and install applications directly from backup images of my software media. This worked like an absolute dream and I found that I could install things in the background as I copied large data files and made some notes in OpenOffice Writer all at the same time. The system maintained performance as I multitasked pretty hard.
I really like the keyboard a lot. There is very little that I need to adjust in my typing habits to be very effective. I can type full speed and find that I make very few errors due to all of the keys being in the proper locations (something that drove me crazy on the Classmate and would on any unit that moved the keys). The key travel on the keyboard is just right for the size. I would guess it is a little less than my Lenovo keyboard, but not by very much.
The screen is very bright. I can use it at far less than full brightness and even outside it was very readable. I have heard people complain about the glossy screens in the sunlight, but this worked very well. Sure, if I tried, I could focus my eyes differently and see myself in the reflection, but it was not a distraction to me at all and I found that the screen was not washed out like I thought it would be. I am surprised that there is no onscreen display that shows the brightness level when I adjust it.
The battery life is not outstanding, but I am very pleased to see that the power brick has an output of 19 volts. That means that I can use my batterygeek battery with it. This may save me from purchasing the 6 cell battery I was planning on, but I won’t know that for sure for a few days. I will run a few tests to see how long the battery will last for me. While I’m working it pretty including downloading applications via wireless, Windows thinks that the battery will last right around 2 hours on a full charge.
The only other issue for me is that the fan noise on the device is noticable. It is a bit louder than my T61, but significantly quieter than my desktop system. I have downloaded a small utility called AA1FanControl that completely shuts off the fan when the system is below a specifiied temperature. I will write a bit more about this application at a later date if I decide to keep it.
In all, I am very pleased with this purchase. The netbook is a very capable platform and I have already been using it more than I thought I might. I will post more at a later date about some of the specifics of the Aspire One – if there is something you’d like to know, shoot me an email or leave a comment.
I have never done an unboxing video. Mostly that’s because I am too impatient when I get a new device, but this time I exercised some discipline and shot the following video after my Acer Aspire One showed up on Friday.
I wrote a post about a new gadget on the way and I had every intention of posting hints about my new purchase each day or two until it arrived. Then reality hit. I have been traveling for work again and just haven’t had the time to do much outside the scope of my day job. Well, it turns out that my new Acer Aspire One is on a FedEx truck on the way to my house right now.
Why an Aspire One? Here are my thoughts:
Through work, I have had or will shortly have the chance to play with quite a few different netbooks, so I will write up some comparison posts as chance allows. Of course there will be a post about my impressions later today or tomorrow after I get it in hand!
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 been dying to pick up a Netbook from the first moment I put my hands on one. I love the size of the platforms and the promise of ultra mobile computing that comes along with systems that were designed to be taken anywhere. I find myself very hesitant to pull out my Lenovo T61 in cramped places like airplanes and would much rather use my iPod Touch when I am around the house. Even if I am just watching a little TV, I find that I do not pull my laptop out because I find it uncomfortable to work with it on my lap.
My typical computing day consists of a lot of email, web surfing, and note taking followed by a decent amount of spreadsheet work and data analysis (not really data crunching as my datasets are typically quite small). With the exception of some occasional multimedia work (or some even more rare gaming) on my home system, I very rarely do anything that completely taxes my computers. The reality is that I could almost live with the performance my Samsung Q1 and its Celeron processor delivers for almost everything I do.
Put all this together, and yesterday I spent some money on a new computer that should deliver the portability I want with the everyday processing I need. It is a netbook that will be arriving some time next week. A couple of you know which one already, but I am going to wait to disclose the details until I have the device in hand. I will put together a post that chronicles my decision making process later.
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!
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