General misc questions about the AAO for a new buyer.

Hey everyone, I have been reading this forum a lot learning a lot of tricks and things about the AAO, but there are some things that I am curious about. I figure the best way to get a definite answer would be directly from someone with experience such as a lot of you here. I plan to purchase either a Brown or Blue AAO 150 160GB 6-Cell here very shortly, but a few things bug me.

I have heard that the speakers on these are really bad. Can someone give me some insight on what to expect? Maybe something to compare them to? I have a Sony PSP and the speakers on that are amazing for what it is, what should I expect for the AAO?

Also, I have read a few places that the AAO does not have the "tap to click" feature on the track pad and needs some different drivers to enable that? One thing I read on here said that when the drivers to enable the tap to click were installed that the sensitivity was no longer high enough.

Another thing is that I mainly wanted a portable PC for sites like revision3 and youtube. Is the AAO capable of playing back full screen videos from these sites without problems? I have a real talent for noticing audio/video lag during playback, should I be worried?

Finally for now, the applications I plan to run at all times are Xfire Messenger/MSN Messenger/AVG Anti-Virus and Winamp. On my desktop PC these apps run pretty much 24/7 and I multi task while these are all running. Things like youtube videos and what not while these other apps are open. Will I be able to continue my habits on the AAO or is it just not going to be enough to function well with multitasking?

I will reply to this topic if I can think of anything else I would like an answer to from someone. Thanks for reading and your answers in advance, I am just waiting on newegg to stock the AAO currently, and wanted to get some final insight before I purchase so I don't end up regretting my purchase. Thanks.

 

1) the speakers are bad. yeah pretty bad, at least on my AAO. however, I couldnt honestly care less, as I didnt buy it for that.
2) the touchpad does double tap and tap with nothing else then original synaptics drivers, again, at least in my case. I didnt touch the defaults, but sensitivity is ok for me. However, I believe I could increase it if necessary.
3) youtube and the likes shouldnt represent a problem. playback is smooth for me, given that the wireless LAN has latest drivers that should minimise lag. I multitask Visual Studio 2008, Outlook 2007, Office 2007 and a couple IE tabs (one with an online radio) and everything goes fine.
Forgot to add I have upgraded the RAM to 1.5GB. Shouldnt make much of a difference to you as you wont be using VS2008 and the likes.
Hope this helps,
N

 

Yea, the speakers are not very loud, but they are sufficient for what they are. Through earbuds, the sound is great. I really think the touch pad is great. Lots of ppl dissed it b/c of the buttons on the side, but tbh, I hardly ever even touch the buttons. Tap to click works perfectly fine, plus you can scroll by moving your finger up and down the right side of the touch pad. Also their are multi-touch features built in for zooming. It is cool for photos, but I mostly use the zoom in FireFox. It does streaming video just fine. Only time I ever see a slight hesitation is on hulu.com when I have several other tabs and programs open. DivX video plays great on the AA1.

 

Thanks for the quick replies, just to clarify something though. Would you say the speakers are 'good enough' to listen to music through? Also, about the volume, how loud do they actually go at full volume? Anything to compare that to? Thanks again, this is helping me a ton, and other people too probably.

EDIT: I just came across some info on newegg.com reading reviews and there seems to be a wireless issue causing the wireless to constantly drop signal? Anyone know anything about this?

 

I dont really have a good comparison for the speakers, but I dont really think they'd be loud enough for listening to music on their own...definetly gonna need some ear buds for that. As far as the wireless issue, if you search here you will see a number of threads dealing with this. Essentially, the default Atheros wireless card has some really restrictive power saving mode when you are running on battery. It is a good idea to turn this off in the driver settings for the wireless card. I myself got really laggy videos from hulu.com until I did this.

 

I'd say the speakers are pretty terrible, they're not good enough quality and don't go to a high enough volume to listen to music through. The touchpad is fine, has tap-to-click, tap-tap-drag etc just like most modern laptops and the sensitivity is great for me.

Performance playing back videos will be great for what you want

 

I've bought these


http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/33610...gle_pc&keyword=Maxell+USB+Flat+Panel+Speakersthe sound is good and quite loud and they weigh next to nothing.

 

I also had some trouble with the wifi and adjusted the power saving in device manager to off. I only get about two hours on a charge like this....
For the OP, the speakers work OK for basic stuff.

 

I suppose you could say the A1's speakers are worse than usual. Laptop speakers are already as a class so hopeless that whether a particular implementation is bad or worse is really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

The distortion is usually quite obvious if you crank the volume to max, but back off a bit and the sound is clear and neutral. Putting the netbook on a hard surface like a table makes a huge improvement in volume and sound quality. If you have the thing on your lap the speakers are muffled and you can't hear a thing. That's probably the cause of most of the complaints.

 

1. The speakers aren't bad for a laptop, keep it on a hard surface. The speakers, obviously, are on the bottom, so if they're on your lap, they'll be muffled. I'd say they're better than your PSP's.

2. Wrong, it might not be enabled by default, I can't remember. If it isn't, click on the "synaptic pointing device" icon in the tray and click on "tap to click". Also, double click on the "synaptic pointing device" icon, click the device settings tab, then click "settings", and you'll find a huge amount of customization available in touchpad features. Things like iphone type Pinch movements, setting corners of it to mimic button functions, scrolling, etc...

3. The AAO has no problems with running web video that I've seen, unless you've got a LOT of stuff open.

 

Thanks for all the replies everyone! A lot of my questions have been answered and answered well. Now I am just waiting for newegg to stock the Brown one, thats the color I decided I wanted. Blue is nice, but after some thought I think it just looks to "toy-ish" to me, and the brown is a unique color for electronics like this I think. All I need now is a UPS vinyl and I'm all set, haha.