My Acer Aspire One AOA150 *lots of pics*

Just got this the other day from dabs.com, the Acer Aspire One AOA150 512MB 120GB Linux White for £227.
(http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...lectedId=11105&NavigationKey=11105,4294952971)

Firstly this is my first laptop and I have been thinking about getting a mini laptop for a while, but they where always too expensive, then came the eee pc which we all know created a new kind of market, small low powered laptops at very cheap price, I have been tempted getting one, and was in too minds weather to get the eee pc 901 or this in the end it came down to price, this is a bargain at this price!



Firstly build quality is excellent it feels very solid and looks professional (something I think the eee doesn't) weight is good, this is the Hard drive version so it is little haver than the SSD, but still lighter than most laptops I've picked up. There is a difference to the back of the unit to most of the pictures I've seen online, the case is a bit thinker on one side to make room for the 2.5" Hard Drive, as shown below.


But it is small


The software that come on it all seem good and stable however I have had one crash with it and I'm completely new to linux and so finding it a little hard to get to grips with installing extra software and games, I might eventually move to windows but only if there is a way of keeping a quick boot version of linux for it, maybe on a USB stick or ideal I would like dual boot system, but never set one up before and have no idea if this type of machine can do it.

Any way I have installed Quake 1 and very happy to see working on it, UAE (amiga emulator) so I can now play lemming, worms, and as shown below Chase HQ, true classics! and many others all on the move, which I find great!



The screen is very bright and perfect size for surfing the net, the wifi is very good, its picking my Hub up much better than my PS3 does. Keyboard is good size and the track pad is pretty good. Sound wise the speakers aren't great but I will be using head phones mainly any way and as for the system it self, the hard drive is a little noise, and you can hear it clicking every now and again, (think this could be a power save feature or something) but its not to bad, the system fan is fine, but I hope it doing a good job as it can start to feel quite warm underneath.

now for the few downsides the web cam although pretty good at nearly still images it can not cope with movement and its only a 0.3 mp, the ram expansion you have to take apart the whole computer which I'm not to pleased about, I assumed that the slot at the bottom was for ram as Acer site claim Ram upgradable, but you have to take apart your whole computer to do it, so I may or may not bother with the Ram it depends on how many times I see "not enough memory" pop up. And finally the battery, I knew at this price there are compromises and for me this is the main one for this device, the Hard Drive must take up quite a bit more power, because I did read you can stretch a 110 up to 3Hr and a half hours, but on the HD your be doing good anything over 2Hr, this is not great, but its a compromise to get it at this price, and I still have the option to upgrade the battery to a 6 cell one for £70 which make it about the same price as the eee 901 so I think that's not too bad of a deal. Overall I would have to give this 90% out of 100% I think the software and support will only get better over time for this device, hopefully 6cell upgrade will fall in price if it becomes the main battery and maybe the ram upgrade wont be as hard as it looks. so I think its a great buy as a small portable device. Glad to be part of the Acer Aspire community.

 

Re: My Acer Aspire One AOA150

Thanks for the info and pics! It looks great!

 

Re: My Acer Aspire One AOA150

Nice review

any chance you are going to run AROS on it? :roll:

 

Re: My Acer Aspire One AOA150

Wow that pic on the bottom is great, i had no idea how small it was in that dimension until you showed that shot w/ the dvd. I can't believe how small that is! Do you find it hard to type on?

 

Re: My Acer Aspire One AOA150

Not to steal the thread, but this is a good pic I found on amazon by a user that also shows relative size. Maybe this guy just has huge hands though

 

Re: My Acer Aspire One AOA150

FYI: I've been browsing hard drives specifications on Toshiba's web site, and it seems that 2,5" drives use approx. twice as much current as 1,8" ones for seek/read/write operations. I don't know about the SSD consumption, but I plan on replacing it with a 1,8" 30GB drive.

 

Spoof of Apple advert Macbook Air for £1,000+ or Aspire One for £200?


Keyboard differences

I found the keyboard very good, the only real problem I have is the space bar just seem too flat, but I think that's how I would feel about any laptop.

Now to try and show the real size of this machine

My Sony stuff looks big next to this, as you can see the screen is brighter than a psp.


Old A4 size Amiga mag, yes you guessed it I am an Amiga fan, AROS would be cool on it, I might look into that.



Finally, mind the coffee cup on your new machine, as I have thought of an interesting question on weather this machine is water/splash proof? Any one know?

 

now I finally got around to posting a quick video of it, still loving my little wonder!