Upgraded My 10"

I have upgraded my Aspire One 10".

I picked up a stick of Kingston Value Ram (KVR667D2S0/2GR) for $18 . I was a bit concerned after seeing people talking about the AA0 having issues with Kingston. I went to the store to pick up Crucial, but they were out.
It went in in about 30 seconds from start to finish.

I also upgraded My HDD to 500GB. This was just an impulse buy. I saw a WD 500GB passport (the Generic one, not the essential) for $89. I Then popped that open, replaced my 160GB with the 500GB, and placed my 160GB into the enclosure.

I am not sure how this will effect my overall battery life. So far it seems to be speedy and running fine. I am also glad to get that Toshiba drive out of my netbook, I have had nothing but bad luck with them in the past.

 

Hi what was the exact model of the hard drive that you stuck in? Any problems? How much RAM have you got in there now? Anyone know what the limit is for RAM? 1.5Gb again?

So many questions.

 

Inside the enclosure was a WD Scorpio Blue 5400rpm WD5000BEVT drive. I actually don't remember the enclosure model number. If i did not toss out the box, ill let You know.

I have 2 Gigs of ram.

That is the upper limit of the chipset. it is 1 SIMM so you have to find a new home for the 1 Gig stick that comes with it. Maybe put in a freinds 8.6".

 

I went the same route (wal-mart). I have been getting just over 6 hours with the 2gb stick and that's lowering the brightness by a couple of clicks. Still plenty bright to me. Now this isn't intensive, just websurfing and going through powerpoint presentations the entire time. I'm dualbooting w/ubuntu and it's showing a lot less battery and xp does.

I haven't touched the HD, but I did add a 8GB SDHC lexar for media files and so far so good.

I don't know if it's related but it seems like the system is getting a lot hotter now, after about 20 minutes on your lap you can tell it's there. At night in bed it gets even hotter, but that's probably due to being on the sheets. I have noticed that the system starts to bog down a lot when it heats up in those conditions...

 

So no on-board ram anymore? That's cool, wasn't aware of that . Gives me another incentive to upgrade to the 10".

Just wondering, do you know if it accepts the 6-cell battery pack from the 8.9" models?

 

Yes, there has been no change to the design of the battery.
My wife has the 8.9" 3 cell and i have the 10.1" extended 5800mAh 6 cell...both are interchangable.
I have used a 5200mAh 6 cell on mine too...no problem.

 

I was just noticing the other day... looks like RadioShack has gotten a new batch of 10" in. I got the last display model. The new ones have the smaller battery, they don't protrude out the back, maybe only 3 cell??

 

using the 10" on your lap or on the bed is actually suficating it.

You might have noticed, 90% of the venting is out the bottom on the D150.. the ideal spots for resting it on your lap... I am am actually using my old laptop at a "table" for my netbook when i use it on the bed. since i got the netbook my main Laptop has become a coaster/bed table..... i'll have to wash the coffee cup rings off it before i take it out again.

If you look at the pictures of the new thinner D250 10" netbook, there is side venting now out at least the lefthand side. I think Acer knew this would be a problem and fixed it for the second wave of 10"ers.

That is what we get for getting the first generation of these, and you know what? i dont care. I glad i got this thing so far.

as far as the radio shack smaller battery, i belive that might be a 4 cell. not sure how it would fit in there but that is what they said would be shipping with them. If it is a 3 cell. god, that thing would get only an hour to 90 min if you were lucky.

The upgraded ram.. It is pretty usless in Nlite'd XP. i hardly ever go over 512, in full photoshop i can eat up a gig when i a am working hard on it. i tend to use 512 for a ram drive for IE/Tempfiles. Now Win7 beta is a whole nother story. it eats tons of ram. about 600mb idol and goes up very fast in use... altho it is pleasantly usable once i upgraded.

 

Ya, I figured about the suffocating, but it's replaced my bedside magazines. Gotta have something to do while the wife watches biggest loser. I have to admit I've been extremely pleased with this acer too. It's my backup laptop that replaced a HP TC1100 tablet. Much more responsive. I wish the resolution was a little higher, but you can't have everything...

 

How did you mirror the recovery partition on the new HD ?
Is it possible to create a set of dvds ?
( I'm waiting for mine D150X, will arrives maybe on monday )

 

LMAO...what are you gonna do on the Aspire One that needs 2GB of ram? Play Crysis?

In my opinion, 1.5GB is the best number for maximum ram on netbooks anything over is just overkill.

If the answer is you need 2GB for Vista/7, that's even more of a joke because the Atom CPU was never designed with Vista/7 in mind.


*I know and am expecting to get some bashing on these comments especially in the 10" section of the forum..*

 

I'm just wondering if Windows 7 was never designed for the Atom then why would Intel waste billions on the technology. Even though Linux has a good share on the netbook market, don't think that MS is going to set around and watch money go away. I also don't think that Intel would create something without having MS in mind to an extent. XP has to die eventually... Have you actually saw vista and 7 side by side on identical systems? 7 definitely utilizes hardware resources a lot better than vista, with less resource hogging. I'm not bashing, but I think that the 2GB will take better use of what 7 can offer vs. vista....

 

I'm not going to bash you for an opinion. As for 1.5gig. I don't believe they don't sell a 1.5 gig stick

As i even stated, 2 gig is a bit over kill for XP plain old XP. I am running a ram drive of a 1/2 gig. I am also running Win7 and it runs fine due to the added memory. besides, who can pass up a sale of 2gig for under $20 after taxes?

Also yes i do game on my netbook, i do use photoshop, I also run fusion, all of which use more then the default gig.

The added hard drive was not intended, but it is nice to have the space to use the netbook as a Mobile data center..

As far as Windows 7. It runs Very cleanly on a Netbook. Microsoft is refusing to loose the netbook market. right now, that is the only part of the industry that is growing. Microsoft obviously saw the errors in Vista and are reducing the excessive resource bloating. As it stands now, I think every net book manufacture has announced their support in Win7 for their netbooks. the only thing left to see is the cost of Win7.

It might end up being a huge joke if the net book is $300 with Linux and the exact same netbook is $450 with Win7.

If they offer only windows 7 basic, that will be a huge setback in the netbook market. it would be really useless for 90% of the users. right now i am running a lot more then 3 applications right now.

 

how do you create a ram drive on the acer aspire one D150?

 

The 10" comes with a utility to burn DVDs of the "restore" load.

The OS takes 2 DVDs. The Apps/Drivers takes 1.

Of course, this will require a USB DVD burner.

 

See that's the thing both Intel and Microsoft knows that Netbooks are selling like hotcakes and is the new big thing to portable computing thus I'm thinking it's highly likely that Intel in gonna release a newer Atom or whatever mobile CPU chip that's more powerful than the current CPU possibly Duo Core running on the same amount of power as the current Atom CPU and/or specifically for Windows 7 but I'd say not until 3-6 months after the public/retail release of Windows 7 because they (Microsoft) want to sell/attract Windows 7 to desktop and laptop/notebook users first.

Microsoft has publicly stated that it's supporting Netbooks with Windows 7 and also mentioned there will will a specific 'Netbook Edition' of Windows 7 but my guess is not on current Atom CPU because although Windows 7 has much improved in memory management compared to Vista but tests have shown that it uses more CPU resources/cycles to run Windows 7 again compared to Vista...

Thus my conclusion the Atom CPU was and will never be designed with Windows Vista and/or Windows 7 in mind thus if you're on XP Home or Pro you do not need 2GB of ram to run an operating system that was designed, coded and release in the early 2000's. With 1.5GB ram XP only uses 300-400MB for the operating system and 200MB reserved for Intel 945M Chipset/GPU, that's a total of 600MB of 1500MB with 900MB+ worth of free ram to run and/or prefetch programs/software. And that's all taking into considering that you actually use 200MB reserved to the Intel Chipset/GPU becuase it's highly unlikely that you'd be able to run Battlefield 2 like games that feeds on video and system memory to add more FPS.

On the topic, yes they do not sell 1.5GB memory sticks but I basing my opinions on the 8.9" 1.5GB Max compared to 10.1" 2GB Max. I don't know if there are two ram slots on the new Aspire One 10.1" as I do not own one but if there are two ram slots, I think a 1.5GB configuration will work just fine with XP. But if there isn't then I take back my statement because 10.1" users to not have the option to save on money and ram wasted again to run Windows XP but I still stand by my opinion that 2GB is a big overkill on a Netbook running Windows XP on a Intel 945M Chipset and Intel Atom N270 CPU.

*It's more of a reminder to 8.9" users that it's not worth upgrading to a 10.1" Aspire One if your just upgrading to run Windows 7 ***BETA*** with the option of 2GB of ram on the 10.1" because before you know it both Intel and Microsoft is gonna stab you up the A_SS and release a newer Intel CPU along with newer Chipset with full support and huge stickers in front stating 'NEW NETBOOK NOW DESIGNED FOR WIINDOWS 7'...not to mention Acer as third party to jump into the hot selling new trend Netbook action!*

But if you want and have extra money laying round to upgrade from a 8.9" to a 10.1" for font resolution per pixel I'm all in for it even for myself but in my current circumstance I do not have the extra cash to spare for such luxury...any any case, again more bashing...an upgrade to a 10.1" EEEPC would be a better a wiser decision in my opinion because not only do you get a bigger screen resulting in less squinting and bigger fonts but you also get a bigger keyboard (80-90 percent of a regular sized keyboard), a bigger trackpad/touchpad and a fully functional not half baked 1.3MP webcam (not useful to all of us but nonetheless atleast working) and lastly but not least a 7800Mah (might be wrong) battery lasting about 1-2 hours more than/compared to the Acer Aspire 10.1" D150. This is based and compared to a ASUS EEEPC 1000HE the 1000H is fine but only 5400-5800Mah battery and not chicklet keyboard like the ones found on MAC keyboards but still 80-90 percent full size.


Thus I'm all said and done...very sleepy right now...

 

Nemix - check out the Feb 09 issue of Computer Shopper.... Intel is already working on their second go round with the Atom, like you hinted. They have a pretty neat article. One of the big goals is getting all day usage from the typical 3/4 cell battery and still some umph to boot...

My decision to get the 10.1" was totally fluke. I didn't even know it existed until doing some comparison shopping. I had intended to get the HP 1000mi, but looked on Radio Shack's website and discovered the AOD 150 and the price. Did a little research, decided I could justify $349 for a 10" netbook vs. $299 for a 8.9" and $450+ for any other brand 10". If you're worried about always having the latest and greatest you'll be in the poor house in no time, unless you're getting a government stimulus I've been running Vista Business on a HP TC1100 tablet for 2 years now and it's a 1GHz Centrino w/1GB. This atom runs circles around it, so I think it "should" handle Win 7 just fine. Good discussions though...

 

Thanks for taking the time to read my post...

True, if you're perfectly fine running Windows Vista on your current hardware than just keep doing so as long as you're happy and can get things done that's what really matters right. Happy=money saved and less worries..LOL

But people who like to upgrade they'll just end up doing so again and again because I just know the Intel/Microsoft in gonna be touting and have headlines everywhere BIG time about the newer Atom CPU/Chipset designed for Windows 7 'Netbook Edition' which utilizes Windows 7 advanced feature and fully supports Aero and saves battery and ta da ta da ta da...the list goes on.

It's gonna very had for the upgrader (not in dictionary) to avoid and ignore the news especially on a Netbook with Windows Vista/7 (BETA in the meantime) and they'll (upgraders) probably just end up selling their existing hardware for the latest and greatest support mumbo jumbo...which means better for second hand buyers because not only will they (buyers) have almost current hardware but they'll also saves a fortune in change and most like be perfectly happy on Windows XP. One mans junk=another man gold...

Right now I'm using a laptop which has replaced my desktop for regular home computing, the current hardware on my laptop will definitely run well on Windows 7. And I use my Aspire One 8.9" Windows XP 1GB (really wanted to upgrade to 1.5GB but I circled two internal screws while opening up the Netbook...LOL) for mobile computing on the go.

 

If you read all the Mac rumors it's going to be interesting to see where they go with the netbook industry and that's going to affect the PC makers, supposed 10" touchscreen/tablet for under $600. I think if PC manufacturers would really pay attention they would see that 90%+ of people use their netbooks for more than just websurfing/email. I actually know a guy who's converted his Dell Mini 9 or whatever it is to a decent looking car pc with full run gps/topo software coupled with tetherberry for his blackberry.