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I just got the Acer Aspire One (AOA150) and the model number also happened to be its price - £150 when purchased. It is a netbook with 9 inch 1024x600 glossy screen. Common to others of this form factor the keyboard is cramped but still usable.

Basic spec is an Atom 1.6 GHz (with hyper threading), 1 GB ram and 120 GB hard disk. There is a combo card reader built in which takes the SD related family and also memory stick. Opposite side is another SD card slot for "storage expansion". 3 USB sockets, network socket, headphone and mic and an analog VGA out complete the physical connectivity options. There's also a built in webcam and wireless networking.

Nothing remarkable there but the hard disk space is what swung it. This will be a handy photo dump for those times where you can't get enough flash storage.

This model came with its own version of Linux preinstalled. It didn't take long to nuke that and throw XP on, where it behaves like any other computer. While I'm sure the Linux version installed, or even an alternate one will do well, for this application I don't want to spend time relearning what I can do without thinking in Windows.

The screen was the biggest concern when I saw it. I neglected to check before buying, but it is a glossy one. Normally I avoid these and will always pick the non-reflective types as they are pretty much glare free. When I opened this it was like looking into a mirror. However my fears were unfounded as once you get something light on screen, the reflection visibility diminishes. Only bright light sources remain reflected and visible. The gloss is growing on me actually, as it gives photo images a bit more punch. Putting aside the glare risk, the image quality is great, being sharp and well defined, and controlled vivid colours.

This is my first Atom based system. Performance on general desktop use is fine, although I fear it may choke on heavier tasks. I intend to upgrade the ram later to its maximum of 1.5GB as I have a spare module. I have yet to heavily load it or test the battery life.

This is also replacement to my original Eee 701. That was never used much as it was cut a bit too far for me, with a 4 GB SSD and 7 inch 800x480 screen. The Aspire One, with a bit more of everything, crosses into the general usability region.

For the price, I think this is great, but I wouldn't want to pay more for it.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

That's very cheap, although netbooks don't really interest me, i'd prefer to have a 13" laptop TBH! Oh and great run down/mini review. It would be interesting, if you could give us a rough indication of performance and battery life..........
Cheers

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Ed


Canon 40D + Grip | Sigma 10-20 EX | 17-85 | Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX II | 50 F/1.8 | 430 EX II + Other Stuff
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Having ran it a bit more, I can add battery life under intensive wireless web browsing is about 2 hours or so. Not much I know, but there are higher capacity 3rd party batteries for it if you really want more.

I did have a weird occurrence at work the other day. It would repeatably shut itself down some time after switching on. I ruled out the OS as it would happen before the OS loaded if you wait, for example, in the bios setup screen. Took it home and working fine again. And hasn't happened again since.

I thought I'd play about with OSes after all. Now it has Ubuntu netbook remix on it. Still need to tinker with it as it'll make things a lot easier once I get file shares talking to my windows network.

On the size, the keyboard and touchpad are both nicely responsive. I think they could have made it smaller though, as the border around the screen is very big. This is about the right balance of usability and size if your primary objective is the smallest package where you can have a decent computer level web experience. Much below this you're into brick/pda phones which simply suck for serious web browsing. Above it are regular laptops and the bulk they come with.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.