I'd like to dig up this thread, and add my updated impressions of the netbook.

As some of you know, I have the similar "blue" Acer Apire One, model AOA-150. I originally purchased the 1GB, HDD, Windows XP Home edition of the laptop. The laptop was purchased back in earli-ish September (if I remember right) of last year. So since it is coming up on 11-ish months of ownership, it's time for Spulat's One Year Review


In the beginning, I myself, as well as others, questioned the usability of netbooks. Low powered, with smaller screens, and (in the AA1's case) 85% sized keyboards, they were not considered good enough for much more than web browsing and simple tasks, and meant more as a portable appliance than anything. I have found, through this past year of use, that I have used the everliving crap out of this netbook. It's draw comes primarily from the portability aspect of the machine, and the fact that you can sit anywhere with the featherweight, and do some light work. I take it upstairs, and keep on top of the day to day goings on, and this allows me to keep my desktop off and saving power (and saving me from having to go down to my room in the dark basement, like a troll).

However, the laptop is not currently in it's stock form. I purchased a 1GB memory chip, to bring the laptop to it's [maximum] 1.5GB memory. Also, to help with latency and performance, I swapped out the stock 5400rpm drive with a 120GB 7200rpm drive. Additionally, I created aluminum foil "fins" and fused them to the heatsink, which allowed for SOMEWHAT lower fan speeds and better cooling. Why they designed a smooth flat heatsink is beyond me, fins would have gone a long way to increase thermal efficiency.


This update will be in the categories of good, bad, and indifferent:

The GOOD:

-The laptop has a high amount of usability. It's small size meant it could fit in the smaller front pocket of my backpack, and I took it everywhere. Combined with tethering it to my phones, it meant that I could have an internet connection no matter where I went. It's true; this laptop was with me more than half the time I left the house.

-It's durability was tried, and tested. The laptop survived two drops on two separate occasions The first time, it was knocked off the top of the toilet in the bathroom while I was using it to play music in the shower (yes I sing in the shower and no I don't have an iPod dock or anything), onto the tile floor. So it definitely works in humidity, and the only damage it took in the fall was some scratching of the case, and the chassis flexed a bit. I literally bent the laptop back into place and went along with my day.

The SECOND time it dropped, we were using the machine to play a piece of music she was practicing, over headphones, while being plugged into a USB input box for her vocal recording. She went to reach to get my attention for something, as I was sitting next to her at the Piano, and her hand was caught in the headphone cord and sent the laptop flying about 5 feet away and a 3 foot drop. It clattered and slid, and once again, I simply bent the chassis back and continued. This little thing is tough as nails, no doubt primarily because of it's featherweight design.

-Though still a fingerprint magnet, it's easy to clean, and the display is still as bright as the day I bought it. Despite being dropped, I only have one dead pixel on the side of the display.

-Nothing else has broken. Not the fan, not the card reader, nothing. The hinges are still tight, the drive still spins well, the fan makes no strange noise. It's never "broken down" despite being in a myriad of environments like a hot car, sitting on a carpet in an 85 degree room, etc. It's never overheated, though the bottom conversely, can become disturbingly warm. Which eventually translates into a warm keyboard.

The Indifferent

-The laptop, as mentioned, has seen HEAVY use. For an entire month, it was used as a primary work machine for IT work. Going on-site, being used in a dual display setup, used as a diagnostics machine, etc. Though never failing to do what it needed to, it never really kept pace with Outlook and other programs open, even with the memory upgrade.

- The EVE online classic client, before it was discontinued, would run at about 12fps. The newer client, which no longer allows as low of a graphics setting, will run about 7fps maximum. The game is unplayable on this laptop, but it runs well enough for me to do any emergency things I need to, such as a forgotten skill change.

- I never did purchase the 6 cell battery like I said I would, but at this point I won't. The stock 3 cell never had good battery life but upgrading to Windows 7 RC from XP, helped noticeably. After a year of use, the laptop still holds out for about an hour and fifteen minutes on average, on the "Balanced" power plan.

- It's only had a handful of BIOS updates since it's release, and none of them really fixed much. One was supposed to fix the fan speeds and cause it to be smarter about thermal control. On my laptop it had a net effect of "zero" difference. The BIOS update that gave a solution to the "flickering screen when brightness is turned all the way down", "fixed" the problem by not allowing the display to be turned down as far.

- Typing becomes more difficult because every so often, the keyboard misses keystrokes. At first I thought it OS related, until it started missing keystrokes in Fedora. This started happening a few months after acquiring the laptop, and got no better nor worse after being dropped.

- WinXP/1GB/HDD models should have dropped the second SD card slot, as a cost-saving measure. With a HDD, there's no reason for me to have two SD card slots on the chassis. This space could have allowed for two more USB ports, or a Firewire option. Given it's size and location, it could have also allowed for a Cardbus/PCI-e option.

- It's Windows XP performance, was adequate. It's Windows 7 performance, was much better than expected and ran Aero without a problem. It's still snappy and in some cases, more responsive, mostly due (I'm sure) to changes in the OS and it's kernel itself. With plugging in a reasonably good performance 1GB thumbdrive, for ReadyBoost, no real noticeable performance difference was observed. Win7 allows for multiple drives to be used with ReadyBoost, however, even with TWO of these sticks performance was largely the same. The system bus is only so fast, and can only do so much. Win7 has some occasional slowdown, and times when text has to catch up that I'd never seen before. I'm not entirely sure if it's hardware related, or something in the RC that's causing it. Fedora performs like a top, and is set up with the ext4 file system.

The Bad

- After 6 months, the power supply died, and I would have to pay for shipping both ways in order to RMA it, and the RMA support process with Acer is ABYSMAL. We had a spare Compaq power supply, and I currently use that. It's 3x bigger than the original PS, makes some high pitched electrical whine, and is rated 2v lower than the original PS, but it works and cost me $0.

- The wireless in this model, in a one-word summary, sucks. There are reported problems with models that have the Atheros (go figure...) wireless chipset with regards to wireless dropping, and general hardware failures. I have experienced both, and any time I tried to put any throughput via wireless... such as streaming a video from the DVR... it would fail within a minute. You would have to switch off and on the hardware switch to reconnect. There is one specific version of the driver that is supposed to work best and resolve the issue. I currently run this version driver, but still experience disconnects; though far less frequent. I cannot trust the wireless to hang in there when I want to move data.

- Despite only being a 1.6GHz HT Atom processor, the thing really could have used a slightly better/newer graphics chipset. Graphically it should perform better than it does, regardless of price-point. Once upon a time, in ancient China, they had Intel 845-series graphics. I read about it in a history book once. Though in it's defense, 720p performance is adequate.

- The fan also, still sucks. Ever since I bought it, even with the "fin mod", within one minute of turning the laptop on it starts wailing away. Either on normal, or on high. Though never intrusive even on high, it's constant running kills battery life and goes to show poor thermal design of the laptop. Many other laptops in this class, have nearly silent fans, or ones that don't turn on so frequently. I would be embarrassed to have this in a classroom at college or in any small environment. I've known 2.2GHz+ Core2Duo laptops that stay largely silent. It's not that the fan noise itself grates on my nerves, it's just the simple fact that the fan runs constantly at the speed it does, and only has two speeds programmed in. It's constant thrum is an annoyance based on principle.

To add to that, the fan adds a noticeable amount of vibration to the chassis. I lost one of the rubber feet to it, so when it sits on a table, unless I put a buffer under the corner of the laptop, it vibrates the whole thing. The vibration of the chassis and the keyboard is a small irritation, noticeable and there, but not enough to truly annoy.

In Conclusion

Though lacking in raw performance, and with niggling problems like the wireless and failed power supply, the laptop has otherwise proven to be a rugged and sturdy daily performer. It's probably the best $380 or so I've ever spent, though next time I would have waited another month or three for the price drop. It's paid for itself in convenience, portability, flexibility, and just raw use. When it is finally retired, I will most likely use it as a low-power network appliance of some sort like a Gateway running Unwired and Ghostwall, or as a simple NAS with USB drives plugged in, test platform, or DVR back-end. Even with no longer being a regular use laptop, it will still continue to have a purpose in my network.

However, once the money is in, over the holiday or early next year I will retire this laptop for a newer netbook. My hope is that by then, a dual-core Atom 330 based netbook will finally be available, using dual-channel memory, and by then viable SSD drives with good performance will also be an option. Additionally, I will be springing for a 10" model that has a 5-6 cell battery. This laptop will result in being a little heavier and somewhat more expensive, but it will fit my "perfect" slot for the all-around utility laptop.

In closing, people like myself, MOST CERTAINLY have a use for a netbook. My need or desire for a fuller, larger, higher performance laptop is non-existent since my quad-core Phenom II desktop is plenty enough. For sound recording and studio-type use, the laptop is powerful enough to run what I need to. Unless it were a full studio recording, in which case, I would rather use a desktop anyhow for better latency. I see myself purchasing netbooks for years to come.