Acer Aspire One First Impressions
Here are some random first impressions:
- The form factor is very cool. Not too small but very light.
- FutureShop (Canadian reseller) only sells models with bilingual (English or French) keyboards.
- The Canadian models allow you to select XP in English or French.
- The whole setup process takes less then an hour (didn't timed it).
- The color choice I had was between sapphire blue and sapphire blue.
- Sapphire blue is a fingerprint magnet.
- The power supply is very tiny.
- Deinstalled Office Student 2007 trial and Mcafee.
- Installed Free AVG, Spyware Doctor and Picassa (both from Google Pack).
- I had an old 5.25" external USB enclosure so I stuffed in there a DVD drive to install Office Ultimate 2007 and Visual Studio Team Suite.
- Installed SQL Server Express 2008.
- Some dialog boxes have a height of 600 pixels.
- Copied some files to the netbook using an external 2.5" USB drive.
- Wifi works without problems.
- External VGA can output more then 1024x600 if the netbook screen is disabled. The driver can go up 2048x1536 however I wouldn't dare go as high. I tested it with an output of 1280x800. Nice!
- If you want to use it as a presentation machine, you must have a podium like setup where you see the output from an external monitor and the projector.
- XP boots fast.
- A fresh boot leaves me with 500MB free memory. Shocking!
- Visual Studio takes about 8 seconds to start.
- Doing presentations that don't require a virtual machine or not CPU intense.
- On a plane to watch a movie or work on a document or presentation.
- As a photo viewer when I go see family and friends.
- Bringing a laptop with me just in case.
- Bringing a backup presentation machine.
- On vacations to dump the daily pictures.