Netbook ahoy!

I have finally managed to lay my grubby mitts on a netbook. I have been after one for some time, and now one is mine.

The Acer Aspire One is my machine of choice. A great combination of look, performance, and price. There are now a number of machines you could go for, all offering about the same features, all for around the same cost.

But I think the Aspire one stands out as the machine of choice (at least for the geeks out there). Not because it is the best, but because it is one of the cheapest, and one of the best performers.

The Samsung is also worth considering, but at almost twice the price it really is not in the running.

Starting at the bottom

I have gone for the very bottom of the range. 512mb RAM, with a 8gb Solid State Hard Disk. This version only comes with Linux installed. There is also version with 1gb RAM and a 120gb hard disk. With your choice of either Linux or Windows.

I went for the bottom of the range because I want to see just what is possible with one of the these machines. 512mb RAM and a 1.6 Intel Atom processor is by no means a slow coach in the mobile computer stakes (better than most of the machines I have ever had). But the machine can always be upgraded very easily to be much better than the alternatives for very little cost.

The only real draw back of the machine is the limited size of the hard disk. Of the 8gb on the disk, you only get half of that available to you after the OS has been installed and you have lost 1gb to the swap space. But this is not a machine for doing video editing or music production, so 4gb is plenty of room for a basic machine. There is one problem using the solid state disk, it is quiet slow. It seems the drive the Aspire uses is just not that good. You will often wait while data is read from the drive before the app will start. It’s something that is a little annoying, but can be lived with. But the upshot is there are virtually no moving parts in the machine, so even if you drop it you should be OK (Don’t hold me to that).

But the Aspire One does have a clever trick up its sleve. There are two card readers on the machine. One is a standard reader for using with lots of different types of media. The other is only for SD cards. When you put a card in, instead of appearing as another drive, it extends the hard disk space instead. So as 8gb SD cards become more reasonable in price you can easily extend the size of the machine.

The custom OS

The Aspire One ships with a custom version of Linpus. Which is already a branch of the Fedora Linux project. What you see is basically a shell sitting over the normal Gnome desktop. So if you are familiar with Ubuntu, as I am. You are already familiar with the workings of the machine.

The UI is actually pretty good. The display is split into four sections. Connect, Work, Fun, Files. Three apps are accessible from each section, or the section can be expanded out to show all the apps in that section.

The whole idea works well. But you soon come up against the limitations of this design. Because this is a shell over the normal Gnome desktop you can get to the more normal functions you would expect. But there are a number of things you have to do to make it work.

I quickly got tired of having to jump through hoops to be able to get to the apps I wanted to use. It also doesn’t come with the most up-to-date software. Firefox 2 is default web browser for example. You will also have to install the more common applications like GIMP, Skype, even Thunderbird. All very simple once you have pulled the tricks to let you get to the package manager.

Back to Ubuntu

Thankfully, as always, the community are working to help us. Once you have installed the latest version of Ubuntu and tweaked it to work on the Aspire One you can put on the Netbook Remix. This is not without its problems, not all the features of the Aspire One work correctly with Ubuntu at the moment. But I am sure the community will solve these problems, especially for a machine this popular.

As of yet I have not tried it, but I will trying it out. Once I do, I will let you know what I think.

Using the netbook

The netbook raises an interesting problem. You don’t use the it like you would a normal laptop. It really is more for dipping into, doing what you need to quickly and coming back out again, than it is to use for a whole day. But this is perfect for the machine. It is so small (8.9 inch screen) you can put it in a pocket and carry it around with you. The battery life is not the best, but can still manage a reasonable 2.5 hours, which I don’t think is too bad (Considering my Vaio has only ever been able to manage 1 hour).

The keyboard is 83% of the normal size and is actually very very good (I’m using it right now to write this). It is responsive and good enough to really use. The screen is also excellent. Bright and clear. It folds down the back of the machine (Apple like). The only real disappointment is the the touch pad. The actual pad is OK, but to make the machine a little smaller the buttons have been placed either side of the touch pad. Your finger naturally wants to click the button under the pad, but it’s just not there. It takes a little getting used to, but you can always plug in a USB mouse if you really can’t use the the pad.

Something that would really benefit these devices would be a touch screen (something I think is coming soon).

Conclusion

The Aspire One is an excellent machine. Just what I was looking for in an ultra mobile computer. Powerful enough to work really well. But small enough to be portable and taken everywhere. While the battery life is not the most amazing, I think it is more than enough.

These ultra mobiles are never going to be replacements for your desktop machine, or your working laptop (I personally can not work on anything but a desktop machine). But if you want a machine for surfing the web, or just doing odd bits of work, this is the perfect device.

Something I always wanted was a Psion Series 7. While I was at uni I had a Psion 3c, a great little computer for doing the most basic operations. Sideswipe totally upstaged me by getting the Psion Series 5, a much more powerful and definitely better machine. With a larger, touch sensitive screen. I finally bought one from eBay for £30 last year, but it just doesn’t cut the mustard any more. But the series 7 was the machine I craved, it had a large touch sensitive colour screen and good sized keyboard. But it was incredibly expensive, even now it still fetches over £100 on eBay.

But the Aspire One has replaced that need.

Update – 29/12/2008
I was having problems with my Aspire One. When ever the machine was turned off it would not turn back on straight away. The lights would come on but the screen stayed off and the BIOS did not appear to start. It would eventually fix itself and start.

I eventually found you can hold down the Fn+Esc keys when you start to force a BIOS reset. This would then make the machine boot again (seems a common command for Acer machines). I was thinking of taking it back but I figured it might just be a BIOS bug. Sure enough I eventually found a great site talking about the problem, and the fix is to just update to the latest BIOS. They even provided a guide to setting up the update (you have to install DOS onto a USB stick, or make a special USB config to get the BIOS to do it automatically).

Now I’m loving the Aspire One again