In the Philippines, I know of at least one local retailer that is already selling these netbooks, and I was informed that the AAO D150 would be phased out already in favor of this new 10-inch model. What makes the Acer Aspire One D250 so great? Well, for starters, it comes with an Intel Atom N280 processor, which has been proven to be generally faster (though only by a little) than the Atom N270 which has been the norm for netbooks for quite some time now. Besides which, you can consider the Aspire One D250 as just an Acer Aspire One D150 with a better processor and sleeker design. Some of the ports have been rearranged to be positioned evenly between the left and right sides, but the overall look and feel is basically the same.

The price Acer is asking for an Aspire One D250 is the same as the price of an Aspire One D150: 23,995 Pesos or about $507 USD. Right now, I’m a little wary if this model is really worth the upgrade/price increase, but I’ll be spending time with it later today to find out. I’ll let you know what happens then.

Via Electronic Pulp

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Acer Aspire One D250 now available for a little over $500 USD

My reaction upon picking it up for the first time is that it is one “heavy” netbook. Though the fact that my review unit had a 6-cell battery on and a larger screen at 10-inches compared to my 9-inch AAO, I think the biggest reason why it has become somewhat heavier than I expected is Acer’s use of brushed metal on the body. Still, it’s not that hard to carry around, and in a man-purse, it should fit snugly into place.

The Acer Aspire D150’s box contains just the necessary papers (quick guide, warranty card, etc), AC adaptor and the netbook itself. The only thing missing from it is a leather pouch just like the one that came with the 9-inch version when it was released.

I’d say it’s a pretty well built netbook, with a great design to boot. Only problem is, it fails in some areas in terms of quality.

Keyboard, trackpad and connectivity

The power button is placed on the right side, just above the keyboard, while opposite to it is the Bluetooth on/off button and Caps Lock/Num Lock light indicators.

The keyboard Acer used on this model still has the same set of plasticky buttons that feel like they’re going to fall off any minute if you ever do any long haul typing. I enjoyed using the keyboard for the slight increase in size (nearing full size), but I’ve found that typing for long periods of time on it can cause some fingers to hurt a bit. And that’s not a good thing. However, for just typing the occasional Notepad notes and blog posts, I felt the keyboard sufficed. Also, it’s nothing a USB/wireless keyboard can’t fix.

As for the trackpad, Acer did the right thing in ditching the old, side-contained left and right click buttons in favor of a single left/right button positioned directly underneath the touch pad. Unfortunately, it’s a little too narrow to provide any real comfort while pressing and oftentimes it can be hard to even just press it at all. Meanwhile, clicking with the use of the touchpad can be equally hard, because it’s not as responsive as it ought to be. Still, this isn’t that big of a niggle since it can easily be solved by using a USB/wireless mouse. I couldn’t get myself to use the multi-touch functionality so I found it pretty useless.

When it comes to connectivity, the Acer Aspire One D150 has got it all–as far as a netbook goes. It quickly runs out of USB ports (as there are only three), and besides the power jack, it’s got a VGA-out port, audio in/out ports, multi-in-1 card reader, Ethernet jack and a security lock slot on its sides.

There’s built-in Bluetooth, but I only got it to work for a file transfer with my Nokia phone, and failed to do so with another Bluetooth-enabled notebook of mine. There’s no built-in 3G module here, but you can always attach one via a free USB port and the Wi-Fi picks up signals very well.

Using Windows XP

Booting up to Windows XP felt like it took longer than necessary. I reckon it’s probably because of the obligatory “bloatware” that comes pre-installed with it in the form of an antivirus program, Acer-made utilities, and Google Desktop. After waiting for a good 30-45 seconds to get from blank screen to the Desktop, you will be greeted with pop-ups like it’s 2005 on the Internet, telling you to update this, download that, check out this, which, needless to say, got really annoying. I doubt if the average computer user will even do anything other than click the visible “x” marks to close these pop-ups, so they will be pestered with these annoying things until the day they learn to turn them off.

But you can’t blame Acer for subjecting their customers to this kind of annoyance. I guess it’s obligatory stuff to have on machines that come pre-installed with Windows XP Home. After all, it enables them to customize the netbook to their liking to the extent that they think will benefit its users.

That said, I think the performance of this netbook with Windows XP Home Edition is just a little bit over the average level. Its 1GB of RAM and 1.6GHz Atom processor with GMA950 graphics aren’t exactly the best combination for an XP machine, but for light tasks which a typical netbook user would be doing, it is fairly adequate. Every once in a while, an intrusive pop-up would come out to disturb the silent peace of operating the Aspire One D150, but it doesn’t really seem to affect how speedy the netbook runs. It’s definitely faster than the SSD-equipped Acer Aspire One that comes with a 9-inch screen, so it would be a nice upgrade for those who own this particular unit.

Battery Life

One of the Acer Aspire One D150’s strong points is its battery life. For through the use of a 6-cell battery, one can run up to 5 hours of usage on a single full charge. I know I have. I even tested the battery life by using the Aspire One D150 for about 1-2 hours each day just for browsing and sideloading of songs to my phone, and I was able to get 6 days of usage. Soon, I believe the battery life on netbooks will be so good that using them will feel like using cellphones all over again–2-3 hours of “heavy” usage per day and you’ll be able to use it for about 3-4 days. One side-effect of the increased battery life, though, is the lengthened charging time. Since the battery is of a higher capacity, it takes longer to fully charge it. Also, it sticks out like a sore thumb at the back of the unit.

Final Thoughts

Compared to the Acer Aspire One with a 9-inch screen, the Aspire One D150 is a worthy upgrade. With a bigger screen, built-in Bluetooth, longer battery life and better design, it beats the old model over most aspects any day. However, I feel that Acer released this model a little too late, for those same features were already found in offerings of its competitors back when the 9-inch model was their only available netbook. For the price, this is still worth it, though, and anyone who still doesn’t have a 10-inch netbook will do good to put this one on their “netbooks to be considered” list.

Acer aspire one D150 is available at Amazon.com for $329.

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Acer Aspire One D150 review

The 6 cell battery version of the HP Mini Note 2140 has been photographed by HP 2133 Guide, as well as comparison pictures of the 3 cell model. The 3 cell model is as you’d expect, sleek, slim and sexy. The 3 cell battery only runs for about 4 hours, where as the 6 cell battery can considerable increase this time by more than twice as much. Liliputing reports that the 6 cell can run for 10 hours if the 2140 has an SSD, but is reduced to 8.5 hours with a HDD instead, but either option provides more battery life.

Unfortunately the extra life comes at the costs of it’s look. With the 6 cell battery in place, the 2140 is no longer as sleek or slim, but rather bulks the netbook up and adds a bit of weight to the netbook.  Fortunately though, it isn’t too unsightly unlike other increased battery life batteries and more than makes up for the extra bulk with the extra hours unplugged usage.

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

HP Mini 2140 6 Cell battery beefs it up

If you’re wondering if it’s worth waiting for the 6-cell version of the MSI Wind, Kevin from JKonTheRun puts the MSI Wind battery under the test and gives his opinion.

Kevin performed two tests as the MSI Wind allows you to underclock the CPU with it’s unique “Turbo” button. Both tests were run with Wi-Fi on, 50% screen brightness and Windows power management turned off. BatteryEater was used to perform the tests, which gives the minimum battery life.

On the first test performed, the results were 3 hours and 39 minutes. When “turbo” is turned on, the minimum battery run time is increased to 4 hours and 59 minutes. Kevin points out that these are the worst possible scenario results as every day usage will not consume as much processing as the BatteryEater. Under normal usage conditions, he believes that you could get nearly 5 hours out of the MSI Wind without underclocking, but 7 hours with the underclocking turned on.

Overall, he thinks that it is worth holding out for the 6-cell version, because not only is there added runtime, but the 5200 mAh battery is designed well to nicely into the Wind, without adding much bulk.

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

6-cell MSI Wind runtime test and results

Acer Aspire One with 6-cell battery shows up at Amazon for the nice price of $399.95.

There have been many complaints over the 3-cell battery thats ships with the Aspire one that only lasts for 2.5-3h. The 6-cell battery should last 5h+.

Unistep.net have a done a size comparision of the 3-cell vs. the 6-cell version with some pictures, check it out!

From: Engadget

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Acer Aspire One with 6-cell battery at Amazon

The global battery shortage is rolling on it seems but, it has come to light that online store Mwave is selling the MSI Wind with a 6 cell battery at last. They are in stock at $570 which is more than MSI indicated they would cost when they announced the Wind however, the global battery shortage then kicked in and MSI could only offer the 3 cell version until now.

There doesn’t seem to be any other retailers stocking the 6 cell version of the MSI Wind so if you want to grab one, head to Mwave and you may be lucky. Even MSI’s own website isn’t selling these netbooks yet.

Via: jkOnTheRun

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Mwave stocking MSI Wind with 6 cell battery

Even though the 6 cell battery version of the MSI Wind was said to be available in September, it looks as though Mwave.com is selling them at $570 – $70 more than what we were promised. This extra increase in the price makes the MSI Wind more expensive than the Eee 1000H ($549.99 at NewEgg) even though they have nearly the same specifications.

Your thoughts?

Via [Liliputing]

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

MSI Wind with 6 cell battery out early