The netbook overall receives a verdict of disappointing and feels semi finished, most of which is attributed to Android. The Android Market has been removed from the OS along with the ability to block sideload software, making it a “closed OS”. On the other hand, Acer seem to have also reworked the OS so that it fits the larger screen on the D250, which is a 10 inch display. Windows XP however works as well as expected on the netbook.

via

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Android Acer Aspire One D250 previewed

Via LaptopMag

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Acer Aspire One 751 reviewed by LaptopMag

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

Via Geek.com

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

HP dv2 notebook gets reviewed, seems more netbook than notebook

From Engadget’s review, the AspireRevo is touted as an affordable nettop that offers great graphics performance, but processing power that needs more oomph. It didn’t have problem playing Blu-ray and pumping out pure surround sound through its HDMI-out, but games don’t really perform as well as you would expect them to due to the severely weak processor. In case you’re still looking for more opinions, we’ll try to get our own review of the AspireRevo up in the next few weeks so watch out for it here.

Via Engadget

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Acer AspireRevo nettop gets reviewed

Via PC Authority

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Kogan Agora netbook gets exclusive first look in Australia

Via Laptop

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook gets detailed review from Laptop

Before anything, I think it should be noted that I used the “bootable USB flash drive” method to install Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One. Now, I’m not sure if that really does anything to goof up the software or any part of it when you’re installing, but I won’t deny that there were some hiccups before/during/after installation that I’m sure at least a few other people out there who used other methods to install Windows 7 (via external USB DVD drive, etc. if there are others) did not experience. In any case, the bottom line still is that I got Windows 7 on my AAO, and I’m here to share the details of what happened with you.

Booting up Windows 7

Before we get to the boring fun stuff that I did with Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One, I’m going to tell you all about the boot up process very quickly. After pressing the “On” button on the AAO, I usually had to wait anywhere from 45 seconds to nearly a minute and a half to finally get to the desktop and have the Windows 7 Start key functioning (indicating that the whole system is ready for action). The fastest boot times I had with Windows 7 were considerably shorter than those that I got with Windows XP. So that’s a win for Windows 7, since it allows the user to get to work more quickly than Windows XP.

Once I was in Windows 7, I was surprised to find out that I didn’t have to install any drivers. The display resolution was already maxed at 1024 x 600, the built-in speakers were working, the built-in webcam showed my face, and even the Ethernet functioned without any problems once I connected my DSL. I was happy because even if I didn’t install the “necessary” drivers, it “just worked.” Or so I thought. Like many others, my Aspire One’s Wi-Fi didn’t work in Windows 7. Fortunately, the guys from over at Liliputing pointed me to a solution (as did many other readers) so I fixed my Wi-Fi problems in no time. So then, everything about my AAO in Windows really “just worked.” And I did the monkey dance.

Speed, Performance, Stability

But back to reality – while all of my hardware worked, was the software itself actually any good? There was only one way to find out: do some tests.

While using the Acer Aspire One, I also had a dual core laptop with Windows 7 installed with me, and I used it to measure how well Windows 7 performed on a netbook.

I tried out the many built-in applications, including the new iterations of the Windows Calculator, Paint, and WordPad. I have to say, the new Paint was a quite a huge improvement over the old one, offering many more options and customizations to illustrations and images, albeit still being not enough for those who want to get real image editing done on a computer. WordPad too improved a lot, being more like a basic version of Microsoft Word now than something that just opened .doc files when you didn’t have Office installed.

A few other notable built-in applications that are worth using/keeping: Windows Defender, Snipper Tool, Windows Media Player, and Internet Explorer.

What’s that? You think I made a typo there in putting Internet Explorer along with the other “keeper” applications? No, actually I didn’t. Internet Explorer turned out to be pretty speedy, comparable to Firefox and Safari speedy, in the new version of Microsoft’s OS. In some situations Firefox was still the faster browser of the two, but Internet Explorer was no longer the annoying and slow browser that it used to be. And I’m sure my impression of Internet Explorer will improve even more when I get to try version 8 in Windows 7 (last time I checked, you can’t install Internet Explorer 8 RC1 on Windows 7.)

All the other programs that I tried to install worked without problems. These were also fast, although only slightly, and these include GIMP, Skype, and Yahoo! Messenger. Basically, instant messaging, image editing, and word processing (or text editing) programs that a typical netbook user uses. It’s like having your netbook given a new life. And it gets better.

Multitasking and resulting errors (or lack thereof)

I didn’t have any problems with multi-tasking on Windows 7. In fact, my 1GB RAM equipped AAO performed satisfactorily. Windows Aero was also on, by the way.

And not once did I experience a BSOD with Windows 7 on the Acer Aspire One. Some programs did crash, though, mainly games like Crazy Taxi, Grand Theft Auto, Counter-strike, and others that taxed a bit on the graphics. Turning Windows Aero off seemed to fix it a sometimes, but without a dedicated graphics chip onboard and only a small amount of RAM, games were better avoided on this netbook.

Battery Life

As for the battery life, I only got a little bit more of it with Windows 7 compared to Windows XP. With the standard 3-cell battery, I can’t say I got more than 20 minutes more battery life on Windows 7 with the Acer Aspire One. Your best bet for longer battery life would still really be an expanded 6-cell or 9-cell battery. Anyone who would use that would no longer have any qualms about battery life, for sure.

Verdict

Even though Windows 7 is still in beta stage, it already works surprisingly well, and offers a number of improvements over its predecessors, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Even on a moderately specced netbook like the Acer Aspire One, one will find Windows 7 a joy to use, and the fact that it offers some cute eye candy doesn’t hurt either. If you still haven’t tried Windows 7 on your netbook after all this time, don’t worry, for it’s expected to become officially available at retail in only a few short months. By then, all the little bugs will have hopefully been squashed, and the performance will improve even more, which is better for us users no matter which way you look at it.

Check out our gallery of Windows 7 screenshots below.

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Review: Windows 7 on the Acer Aspire One

Via JKontherun

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

HP Mini 1000 Mi reviewed on video

Via Gizmodiva

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition Netbook reviewed