While tapping the keyword, I was thinking as to how I should write this review. Assuming that you are comfortable with both descriptive and ‘pointer-bullets’ analysis of the Acer Aspire One - the ultra portable notebook and so I decided to give you a mixed pickle!

Small and compact, the Aspire One should not have caused much trouble for the manufacturers! Huh! Not really! With so many companies trying to put it right, it seems not to be a non-herculean task. Aspire One took an impressive gait. ‘The One’ (not the kung fu star Jet Li) has two big reasons to catch my attention. They are:

Acer Aspire One Netbooks

• A smart and impressive keyboard.
• ‘Aspire One’ rejects white as a color for itself! Guess what? Camera loves non-white elements!

Unlike most of the netbooks (which fail on the keyboard stand), ‘The One’ did an impressive job. The decently sized smooth and firm keyboard gives complete satisfaction and passed all the keyboard tests (with no problems) which include playing games and writing articles!

Technical Details

Coming to the technical details of the Aspire One, here is what I found. The body of the netbook is made up of a small plastic frame and has a dimension of 245×165x25 mm. It is power packed for the basic tasks like the MS Office or Web browsing. Why not more? Well, probably this is going to explain:

• 512 MB RAM.
• 8GB SSD storage.
• 1.6 GHz Atom CPU.

This a true power pack for office stuff and internet surfing. There are some additional specifications as well! They are:

• 802.11 g/b wireless card.
• A webcam (which is probably good for nothing because you are more likely not to use it).
• 8.9” screen and has a resolution of 1024×600 pixels.
• Has a Li-ion battery having three cells.
• Have 3 USB ports.
• 1 SD card reader.
• 1 Ethernet port.
• 1 VGA-out.

Can you upgrade it? Acer thought of that before you could ask them! The netbook can be upgraded up to 1 GB of RAM and 120 GB HHD. The HDD can only be upgraded to a non-SSD one.

The keyboard

This is where Aspire One leads the other netbooks. The keyboard has a perfect size but is not too flashy. It is made of plastic and has a comfortable touch with zero acclimatization periods. The decently sized right shift button and the slightly higher placement of the spacebar over the chassis gives the keyboard a higher ranking compared to the players in the same category. However, a serious impediment to the popularity of the netbook can be the trackpad which is not really up to the mark. The mouse buttons are placed on the right and the left of the pad and thus takes away the natural feel which generally comes with the buttons placed directly beneath the pad! Well the buttons are also undersized and the thinness along with the flush of the buttons sometimes makes them hard to press!

Sounds bad but looks good

Can’t really afford to miss out on this! The worst thing that you can find in ‘The One’ is its speakers. With its redeemable quality, the sound of a rusted blade cutting through an aluminum sheet can be more soothing for your ears! It may sound a little harsh but it is true-it really fails on a music test with the high quality authentic music (not one of those peer-to-peer transfer qualities)! But you can always enjoy with additional speakers plugged in! Sorry folks, it lacks a drive and you really can’t play your favorite DVD! Just to pine up the visibility, you can love that because of the brightness and the scalability of the screen.

The Linux playground

Take it! The Aspire One plays best with Linux because it can be fully customized and it uses one of the customized versions of Linux know as Linpus Linux Lite. It takes only 13 seconds to take you to the desktop. The desktop has four sections which are work, play, connect and files! The miniature computer is preloaded with complete OpenOffice suite.

Performance

With minimum usage of resources, it can last for 2 hours and 40 minutes which is not really appealing. It is meant for portability and not for long lasting performance.

Conclusion

The Acer kid – the Aspire One cannot be called a perfect one. In spite of glitches, the mini Acer, ‘The One’ has the price as its biggest advantage and is one of the most attractive netbooks that I have ever seen. You can count on the features!

If you want to know more about the Aspire One, then have a look at another review!