Just recently we have experienced minibooks or netbooks as they are also called really come of age. One major reason for this evolution is the Acer Aspire One. Like all of these units it brings the benefit of being compact, but is also packed with most of the features that a regular laptop would bring you. Astonishingly the power and capacity of the Acer Aspire One is about equal to the power and capacity of high-end laptops from a couple of years back.

A netbook is not a laptop

Acer Aspire One

However, what should be clear is that netbooks are not intended to be able to do everything that their big brothers, the regular laptops, can do. Also they won’t be able to perform similar tasks with the same flexibility or speed. This trade-off seems very minor tough if you think of the portability you will gain with a minibook. You will for sure not be disappointed if you just want to perform the regular tasks of laptop users which are surfing the web, writing memos or updating spreadsheets.

Processor and RAM

Those tasks can be performed with the Acer Aspire One in a very robust way because of Intel’s 1.6Ghz Atom processor. It is not the same powerhouse of the company’s Dual-Core monsters as found in the full-scale machines, but still delivers enough speed to perform all the tasks you will usually want to do.

You will have plenty of RAM in order to run word processing software without having to get frustrated. You can easily use Open Office Writer, which is pre-installed on the netbook, and edit 600-page documents without any problem with 512MB. There are even some configurations that have 1GB RAM pre-installed. In case you want to fire up a calculation spreadsheet from this set of productivity tools you will only notice a slightly prolonged loading time than on a standard notebook.

Storage options for netbooks

On the netbooks you will usually also find plenty of storage space for all the documents you want to work on. The 8GB SSD hard drive is quite tiny in comparison to regular laptops, but it will still take a long time to fill up the built in storage space with documents that are usually only a few dozen kilobytes big.

If you reach that limit thee is still a slot for a SD card with which you can solve your problem easily. There are many high capacity SD cards available at very reasonable prices so inserting an extra 16GB is an easy and convenient task. You can simply move your larger files there and are ready again in just a couple of minutes.

There is even another SD slot that you can format in a way to look like an internal hard drive space – even less problems for you. Another thing you can do if you know you will need more space is to acquire the Aspire One with 160GB standard hard drive which is only a little bit more expensive.

Choose between Linux and Windows

This system comes pre-loaded with Linux Lite. Don’t be afraid of that – it is really easy to learn and use. If you think you really can’t get used to any other system than Windows you can simply install Windows XP and use either Open Offe or Microsoft Office on your netbook.

There are some netbooks with which you will have problems watching YouTube videos as they are not running fast enough, but that is not an issue for the Aspire One. Connectivity is no problem because of the wireless 802.11g support. You can use Firefox just like on a normal laptop and go to every website you like to.

Buy a netbook for the right reasons

Again, buying the Acer Aspire One, don’t expect to buy a high-end laptop model – it is not. It’s a netbook which lacks some features of the regular laptops, but has many benefits too. If you have the right expectations you will be amazed by how a 2 lbs and 9.8” x 6.7” x 1.14” model provides you with lightweight and small platform for general computing that works in an excellent way.

Don’t forget to check out our second review of the Acer Aspire One!