Acer Aspire One - £199inc eee 901 killer

[dangel]

Atom based
8.9" 1024x600 LED backlit
512mb Linux version 8GB SSD = 199ukp INC VAT(!)
1gb WinXp 80GB HD = 299ukp (inc)
TWO SD slots (one acts as fixed drive!)
Battery life - six hours odd on six cell (extra) and 3 on a 3 cell (standard)
802.11g
945GSE chipset
3 X USB 2.0 ports
3.5mm audio sockets
second miniPCI slot on the motherboard
spare DDR2 memory slot (two in total in other words)
0.3-megapixel CrystalEye webcam
Linpus Linux Lite with a heavily customised UI
The three-cell SSD Acer Aspire One measures 249 x 170 x 29mm and weighs 995g
The six-cell HDD model measures 249 x 195 x 36 and weighs 1.26kg
Both models will initially be available in blue and white colour options, with pink and brown shades added later.
On sale from 10 July in UK




Mmmm quite possibly want BOOM goes the eee line in my eyes.
Blue for me based on the pics.

[staffsMike]

Certainly a better price than the wind or Eee, I'm thinking about an XP one myself. I'm waiting on the dell though.

[dangel]

Looks like waiting till early July is the smart thing to do with so many launches on the way. Dell looks nice though:

[dangel]

Also: from what I can tell the Page Up and Page Down keys are there without a key modifier which is excellent - the eee is the opposite and I find it a little annoying.

[jimbouk]

Looks like not everyone has gone down the 'bigger and more expensive is better' route then, excellent

[MSIC]

Wow. Now this i really like.
I'm glad that some manufacturers are realising that price is one of the major factors involved, and at under £15 to slap in another 1 Gig of RAM, and 8 Gig of SD at £18 and falling all the time, this could be one very cheap but useful machine.
To quote 'TV Quick' about the first episode of Knowing Me, Knowing You, "Lovely Stuff". (I think anyway, been a while...)

[dangel]

Hopefully you can pick the six-cell up later as an upgrade - not interested in a mechanical drive myself and storage isn't an issue on my 4G eee (so 8 would be fine!).

[FifthFreedom]

Euch...

As much as I love the mini notebook idea, none of them are there for me spec wise yet...

For example things this and the eee are missing:

Bluetooth - No phone or keyboard/mouse connectivity without a dongle is just dumb, and it's so easily fixed
a 1.3 MP WebCam - Without this a webcam is just a gimmick
A battery thats good - 3 hours is taking the piss, so you have an ultra portable laptop but have to stay within a meter of a plug to be useful.
The Atom - Thought his isn't mentioned here, the latest eee model still goes without
Built in 3g - Ok so it's not necessary for everyone but it would be a nice option wouldn't it? The stupid plug in USB variety are completely pointless as they aren't portable!!!

When these issues are fixed I will buy an Ultra-Portable. Untill then, no chance.

Note: £600 is my upper price limit for a dual core atom with 2 gig ram and 32Gb Solid State

I'm thinking mid-2009 maybe?

[EndlessWaves]

I'm thinking mid-2009 maybe?

The eee 901 out in a couple of months should have almost all of that. The 900 already has a 1.3MP webcam and the 901 will switch to atom which should improve battery life. The 901 is also said to include bluetooth support.

I find having the home/end keys as fn + arrow keys quite nice actually.

The acer is a nice price, I just hope the quality is up to eee standards at least and not as bad as acer's bigger laptops. Apart from the parade of new eees I'm looking forward to the dell and hopefully a sensible revision of the mininote.

[Flibb]

If that price is right I will probably get one, looks like what I wanted from an eee.

Would probably keep it penguine, but would the cheap one work with XP?

[Thorsson]

No coz the OS takes up too much space.

[staffsMike]

I thought you could get a cut down version of XP that worked on the 4GB eee's. Might be mistaken though.

[Thorsson]

You might be right, but surely everybody would want one?

[TAKTAK]

I thought you could get a cut down version of XP that worked on the 4GB eee's. Might be mistaken though.

a full fat version of media centre 2005 works fine on a eee 4gb (i CBA to nlite it )

[Dreaming]

computex 2009:

EEE / Aspire touchscreen?

Seeing as apparently the cost increase is 'fairly' small (something like £15 vs a non touch screen I read somewhere) I don't see why not, it would make something good into something pretty amazing. Really when I take notes in lectures I simply must draw doodles and all sorts, a touchpad doesn't allow me to do this

What is the compelling reason for windows over linux? I have a windows mobile phone so I'm stuffed but starting to realise that I want to be a bit more 'free' as everything I have pretty much depends on windows . I don't mind Windows, just annoying proprietry outlook sync that only works with windows and so on (although, extremely useful!).

Might be tempted to buy one anyway, got a summer coming up with nothing to do so a project might be fun.

[arthurleung]

computex 2009:

EEE / Aspire touchscreen?

Seeing as apparently the cost increase is 'fairly' small (something like £15 vs a non touch screen I read somewhere) I don't see why not, it would make something good into something pretty amazing. Really when I take notes in lectures I simply must draw doodles and all sorts, a touchpad doesn't allow me to do this

What is the compelling reason for windows over linux? I have a windows mobile phone so I'm stuffed but starting to realise that I want to be a bit more 'free' as everything I have pretty much depends on windows . I don't mind Windows, just annoying proprietry outlook sync that only works with windows and so on (although, extremely useful!).

Might be tempted to buy one anyway, got a summer coming up with nothing to do so a project might be fun.

You certainly haven't mastered the skill of drawing nice and quick in MS Word
TBH if you want to take notes that way you might as well go for a tablet AT LEAST 12".

Personally I don't think there is any advantage using touchscreen over paper consider you still need to write on it. Not to mention neither the Eee or Aspire One have rotatable screen which make Draw&Type very stressful.