I’ve just returned from the UK launch of the Aspire One, helpfully held within spitting distance of the PC Pro offices, where Acer announced that its new low-cost notebook will be hitting shelves on July the 10th.
The first model will cost just £199, including VAT - placing it in direct competition with the Eee PC. However, direct competition with the Eee PC is a very crowded place to be right now, and Acer has taken its time to get there.
Luckily, from what I saw, it trumps most others on features. The 8.9in screen displays 1,024 by 600 pixels, giving plenty more real estate than the Eee’s 800 by 480, and the sub-£200 One also doubles its 4GB of internal storage.
Just like the Eee, the notebook runs a modified version of Linux with a bespoke front-end. Rather than the Eee’s many-tabbed menu, though, the One has just one, which handily displays the number of emails and IMs received.
Playing with the software yielded few surprises; a version of Open Office handles office tasks, just as with the Eee. The unusual supplied email client did stand out; gathering up to 6 accounts (webmail or otherwise) into one inbox. Unfortunately, I only got five minutes with the device, so was unable to see if this is a useful or a confusing option.
Another bizarre feature is the SD expansion slot – any cards can be treated as an add-on to the internal hard disk, with both showing up in file manager as one drive. It seems like this could pave the way to oodles of lost files and confusion, but Acer claim to have developed some tools to make it all straightforward. Again, we’ll let you know if this is true once we get a longer play with the device.
Battery life is a claimed 3 hours, perhaps a tad optimistic: a quick glimpse of the battery showed it to be just 2,220mAh. Just in case, a larger model will be available that will more than double this to 7 hours, claims Acer.
Windows XP versions are also on the way, but will have a negative impact on battery life as well as price. An Acer spokesperson admitted that, “to be honest, we’d prefer not to sell XP”, begging the question; why are they?
Of course, that figure is helped in no small part by Intel’s new Atom processor, which may not be the fastest chip we’ve seen in recent months, but is very frugal with power. The first versions will include the N270 1.6GHz chip, similar to the N230 we recently reviewed in the Tranquil T2e Atom PC.
Aside from all this, the One is very impressive; a well designed chassis, sub 1kg weight and boot up and shut down times that only slightly overrun the claimed figures of 15 seconds and 5 seconds respectively. Acer may have taken its time attempting to catch up in this rapidly emerging market, but it’s done it properly from what I’ve seen.
Tags: acer, aspire, Atom, intel, netbook, one
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June 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“Another bizarre feature is the SD expansion slot – any cards can be treated as an add-on to the internal hard disk, with both showing up in file manager as one drive.”
Well, as it runs Linux this shouldn’t be a surprise.
This is standard behaviour for Linux.
All files come under ‘/’ and it’s sub-folders (as opposed to different drives in Windows).
If you have used Linux then you will see this really isn’t anything complex.
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
It’s normal for storage to live under /dev/sda or similar in the filing system, but not for two devices to be presented as a single concatenated volume in the graphical file manager.
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I think Rowan was talking about the mount point in the filesystem. Yes, the drive lives at /dev/sdxxx, but you don’t actually use it from there. You can mount to to /mnt/disk1, or even /usr/local/….. or /home, etc. ..
In that case, yes, all the drives would appear to be “one big concatenated volume”
June 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
>> …/dev/sdxxx…
And with unionfs/aufs you can actually get the files on different harware devices to appear together as the very same overlapping directory structure. This means you can basically save anything you want on anything and then they can be mounted so that they overlap and you have everything you want in the same place organized.
PuppyLinux uses this “trick” to allow you to add things to the end of writable multisession DVDs and it all appears together when you boot up the liveDVD. There is no need to remaster the distro with your data and reburn onto a new DVD whenever you want to add data or just change things around.
Already Monopolysoft cannot keep up with Linux advances. As the rest of the industry catches on and realizes that they don’t have to beg Monopolysoft to get 20% of their wishes implemented in 500% of the time but can just do it all themselves with the free help and other advances of the community, Monopolysoft will plummet dramatically.
More importantly, those of us that today value free software will finally be able to share in that experience everywhere we go with everyone else.
June 4th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Can’t leave without mentioning the most important thing: you and me.
Many people currently are not contributing to Linux but have many skills and will be able to contribute in the future significantly — once they realize what is out there and that they’d rather work for their gain instead of Bill Gates’. Ideas, artwork, little changes here and there, all can become part of what others download and use (or you can keep the modifications to yourself). On Linux, it’s basically all open source..
..and much of it is actually protected with great licenses like the GPL so that others don’t take your contributions, add their own spin, and close things off to make lots of money while you watch on the sidelines. If they add special sauce and distribute, you are entitled to their recipes, too. We all have the opportunity to make our money and contributions rather than be dominated by a few like Monopolisoft.
Use free software to entertain and share with friends or to help market your talents. Use the free ($0) software in your business. ETC. ETC.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Recently my gf bought the basic 8Gb NAND storage model for £249.99 from PC World.
Here’s my impression.
1. Nice build-quality;
2. Awesome screen;
3. Keyboard a bit flexy;
4. Battery life about 2.5 hours - probably a tad more after proper conditioning;
5. Linpus Linux naff IMHO. Few apps and the usual hassle installing more/updating etc. Linux geeks should be okay though…provided they can connect to the update server (we couldn’t);
6. This model will run Win XP Pro SP2 fine (we tried it). Drivers from Acer Thai site;
7. Webcam rubbish (only 0.3 megapixels);
8. Under Linpus Linux neither the internal nor an external mic will record sound to webcam app (apparently mics only work with Skype and Messaging services). An external mic works okay with XP Pro. But sound quality is awful. The internal mic still produces only a hissing noise. Even in the highest quality setting webcam video was dead jerky. So altogether webcam seems pretty useless – unless you like making duff silent vid clips;
9. Connected effortlessly to local WLAN;
10. Easy to restore damaged installations. Will boot from a USB stick. Instructions included;
11. Documentation sparse;
12. Acer UK support virtually non-existent at the mo. No one there had ‘even seen an Aspire One yet’. So they couldn’t help. We were invited to call a premium rate number next day for more info. Although the hardware is guaranteed for a year, the software is not, apparently, guaranteed at all. Hence you has to pay plenty for help with it;
13. Sapphire Blue colour looks mighty cool;
On the whole quite a quaint little unit and just about acceptable - to some perhaps - for the originally intended launch price of £199. But, given the above, way OTT at £250. So - back to the shop it went, and she’s now saving for an Asus eeePc 901. A wise move here methinks.
However, when this Aspire One becomes more available in the marketplace I guess the price will fall to a level that could make it a good buy for those just wanting rudimentary facilities in a neat package, and who can live with the shortcomings described. Cos let’s be honest…
The competition is bags more expensive and there’s no doubt: the ‘One’ has a definite ‘charm’ that’s impossible to explain.
July 20th, 2008 at 4:48 am
there olny £219.99 at http://www.simplyacer.com/Products/cat/ASPIRE+ONE
if you pre order i think there gr8 im gonna get one soon as there hear.