Product Reviews

Ever since Asus launched the Eee PC 701 last year, manufacturers have gone cheap ultraportable crazy. Asus is now on its third incarnation of the Eee PC (reviewed overleaf) but the big news is Taiwanese giant Acer's assault on the bargain laptop market: the Aspire one. Acer calls it a 'netbook', designed for accessing the Internet rather than creating and editing documents and playing media. Another way to put this is that you can't expect it to do everything a 'proper' laptop can - like run Windows Vista. However, it turns out to be capable of more than you might expect.

The Aspire one is available in five editions from £235 including VAT, comparable to the original and less ambitious Eee PC. We tested the base model, which has 8GB of flash memory in place of a hard disk, 512MB RAM, and a Linux operating system. You can also buy this version with an 80GB hard disk for £244, and add a full 1GB RAM for £264. The unusual blue finish is optional.

The 80GB hard disk seems almost an excessive amount of storage for the Linux version, with its compact operating system. It's necessary if you want to run Windows XP, though. An Aspire one with 512MB RAM, 80GB of storage and XP Home costs £297, and an upgrade to 1GB RAM is a further £20. All versions come with WiFi built in, and you'll be able to order an internal 3G modem to surf the Internet through a mobile phone network account at broadband speeds. We covered the various tariffs available last month (search for 198462 at www.computerbuyer.co.uk).

Perfectly formed

First impressions were excellent. This is a tiny laptop that weighs less than a kilo, and the sleek design makes it look far more expensive than it is. Acer has managed to squeeze a lot in. The left side has a VGA output for an external monitor, plus network and USB 2 ports and a storage expansion slot for SDHC cards, the same kind used in digital cameras. On the right are two more USB 2 ports, headphone and microphone sockets, and a card reader for SDHC, MMC, Memory Stick Pro and xD.

The 8.9 inch screen, matching the latest Eee PC, shows 1024x600 pixels, wide enough for most web pages. The image is bright, with vibrant colours, if slightly grainy. The keyboard is also excellent. The laptop has a broader base than the Eee PC 901, so its keys are significantly wider, and the layout is standard, with the tilde key to the left of the number 1. The Asus has the number 1 at the far left edge of the keyboard, which is confusing.

The keyboard is much more comfortable to use than the Eee PC 901's. The keys don't flex as you type, and have a surprising amount of travel and feedback considering how slim the base is.

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We weren't so sure about the touchpad. It's accurate, but very small, making it hard to select smaller icons unless your fingers are tiny. The touchpad buttons are also odd. Instead of being positioned below the touchpad, they're split up, one on either side. This means you have to use one hand to left-click and the other to right-click.

Small is beautiful

Like the Eee PC 901, the Aspire one uses a processor from Intel's new Atom range, which draws only 1.5 to 2.5 watts of power. The Aspire one has the 1.6GHz single core version, and 512MB of RAM. We tested the Linux model, so we couldn't run our Windows benchmarks, but the Aspire one certainly feels quick enough. It took 22 seconds to boot up, and applications took moments to start.

Linux isn't a consumer-oriented operating system like Windows, and can be tricky to get to grips with, so Acer, like Asus, have gone for a simplified interface. This groups all the pre-installed applications into categories. Connect has the Firefox web browser, an email client and an instant messaging program that supports MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk and AOL accounts, as well as Skype Internet telephony. Work has OpenOffice.org, which includes Microsoft Office-compatible word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications plus organiser and contacts manager.

The Fun section gives you a media player, a photo management program and basic image editor, and a selection of games. Finally, Files contains file management applications for all your media and documents. While the 8GB Aspire one only has around 4GB of free space (the equivalent of a hard disk, remember, not RAM), it's easy to add extra storage using the SDHC slot. You can buy an 8GB card for around £30, and this memory is integrated seamlessly into the internal storage.

The interface may be simplified, but it's more flexible than the Eee PC's. There's a right-click menu for fast access to all the programs as well as system settings. You can also select the Linux terminal from the menu - it's not hidden away, as on the Eee PC. If you're an experienced Linux user or want to learn about the more advanced functions, it's good to have the option of using the command line to get into the operating system.

Too much, too soon?

Unfortunately, the operating system on our review model proved buggy. It would sometimes freeze for a few seconds, and icons for various programs would refuse to work the second time they were clicked. We also had terrible trouble with networking. Our unit recognised that it had wired and wireless network adaptors, but refused to connect. This meant we were unable to test web browsing performance, but tests using YouTube files showed it was capable of playing video smoothly.

One other disappointment was that, despite its low-power processor, the Aspire one's battery life was poor. It only lasted two and a half hours in our light use test - worse than many full size laptops - compared to the Eee PC's eight hours.

In several ways this is a superior laptop to the Eee PC 901, not least its better looks and far nicer keyboard. However, we can't recommend it. Even if the bugs are sorted out, that still leaves the issue of battery life. The XP version, with its high-capacity battery, should be more satisfactory, though we can't confirm that until we test it.