Acer Aspire One A150L

There's one very good reason why Acer is selling more laptops in Europe than any other company: the Acer Aspire One. It took Asus' vision of a bargain notebook to surf the web, and concentrated on getting all the basics absolutely right.

The first basic is the keyboard. It's cramped due to the chassis' width, but we found it possible to touch-type with relative ease.

The other basic is the screen. While Asus' Eee PCs' screens tend to suffer from graininess, the Aspire One's is sharp and bright - a real pleasure to use. And this despite its 8.9in diagonal.

We were also impressed by the build quality. It may not be able to match the very best here for ruggedness - the HP Mini-Note in particular - but it's solid and the screen feels well protected. Our only mild criticisms are of the tinny speakers and oddly positioned mouse buttons on either side of the trackpad.

This is a very light laptop: it weighs only 1.06kg, which puts it just behind the Toshiba and Apricot. Despite this it uses a fully fledged 120GB SATA hard disk, which is accompanied by Intel's near-ubiquitous Atom N270 processor, and 512MB of DDR2 RAM.

These helped to ensure the Aspire One felt speedy enough in use, although it takes three or four seconds to launch applications. We'd prefer more memory if it was using Windows XP, but Linpus Linux Lite had no issues.

The choice of Linux does have some disadvantages. Quite apart from losing the familiarity of Windows, it isn't as good at managing power as Microsoft's OS. We found there was always a faint hum of fans emanating from the Aspire One, while its battery life score of 2hrs 30mins under light use means you'll generally need to carry the power adapter with you on your travels.

Or you can choose from one of its optional extras and buy an extended battery. We found a six-cell, 6,600mAh unit on sale for £43 exc VAT, which should take life to five hours-plus.

There's no denying this is a basic machine, but as a second system to sling into a bag when all you need is internet access it's a great value choice.

Author: Tim Danton