Acer Aspire one: An In-Depth Look
June 12th, 2008 by Jeffrey L. Wilson
Acer sure moves fast. This morning, a little over a week after the company announced its first entry into the mini-notebook space, the Acer Aspire one (Linux version, full review here) arrived in our offices to much glee. We couldn’t wait to test Acer’s answer to the Eee PC, HP Mini-Note, and MSI Wind NB.
However, before we began testing, we talked to our Acer rep who informed us that ours is a pre-production model that has a handful of known bugs (primarily inconsistent Wi-Fi and video playback issues), which are being fixed before the system ships. We kept that in mind as we dug into the system and evaluated its potential.
Design and Aestheics
Upon getting our hands on the Acer Aspire one, one of our first thoughts is that this doesn’t look like a budget machine. Our system sports a glossy white lid on the outside (it will also be available in black and blue), and a glossy black bezel on the inside which frames the 8.9-inch, 1024 x 600-pixel resolution display Unfortunately, it was a bit of a fingerprint magnet.
What we didn’t like is that the Acer Aspire one has a gap between the bottom of the display and the base of the machine, which reminds us a little bit of the Everex Cloudbook, a mini-notebook we want to forget. Whether or not you like a gap between your screen and your notebook body is totally subjective so we won’t hold that against the Aspire one. Overall, it’s a nice look and one that we’d gladly whip out at a coffee shop without fear of pointing and giggling.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The 2.2-pound Acer Aspire One features an 89-percent keyboard, which is not as large as layout on the HP Mini-Note or Windbook NB but is big enough for comfortable touch typing. It’s certainly bigger than the Asus Eee PC 900/901. The keys were quite responsive and offered very nice tactile feedback. We plan to put the Aspire one through our touch typing test in the days ahead to see how it compares to its competitors.
We’re not big fans of the small touchpad or the mouse buttons that flank it. HP uses the same “buttons on the side” layout on its Mini-Note and, in both cases, we find it awkward. The buttons also feel cheaper than the Mini-Note’s. However, the positive side of a smaller touchpad is that the system itself can be more compact, as less room is used for the wrist rest.
Ports and Dual Card Readers
The perimeter of the 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.1-inch Aspire one serves up the following ports: three USB 2.0, a Kensington lock, VGA, Ethernet, and headphone and mic jacks. One particularly useful aspect of the machine is the inclusion of two memory card slots: one dedicated SD, and another 5-in-1.
“Why include two card readers,” you ask. Inserting a card into the stand-alone SD slot expands the internal storage. When we popped in a 4GB SD card, it was added to the on-board 8GB of flash for a total of 12GB. The system’s file manager actually adds the additional memory to the total of the internal hard drive so the whole thing looks like one large disk. We had one freezing incident when trying to view photos that were on the 4GB card before we inserted it, but we chalk that up to our system’s preproduction status.
This second expansion slot is Acer’s way of accommodating upgraders without encouraging them to monkey with the system’s internal components. This is a good thing, because since the RAM and SSD are soldered into place (according to our friend Brad Linder’s Aspire one dissection) making upgrades to either is pretty much impossible.
The Linpus Linux Lite Operating System
When the Acer Aspire one hits the market in July, mini-notebookers will be able to purchase the machine with either a Linux or Windows operating system (priced at $379 and $399, respectively). Our model features the Linpus Linux Lite OS, which takes a page from the Asus Eee PC’s Xandros Linus OS by organizing applications into distinct sections: Connect, Work, Fun, and Files.
Under the Connect heading, you’ll find Firefox 2.014, an instant messaging client that’s compatible with AIM, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger, Aspire one Mail, an RSS reader, Skype, and links to Wikipedia, Google Maps, and Hotmail. Work contains the OpenOffice suite, Contacts, Calculator, Notes, and Calendar. Fun houses the Media Master multimedia player, Photo Master picture manager, the KolourPaint paint program, a webcam, and a slew of causal games. The Files section is home to the My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, My Downloads, and My Files folders.
The look of the interface is very simple and clean; our only gripe (and it’s a minor one) is that we had to click an arrow to display all programs in a section, as only three are displayed by default.
Located above these areas is a rather cool search box that doubles both as a desktop search tool and a traditional search engine. We decided to test it by typing in “NY Yankees” and clicking the search icon. Seconds later Firefox launched showing Yahoo search results for the query.
After we loaded the machine with multimedia files, we typed in “Sister”, changed the search from “Internet” to “Desktop”, and clicked the search icon. Instead of instantly displaying the results, the Acer Aspire One opened another search box, which was populated with the term we keyed in. Clicking Find initiated the search to find The Noistette’s “Sister Rosetta” MP3. It seemed like an unneeded extra step, but it worked well.
Next Page: Multimedia, Wi-Fi, Performance, Hands-on Video, and Gallery >>
Related Content
Related Deals
- Lenovo S10-1211 Intel Atom 1.6GHz 10.2in Miniature Laptop (2.8lbs) Starting At $409.99 at Circuit City
- Dell Inspiron 1721 AMD Dual-Core 2.9GHz 17in Laptop (2GB/160GB) $699 Free 2 Day Ship at Dell Home
- Dell Inspiron 13 Core 2 Duo T5750 2.0GHz 13.3 inch Laptop (3GB/250GB) $699 at Dell Home
June 12th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
The RAM cannot be changed????
damn!
June 13th, 2008 at 8:37 am
what about heat? does it heat up?
June 13th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Argh. How can I believe anything written here? It’s not by Joanna Stern! What have you done to her?! The rest of you go play with the bigger notebooks and cellphones. We want Joanna!
June 13th, 2008 at 11:58 am
That six-cell battery, how will it attach? Will it raise the back like the hp Mini Note? And you left out the capacity of the default battery it ships with. Plus, how long it the runtime with it?
Will there be 512MB RAM in the low-end XP version? That’s not happy!!
June 14th, 2008 at 5:00 am
From the views, the interface feels clumsy and childish. Too much colorful and you need to scroll each “tab” to get its entire content. I like more the Asus Eee PC interface. with “real” tabs.
June 14th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I’d like to know how much of that 8Gb SSD did the OS occupy. The Eee Xandros is 2.35Gb. Pupeee is 1/10 of that. Soldered-in SSD and RAM, same camera, EasyMode interface, buggy WiFi, and audio, looks like a 700 series competitor, NOT a 900 series competitor. In that respeect, the Acer One is a better value. Without a fan, I hope the glaring heat issues of the HP 2133 are not duplicated here. What good is a laptop that is too hot for one’s lap? for $1 put a friggin fan in it.
June 15th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
MSI Wind is a much better choice!
June 16th, 2008 at 11:47 am
since this linux version will be the first to hit the market how hard would xp be to installed on it
June 17th, 2008 at 1:51 am
How about USB slots? Is it possible to boot the device from USB first? (I was thinking of other Linux flavours, Linux LiveUSB such as Puppy Linux or Slax).
June 17th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
With the mouse buttons on either side of the touchpad middle clicking in linux is going to be a proverbial pain in the posterior. That for me may well be sufficient reason to go for another option.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
On the plus side, it is great that they didn’t undersize the right shift key on the keyboard. For touchtypists, this will be a great benefit. I can’t count how many times I have hit the up-arrow key on my Eee PC 900 because of the keyboard configuration. The keyboard on the MSI Wind and newer Eee models like the 901 and 1000 series appear to have the same keyboard configuration with an extremely undersized right shift key.
On the down side, the 2200 maH battery dissappoints. My Eee PC 900 has a 5800 maH battery and I can’t get even 3 hours out of it although that is probably due to the old Celeron 900 MHz CPU. I may sell my 900 and get the Aspire One with the 6 cell battery and an extra 512 Megs of RAM and then put UBUNTU or UBUNTU Netbook remix on it. On the other hand. the MSI Wind looks promising with a nice 10 inch screen though and a comparible price.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
i am using one right now and its windows XP performance is terrible. I think the Atom chip doesn’t cut it so I have to go back and use Linpus which is acceptable.
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:58 am
Hey everyone, don’t know if anyone checks back, but just thought I’d answer some of your questions, and you can check out some videos I’ve posted.
there is 512 ram soldered so that cant be changed,but there is another slot (a bit hard to get to) that can be used to add RAM up to 1.5gb total.
it does not heat up. only slightly warm
i’ve seen pictures of the 6cell, it doesnt seem to raise up the machine. the 3cell runs for about 2-2.5hrs. not very impressive..
i think xp version comes with 1gb ram.
the interface is actually very convenient and ive grown to like it, especially after Ive added icons of my favorite programs onto the desktop.
the OS occupies about 3.4gigs,with 1gig allocated for swap. the SSD is not soldered on
XP would not work very well on the SSD but there are ways to make it work “better”
3 USB slots. yes boot from USB
middle clicking? scrolling works, slide your finger down the right side, or along the bottom.
ubuntu for the most part works, its still early so the kinks will probably get ironed out. How much for the 900? I’m interested…
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I have used my Aspire One for almost a day. I like the feel. I also like the mouse pad and the buttons on the side. I have no problem with wifi. I find Lisa remarks (23 July at 5:58 am) very accurate.
I think the OS modifications for the Acer Aspire One was rushed to market too quickly. I am receiving a lot of updates. I can not use the supplied Mozilla browser or the Media Master application to view MPEG-4 video. The OS is linux but there is no documentation about the Linpus Lite Linux anywhere on the web or with the Acer Aspire One.
July 24th, 2008 at 2:42 am
A few days ago (July 21), I bought this Aspire One in Maastricht (The Netherlands).
Some remarks:
-The supplied battery was not 22000 mAH but 24000 mAH
-Linpus is a good (Acer) branch of fedora 8 for users migrating from Windows. Experienced linux users can easily modify the system (the console is reachable via the menu of “my documents”). I’ve installed latex with all needed editors (rpm downloaded from rpm.pbone.net - fedora 8 versions) and it is working fine. ALT-F2 gives a “RUN COMMAND” console. From there I start Texmaker or Kile. There is no need to change the standard graphical environment.
-The Dutch traduction of Linpus is not without a lot of mistakes. I hope updates will correct this.
-The software is not totally stable. There are still some minor problems (audio problems in some situations)
-The mouse pad has a really good mouse scroll function when touched in the most right area.
-I’ve paid 299 euro, a good deal for such a well build beauty.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
hi - am looking for a small notebook that my daughter (going into 7th grade) can use in school (therefore small and light good), but not too small that she has difficulty typing. she has dyslexia and dysgraphia (disorder affecting her handwriting) - she is very bright - but has trouble physically writing her thoughts down. doyou think this would be a the Acer Aspire would be a good choice for her (think use for this computer would mostly be wordprocessing (word) - would look to get the XP version w/the 6 cell battery if possible, comments and thoughts are much appreciated
July 24th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I am into my second day of playing with my Acer Aspire One and I found two very annoying problems.
One is the keyboard setting changes to UK and I want US. I am always changing the keyboard setting back to US. I do not see a pattern for the random change back to the UK keyboard. I have every setup setting option for English keyboard not the English/European keyboard.
The other is the Wi-Fi does not work after awaking from sleep mode. The Wi-Fi icon at the bottom of the screen indicates that I am connected to the correct network but I can not connect to the internet. To surf the web after sleep, I need to shut down and power-on again.
July 24th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I have a similar problem: I want the US keyboard and the default setting is NL. I have to switch sometimes back to US when opening a new application. I am examining the linux config map /etc in an attempt to find the responsible config file. Until now without result. To be continued in time when the right config file is found. Maybe in the meantime an update will fix it.
July 25th, 2008 at 5:34 am
-An easy way to toggle between the keyboard layouts is ALT-SHIFT
-I changed the keyboard layout settings in the config file /etc/X11/xorg.conf. I’m sure I saved the changes. After reboot, I was surprised to see that the initial file was restored. I don’t know the responsible script that is fixing that..
July 25th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Is it possible to erase linux and install WinXP on this mashine?
July 26th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
RE: Artur
Yes, in fact, I just finished installing XP Pro with SP3 RTM 5 minutes ago on the Linux version. Booted off the XP Pro CD, erased all partitions (it comes with two partitions), and created one partition with the full 8 GB on it. I then proceeded to install XP (I used an IDE to USB adapter) which took about 2 hours (although the setup said 39 minutes) but it was worth the wait. Drivers are easy to install, works smooth, no more Wifi problems, no more sleep issues, and the boot up time is similar to Linux.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:07 am
What about th epower adaptor that comes with it? CAn it handle both 110VAC and 220VA, in both 50 and 60hz? It would be ashame if they did not provide a universal adaptor with this machine…
July 28th, 2008 at 5:14 am
# Patrick. According to acers specs, the psu is universal
what i would like to know is: the 150l version, does this version come with 3 or 6 cell battery, i have been looking all over, to no avail.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:19 am
@Thomas
@David - It’s not random, but defaulting on a per window(/application?) basis.
I’ve got the keymap changing too but for me it’s defaulting to UK and I want US.
In my case I solved the problem by editing /usr/bin/xkb_plugin_set_xorg.sh and swapping ‘GB’ and ‘US’ in the relevant stanza, so that US now becomes the default keymap. Please send money.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Mathew, I think you are right. It seems to be the /usr/bin/xkb_plugin_set_xorg.sh script that is responsible for messing up the settings in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. For some reason Acer decided that language and keyboard layout are linked in all cases. Maybe someone should pay their software designers a voyage to Europe….
So this should solve your problem too Thomas, I havve a Belgian layout keyboard and want to use my system in English only. If someone wants to test a different keyboard layout, it is easy to change it starting from the console. The command is of course “setxkbmap -layout be” (or whatever countrry code you need) and the change is instant, but limited to that session or a new change.
I absolutely love this machine. Yes, it is based on Fedora and to get more access I found this veery useful:
http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/aspire-one-apps.aspx
Just follow these instructions, you really do need this type of access. And for whom all of this is reelatively new, it can be useful to remember the need to run the filemanager in root mode. Just start it by using Alt+F2, then in the popup enter “sudo Thunar”. A red bar on top warns you that you are in root-mode; so thee risk of doing some ddamage is limited.
Marc
July 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Thanks to Marc’s excellent advice I found how to get rid of the annoying changing of keyboard layout. In root mode:
1. Edit /usr/bin/xkb_plugin_set_xorg.sh script: comment out the last line with //
2. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf . Look at section “Input device”, option Xkblayout. Change “uk, us” (or whatever you have) to “us”
3. Reboot … problem solved!
July 29th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
In my case /etc/sysconfig/i18n reads LANG=”…”, the script xkb_plugin_xorg.sh however does a ‘grep LANGUAGE’ –> this can not work.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I am a college student, and I need something that is portable, light, somewhat fast and that I can type and save papers on. I would like to have some music and pictures on there as well. Not a lot but some. Would this computer be the right choice for me? Do any college students have this machine? Thanks!
July 30th, 2008 at 5:07 am
What kind of audio problems there are? Many people has told that there are few but nobody tells what kind of problems they are.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:05 am
Meghan - these small ultralight notebooks are great for surfing, a few minor writings and some music. But they can’t replace the convenience and utility of a regular laptop with a dvd drive, full keyboard, and substantial storage space. For a main machine you need to look at something with at least 12″ of screen. It will be a bit heavier, but well worth the lower frustration/strain factor of looking at the screen for 12 hours trying to get that paper finished.
I have an EEE pc 701 with a 7″ screen and a small keyboard. I love it for travelling and playing around surfing, but you wouldn’t want to produce a 50 page paper and then make significant edits. It could be done, but it wouldn’t be fun.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I got an A1 xp w/120GB HD machine yesterday, 7/31 in Taiwan, about NT 15000, US$500 (tradeshow discount). It has the 6-cell battery which makes it heavier but more stable on table.
Amazing battery life right out of box (80% charge and ran like 5 hours while I installed a few apps and tried hooking up to WiFi at home, cafes and stores). And stayed cool all this time. Even the air out of the vent feels much cooler than usual. Don’t have a software measuring temp but my hands/laps give it a A+. 6 cell definitely adds more weight, and making it a little bit off balanced while holding in 1 hand. The eee and WIND 10″ feels a little bit better balanced (they are thinner and wider), but keyboard is definitely no worse than eee 1000H, and better than MSI WIND (subjective).
As a side note, eee1000H and MSI 10″ (with xP & 80GB HD) are selling for $US 100 more. I had all 3 next to each other and decided on the A1. So it’s that good. I also tested a few of the 12″ with the new Centrino platform (Toshiba, SONY, Lenovo), and I like these mini-notes way better, because of price, xP, portability and so much longer battery life.
Not a whole lot of junkware on it (thank you ACER), but MS still got their trial Office 2007 on it. What’s kind of weird is, the IE starting homepage is not even ACER or MSN, but Yahoo? Some of the shareware on it (like MSN Messenger) are of the real old vintage (as old a when xP was first released). It also comes with 1 year of McAfee for free. Anyhow, this may be all different depending on where you are.
No xP recovery disk, but guess it’s built into the system RAM or something? Or maybe I need to burn a recovery disk? WIll know more once I hook up an external DVD burner. Hooked up a few peripherals, and xP took them without any hitches.
Performance wise it runs xP and apps about same speed as a Pentium 4 3.0MHz, minor lags running IE and downloading things, probably because I am used to PC’s with fast HD, big RAM and running Vista. But if I am in a plane or waiting at a cafe, this speed is totally acceptable. Sorry I haven’t bombard it with serious apps (Adobe, AutoCAD, etc.) but don’t think I ever will (screen too small for serious graphic work). Play videos and music OK and not noticeable lag, but speakers are kind of weak.
Not sure why but I had hard time hooking up to my WiFi router at home. I ended up making my router OPEN, then resecure it again. Did not have this problem at stores or cafes. It also stayed working after waking up from SLEEP mode.
For students or frequent fliers I definitely recommend this (this A1 goes to my college bound son) because you probably need portability more than productivity, and only this and eee 1000H (for the moment) can let you go 6-8 hours without plugging in. And productivity this A1 is still good, because the keyboard is good enough for 2 handed touch typing (bring your fingers closer), and it runs xP, so lots of software to use. Moreover, any good 12″ will set you back $ 2000+, and for that you get shoter battery life, less portability, and Vista.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:58 am
Beautiful machine but up till now, I faced two problems:
- Keyboard set back to NL (instead of EN) after opening new APPS
- Can’t get e-mail working. Other Vista-PC’s do work with same account set-up.
Any ideas? Please help.
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:13 am
i am new with linux and am trying to figure out how to change the default keyboard settings. i am able to access /etc/X11/xorg.conf but i’m having a really hard time trying to find /usr/bin/xkb_plugin_set_xorg.sh . someone please help me out. alexn86@aol.com thanks
August 4th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Hi, i’m from Suriname. A country on the north coast of South America.
after reading your review about the Acer Aspire One. it’s possible that it will be available soon in my country. but the price is yet unknown.
here in my country are people used to Ms Windows and not Linux. but linux looks promessing so i’m up for the challange. i hope that the bugs that were mention in your review will be solve soon. because the Acer Aspire One may be a solution to my computing need. i’m always on the go and this maybe the answer.
i hope that you have more update on this machine and please let me know thru my e-mail. thank you for the nice review. this is helpfull before perchasing one myself.
my regards:
rudolf…
August 5th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Hey Peter, same problem ie e-mail won’t work (horaay, thought it was just me). Won’t work on my home network, but does work at my office. Home has a D-Link DSL-502T router and I’m guessing it doesn’t like Linux. Will try the DMZ setting tonight to see if that works.
Otherwise I like it. Wouldn’t mind trying to install a ‘better’ ie more flexible OS like Ubuntu. Anyone tried? I plugged in an external CD drive and tried installing XP Pro yesterday and it stopped part way through, so don’t know what the problem was there.
Australian PC User magazine produced an improved, super-lean version o Xubuntu which I’d like to try when I figure out how! I have it as an ISO image on a pen drive, which I can tell it to boot from but doesn’t install????
August 5th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I have just bought a beautiful glossy white Acer Aspire One with Linpus Linus for 299 euro.
After using it for two days I am very happy with my choice. The laptop is beautiful, battery lasts long, keyboard is comfortable and screen is nice.
But there is one thing that I seriously don’t like: there is no Skype installed! How could the dear people at Acer forget to install the most used free international video-call program? They should seriously add Skype as an update to download automatically when performing the easy automatic system update.
The ASUS Eee PC does have Skype pre-installed, but the machine has a too small keyboard for me and I like the appearance of the (white) Acer Aspire One more.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Hey All,
I have just bought an ACER ASPIRE one and it is a great netbook.
However I seem not to be able to get the keyboard layout correct, it is fitted with an AZERTY layout while the O/S thinks it is an QWERTY one; in addtion the programs are all in DUTCH. I have tried to change the setting in the “Instellingen” (settings) applet but it does not accept the FRENCH keyboard layout.
Who can help me???
August 6th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Help!
Bought the unit at Circuit City, and it works fine. No msjor issues…however.
When I attempt to install XP (Home Edition, no SP on CD), I can boot to the external CD Drive, and start the installation. When it gets to “Starting Windows” I get a blue screen of death. Do I need to preformat/partition the 8GB drive before I run the install CD?
August 6th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
There is an other Eee-killer joining the mini notebook market: The Dell E. It has not been confirmed by Dell, but it’s supposed to launch his month. See: http://netbookusers.com
I can’t find any pre-order possibilities yet.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Is it possible to swap SSD with 2.5 inch HDD? In home.Only Acer, Me and my screw driver:-)
August 14th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Just got my acer two days ago. I’m impressed with how easy linpus linux is to use, once you’ve enabled the “advanced’ mode so you can right click on the desktop (you can find out how on youtube). I’ve installed printer drivers, connected to a wireless internet connection, played around with the general settings, etc… This machine sets up internet connections much easier than my imac does with osX. I can’t get most of the compiz effects to work (can’t figure out where to find the keyboard commands), and i’m not sure how to create a bootable usb drive. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
For the price this is one great little laptop. Sure it’s not as comprehensive as a regular laptop- try hooking up a camera or ipod to this thing- it doesn’t have a clue what to do, but for surfing the net, messaging, email, school notes, etc.. it does the trick. Not bad for $400 cdn taxes in.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Hey I am thinking of buying this….I live in Canada and there is this really cheap computer store selling these babies for 400 a piece. I was unsure if I was going to get one but then i watched a few reviews on YouTube (how could we live without YouTube :)) and Im going to buy it tomorrow.
If you guys are unsure just take at a few reviews on YouTube and you will see that all of them are positive and quite happy with this product. So great that Acer clued in that people want a CHEAPER similar thing to eee pc.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
ya its great they actually clued in. i watched some reviews on Tube and jb is quite right…..they are all happy.
August 17th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Received my Acer Aspire One with 1Gb RAM 120GB HD and WIN XP from The Nerds today $434 delivered. I works great. Installed Skype, Picasa, Firefox 3 and upgraded the Windows Media Player v9 to v11. Home Wifi works great. Battery life is every acceptable, but I’ve just ordered the larger battery from CDW. I’ll connect it to my Blackberry for broadband Internet access since there’s no PCMCIA or Express slots. Reads external USB HD’s and thumb drives without a hitch.
I just need to get used to the 89% sized keyboard, my big fingers seem to be making more mistakes than usual.
It’ll be traveling to Europe next month and I wasn’t too excited about lugging a Dell 17″ notebook around.
I give it two thumbs up.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
got a bit of an issue anyone had this problem? Acer aspire linpus lite installed vlc media player alls great!! But the volume icon has dissapeared from my taskbar thingy and volume suxs on the net but great everywhere else! HELP ithis is really doing my poor head in. Much app ben.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
hi!
can somebody please help me how to install skype. my keyboard also seems to be wacko, i cannot type the question mark or the dash etc etc. i read acer guys tips, but got lost when he wrote that under systems you can find the add remove software… where is that. going nuts here, want to have skype up and running! thank you so much in advance…
August 19th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
How do you put an icon on the desktop of an appliaction. In the desktop page, when right click, nothing comes out?
August 19th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
hi stina
You must download skype for linux from the web and then install it. It works fine for me. But I do not know how to put the application on the desktop, let’s say under connect?
August 20th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
OK - I’m flummoxed! My linpus aspire one came with a UK keyboard (shift-3 = £), but with US keyboard configuration. I enabled Xfce (thank you Marc for the link to laptopmag.com, above), and following the good advice of Matthew, Marc and Nederfox I made the following edits in root mode:
- etc/sysconfig/i18n such that LANGUAGE & LANG both read en_gb.UTF-18
- usr/bin/xkb_plugin_set_xorg.sh had all references to “us” changed to “gb”, and the last line cp command was edited out with //
- etc/x11/xorg.conf had “XkbLayout” in “Input Device” changed to “gb”
I even double-checked usr/share/x11/xkb/symbols to make sure that it was “gb” and not “uk”, but all to no avail; when I type shift-3, I still get #, dammit! The only noticable change is that the blue “EN” symbol has disappeared from my tray (?).
Anybody got any clever ideas, other than tippexing out the key labels, and getting my employers to pay me in $’s instead of £’s?
August 21st, 2008 at 8:56 am
I deleted the Lynix and installed xp on this machine and u know what the machine become unresponsive and slow to a craw, its like running a 386. haha.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Hi All,
I am facing display images problem while useing internet explorer or fire fox. The images are getting blurr type or looks like very low resolution and not at all clear.
If anybody can sort out this problem, pl let me know.
RAJ
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
hello
I have a aspire one with Linux but it is in English language how i can
change language in French please help me slowly
please please
thanks
August 23rd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Hi folks! Yesterday, my Aspire One arrived (yey!). It has 120gb hard drive, 1gb ram, Windows XP, and a 6-cell battery. There are a few strange problems, however. First, and most importantly, I can’t get it to recognize the ethernet cord I use to access my broadband Internet connection. Second, it doesn’t have any software to use the built-in webcam. The drivers for both of these devices are there, but the devices themselves are non-functional. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the ethernet driver, and even tried the Acer eRecovery Management tool. I’m prepared to wait until Monday to get some help from the Acer folks by phone, but if anyone has experienced similar problems, or has any suggestions on how to fix it, I would be very interested in learning about this! Thanks so much!
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:57 pm
I can’t seem to find the (new) 1447 with the 160GB and the 6-cell battery for sale anywhere (in the US). Anyone have a link or a release date?
August 24th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I’ll stick witth my cloudbook, running at 1.2 with Ubuntu its rock solid and durable
August 28th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Just got my Xp 1GB/120MB one today. I must say it’s really impressive. Performance is very good using Office 2003.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Got my 1g/120mb one yesterday and very happy so far. Great screen and keyboard good to use.
Agree with previous comments regards no preloaded sykpe. Main reason I got it was to pick up emails and talk to the kids over skype when away on business (one trip to Japan without mobile phone bill will nearly pay for the thing!)
Took me all afternoon to install skype or rather find it once it was installed - hidden away in downloads which I still have to find ever time i restart as I have yet to find a way to make a shortcut on the desktop. If anyone has any advice on this?
Also have had no success as yet adding music files. I have tried both directly from my ipod and from an external hird drive. They copy over OK but the Acer system does not recognise the files. Anyone got any ideas?
Otherwise, an excelent little machine.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Does de 1Gb/120 GB have a 3 cell or 6 cell battery?
August 30th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
hey. r massenger programs working on aspire one? MSN/yahoo?
August 31st, 2008 at 4:49 pm
OK. I read the reviews and finally bought an Aspire One with XP. Problem is that it doesn’t come with much in the way of instructions. Thanks to laptopmag for it’s in-depth review. What I can’t figure out now is how to turn off the two finger zoom function. I disabled the “tap to click” function but occasionally when I rest two fingers on the touch pad I get the “move” cursor and text either zooms in or out. I can play around with it until it changes it back, but can’t find out how to control it. Any help out there?
September 1st, 2008 at 8:41 am
I’m in GB, I’ve got aEnglish keyboard but USA config Tech blokes at Acer said that mine was USA built and a patch will be provided to correct it. However I don’t seem to be able to download upates - I can browse, what am I doing wrong.I also can’t set up my current tiscali e mail account on it. I’b be grateful for any help
September 1st, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I own the AA1 with Linpus lite and I am having a heck of a hard time installing my network printer. Does anyone have any advice?
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Just bought 1g/120gb hhd aspire one / xp home ed.
couple of things. It has been having major issues on my wifi connection. Very very slow to connnect to my rounter (2 other laptops in home have zero problems). Not sure if this is just a setting on its wifi adapter or something worse. At first it would not connect via ethernet cable either because I got about 80-100 feet of cable between computer and cable. I solve this problem fast by, go in to the device manager selection (control panel/system/hardware/device manager/network adapters/(something like…ethenetcard/advanced/(the link speed option)/ (then set to) half 10mpbs half duplex
The default it Autodetect but if you are using very long distances of cat-5 cable, you may experience connectivity issues.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:42 am
I bought the linux version, but had to take it back as it wouldn’t work with my 3g modem (no drivers) and then bought the XP version. All fine - except it gets alot hotter and makes more noise (fan) than the linux version, which I can live with, but the real killer is that the wifi connection is sloooow… I’ve updated the wifi driver to the latest version, but it is still really slow (like 56k modem) on the 3 wifi networks I’ve connected to, all with different routers, Dlink, Netgear and SMC. Does anyone have a fix for this?
September 6th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I too purchased the XP 120gb version.
As the XP version was the home edition, I removed it and installed the Professional version.
The machine is quite able. I increased the memory to 1.5gb and noticed a performance improvement.
I am currently running virtual machines via Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 and Adobe Reader 9 and a USB modem with no problems. I do not use WI-FI and so cannot comment.
The above are all positives. On the negative front I would include the soldered memory, 2gb would be fantastic and the difficulty of upgrading the machine. (I was glad to see a YouTube video whilst I conducted the memory upgrade.)
One further thing to note, is that I intend to upgrade the Seagate 120gb to a 320gb at 7200 rpm. This will give the machine a further performance boost, but is mainly to run virtual machines and then buy the enhanced battery.
It may be cheap and should be cheaper if you consider that basic laptops now sell (with XP /Vista) for about the same price but it can do some serious work and is both light and powerful.
September 10th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I got one of these babies too - bought the 1GB RAM/120GB HDD version with Windows XP, which lasted all of about 3 minutes before I made a bootable USB pendrive for Ubuntu Linux. In those three minutes, IE was a little laggy and I found that startup seemed to take forever. Never was a fan of Windows anyway.
In its current configuration, it runs like a dream. Initial configuration required a little finangling, but nothing too hard for even a newbie like me. There are a lot of helpful guides out there. Wifi works fine, webcam works fine, videos play fine…. in short, this is exactly what I needed for my college courses. It’s very light and compact, and convenient for me to check emails between classes. Performance is equal to or better than my cheapo Toshiba Satellite that came before, and even my $1600 Fujitsu S-series before that. I love the keyboard - it didn’t take very long for me to adjust to touch typing on this. I LOVE this thing.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I have been testing the Acer One for 12 days. It stopped working!! Couldn’t do anything. Nothing on the screen. The power lite was green. I tried turning it off. Nothing happened. This morning it starting working again. The amber lite battery indicator is always on. Not sure whether or not to keep it or return it. I think it has a glitch.
September 14th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Don’t buy this computer. There are a myriad of reasons to back my statement, but I’d rather have a 10 year old Gateway desktop with Linux-Kubuntu installed, than this piece of garbage.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Hi people, I,ve got an acer aspire one no probs at all at the momment, bought in uk maybe thats why, seems to me that most peoples probs occur abroard, who knows?
September 19th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Hi.
Acer One is one of the best!!!!!!
no prob. for 40days.
LG Philipp
——————–
http://www.reymont.at
September 20th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I’ve had my acer one for a couple of days. I like this little machine, and in the out of the box configuration everything seems to work. It picks up my network from other rooms and so I can do email anywhere in the house. It downloads spreadsheets from exel and they are easily readable. It downloads word files and reads them. It downloads pdf files and reads them.
To my mind, this kind of a market entry is what has been needed a long time. As a linux machine it will bring millions of people to linux. And with linux Acer and others can bring a great little machine like this to us at a low cost, and we con do upgrades that don’t require hundreds of dollars for every new software.
It takes me back to the days of the commodore 64 which also cost about $300 but in 1980 dollars, And the disk drive also cost $300 and then you had to have a tv or a monitor. So this little machine is way less than the 64 was, and incredibly more capable, and it will introduce linux to millions if it is done right and could finally break the hold of microsoft on the market.
But there has to be better documentation. I have learned more about the machine from commentators and the web than from the manual. As each of us tries to customize the machine for our own use…more memory etc. there needs to be specific information about how to do it. Otherwise it will just fail.
And there are still glitches. I have had much trouble trying to add an sdhc memory card.
I bought a 4 gig card and loaded some pdf data from my pc onto the card then put the card in this machine. It wouldn’t read the pdf’s. It did read a couple of videos I put on the card. It takes a long time with the card memory and locks up frequently regardless of which slot you put it into. Remove the card and it boots fine.
Sometimes it sees it, sometimes it doesn’t. Reboot doesn’t always help. Once used in the left hand slot of this machine my pc can’t read the card anymore and won’t reformat it. Now this machine won’t recognize it either.
There are larger memory cards now, up to 16 gigs for SDHC. However they operate at different speeds. No information about how fast the speed is that this machine will accept. $99 for a fast 8gb card and then maybe it won’t read it.
Acer you’ve done a wonderful job so far, but you need to get a more detailed manual out.
Linpus…we need a manual from you also.
One of the fun parts of a small machine like this is being able to tweak it and upgrade it, but we need to have a little help how to do that.
The manual has to tell us how to add memory; how to customize the desk top; what outside memory can be used; will it be compatible with a windows pc so that a portable hard drive can be used for data and then used on both?
The more you can put in the more we can use this machine and the more dominant it can become in the marketplace.
September 20th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Irene, the solution is here: http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/08/acer-aspire-one-bios-recovery.html
September 21st, 2008 at 1:04 am
I bought this computer 17 days ago at a Best Buy in Colorado… I paid $379 with tax for it. It came with 1GB of ram, Windows XP Home, and the Intel Atom. I got the blue model. I love this computer! It is very light. Definitely a GREAT investment… The Wifi has a very strong signal. But can I upgrade my 1GB ram to 2? I don’t “need” to, but I would like it as fast as possible. Also; I only have a 3-cell battery… The life is about 2:30 but I would like more that 3:30…. How much would it cost to get a 6-cell and where would I get one?
September 24th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Hi Everybody!!!!! I got a question. What do U think. Is the any possibility to use the same function - Smart File Manager - to make a primary SSD patrtition biger when we add a SD Card - I found that oprion onlu under a Linux ver. on my A1 but how to do that under WinXp?
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Hie every one could somebody tell me how to put win xp on a linpus one, by step by step thanks.
I think it’s a gerat idea to buy.it’s small,light,and quiet.It’s so simple to handled.