Now that I’ve had my itsy-bitsy laptop for about a month, I’m ready to give you all a full review of it. I love it! Ok, that’s enough, right?
No, alrighty then… The specs for my baby (the Acer Aspire One in sapphire blue) are:
- Windows XP Home
- 1.6G Atom Processor
- 1G RAM
- 1.3 MegaPixel Webcam
- 2 media card readers – one multi-format, one SD only
- 160G Hard Drive
- 802.11b/g Wireless
- VGA and Audio out
- 3 USB ports
- 1 free mini-PCI slot
- Ethernet port for wired connections
- Size (LWH): 6.7 inches, 9.8 inches, 1.14 inches
- Weight: 2.2 pounds
I got the 6 cell battery option, which gives me around 6 to 6 1/2 hours of regular use between charging – which is pretty freakin’ nice! That makes it a touch bigger/heavier than it would be normally, but not so much that it bothers me at all. It’s got a standard keyboard layout with the keys at about 90% of the standard size – so my little hands have no problems and even men with larger hands seem to be able to use it easily. The sapphire blue is gorgeous – but shows fingerprints like nothing I’ve ever seen – I’m constantly wiping the cover down…
It has a quick boot time – under 30 seconds – and is pretty speedy, considering the limited amount of processor in there! The screen is 8.9 inches and it’s fairly small for everyday work (though I end up using it a lot – I only use my desktop setup for writing, and that’s just because I’ve got a dual monitor setup for that one) but absolutely perfect for traveling.
I took the netbook with me to Internet Librarian this year and found that it was just about perfect for carrying around during sessions and such. There were a bunch of folks with these tiny little laptops around, but I still got a bunch of comments about it every time I sat down and fired it up. Helene Blowers has one of the original netbooks – the Asus – and we had to set them down and compare our teeny tiny laptops – you’ll note mine (on the left) is a touch bigger, but not so much as to be really noticeable.
All in all, I love my little tiny laptop and I’m pretty sure that I have found the perfect traveling companion (at least until my phone beefs up and can start to compare with some of the specs I posted above…). For the price ($400.00 at Amazon.com), it just can’t be beat!