Mar 112010
Acer Mini Notebook
Posted by: LaptopsArena in Acer
When someone refers to an Acer mini notebook, most people will think about the Acer Aspire One netbook which is an 8.9 inch laptop that has sold a lot of copies worldwide. A quick look through the specs will reveal an Acer mini notebook which is based on a 1.6 GHz N270 Intel Atom processor and 1 GB of RAM. Intel Atom processors are very common on netbook because such a machine is generally used for the most basic computing needs like surfing the internet and working on documents. This means that the components inside the laptop are weak.
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One of the main reasons why mini laptops have weak components is because certain sacrifices have to be made in order to get such a small laptop. When we are dealing with powerful components, they generate a lot of heat which could cause severe damage inside the unit. The laptop usually comes with a preinstalled version of the Windows XP Home Edition operating system with service pack 3. The display measures 8.9 inches in diagonal and it has a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. The display is covered in a glossy coating which makes colors sharper and a lot more vibrating which eventually leads to an improved quality of the image. The horizontal viewing angles are excellent but movie watching with friends is not going to be great because of the reduced dimensions of the display. The total storage capacity of the hard drive is 120 GB, quite sufficient for such a small notebook.

The keyboard is generally a problem for such a small laptop but the 9 inch Acer Aspire One does not seem to cause much trouble when it comes to typing. The keyboard is stretched all the way to the edges of the notebook and so it looks that the laptop is actually smaller than it already is. There is no flex registered in the keyboard area which makes typing a real pleasure. The touchpad feels pleasant to the touch but it is awkward to use the left and right touchpad buttons which are placed on the left and right side of the touchpad.

As for the selection of ports and features, the unit comes with 3 USB ports, one multi format media card reader, a Kensington lock slot, a VGA pot, an SDHC storage expansion slot, an Ethernet port and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks. You always expect to get good battery life out of such a small laptop. With the screen brightness set to 60%, the wireless card enabled and used to surf the internet, the Acer Aspire One will stay on for about 2 hours and 23 minutes. For as low as $400, you get quite a good notebook, 2 card readers and a mini laptop which can provide you with good performance. Too bad there is no way to open it up and upgrade the main components and the cooling fan could be considered loud by some people but this is without a doubt one of the best netbooks on the market.












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