Acer Netbook Review May 26, 2010
The Acer Netbook - Should You Buy It?
I’ve had the Acer Aspire One netbook model AO532h-2326 in my possession for about a month so far and I’ve been testing it out ‘in the field.’ I have two netbooks in my house - both are ASUS Eee models and two of my kids use them for online academics. But I can’t get my hands on them so a few companies sent me their models to test out and review, starting with the Acer netbook model.
Here are the general specs for the model I’ve been playing with: Intel Atom N450 processor, 1 GB RAM, 10.1″ display, 250 GB hard drive, and a 6-cell battery.
Let’s start with the battery. The draw of the netbook is its portability. Definitely. So it better have a good battery life - and the Acer model doesn’t disappoint. Its 6-cell battery delivered about 6 hours of battery life for me - plenty to do what I wanted and enough for a long flight across the country.
The keyboard takes some getting used to. They call it a 92% keyboard, meaning it’s 92% of the size of a regular laptop keyboard. If you’re a fast typer like me, be prepared to correct mistakes. But that was somewhat expected.
Touchpads are a sticking point for me. My kids’ Acer touchpads leave something to be desired. I’ve found that netbooks often have annoying touchpads with stiff left/right buttons. Not sure why…they just seem to. I’m happy to announce that the Acer was above average in this department.
Performance. Ok, you’re not going to blaze through graphics work on a netbook, but that’s not why you buy them. The Acer model performed admirable on Word and all of the Office Suite products. I was even able to make quick work of MS Project files so I was satisfied.
Overall, I give it a thumbs up. My overall goal is to test out netbooks to determine if they are good field machines for IT and project management professionals. So far so good, but that’s another article. Up coming articles will cover reviews of the HP and Dell models that I’m also toying with right now.
