The other day I received my new 10.1 inch Acer Aspire. Sure my 8.9 unit still works and does pretty much everything I need it to do. But heck these things only cost $350 so why not get the new one too.
Here's what I like about the 10 inch model:
Did I mention the battery life? Really it's great. I don't know what the real life span of a charge is yet because I simply haven't worked on it that long at one time. I'll probably figure it out the next time I'm at a customer's site. I wish they included a shorter clover-leaf power cord though. I've found sites listing a 1 foot cord but everyone is out of stock. I guess that's the "in" accessory for these netbooks. When/If I ever find them in stock I'll definitely order a few for all of my laptops and then leave the 6 foot cables at home.
It's not perfect yet, but this little netbook will definitely be going to my outings with me from now on. The 8.9" will be relegated to a handy Hackintosh for testing web stuff when needed.
Here's what I like about the 10 inch model:
- Larger screen makes it easy to run smaller fonts to maximize the 1024x600 resolution
- The 6 Cell battery gives me 4 plus hours of true wireless run time
- The sata drive is noticeably faster than the PATA drive I put in my SSD AAO
- Easier to get to the ram and wireless card, already boosted to 2GB and Broadcom card, without taking the thing apart.
- Difficulty to find articles on google due to the similar name, AAO seems to refer to the 8.9 inch
- Can't get the internal mic to work in LInux. So Skype in Linux requires a headset, not in XP or 7 though.
- Haven't been able to get a Mac OS X install to work once installed, retrying now with this post
- The suspend feature under Linux recently quit working, I've used this post for the 8.9" with success. I probably goofed something up...
Did I mention the battery life? Really it's great. I don't know what the real life span of a charge is yet because I simply haven't worked on it that long at one time. I'll probably figure it out the next time I'm at a customer's site. I wish they included a shorter clover-leaf power cord though. I've found sites listing a 1 foot cord but everyone is out of stock. I guess that's the "in" accessory for these netbooks. When/If I ever find them in stock I'll definitely order a few for all of my laptops and then leave the 6 foot cables at home.
It's not perfect yet, but this little netbook will definitely be going to my outings with me from now on. The 8.9" will be relegated to a handy Hackintosh for testing web stuff when needed.
