subject: Acer Aspire One 1690 [print this page] The article via:http://www.guide-shopping.org
Asus is coming under pressure: more and more competitors challenge the Eee PC. Now Acer is increasing with the aspire a150-1570 battery in the battle for the best mini-notebook.
At first glance wins Acer: the aspire 1690 battery is the most beautiful Netbook. It's in a shiny dark blue housing. The black bezel of the display is presented in glossy look. As a splash of color, the display hinges are framed in red.
But the cheap chic design of the 330 Netbooks drawbacks: fingerprints left unsightly and visible traces on the body. This constant brushing is called for when the mini laptop is to remain as beautiful as the first box. This will not be the only case where the Aspire One's first impression is deceptive.
Linux as an operating system
The Aspire One costs more so than the first Eee PC. But with 330 the Acer netbook is significantly cheaper than current competing products from Asus and Medion. The low price made Acer the fact that on the aspire 1680 battery with Linux operating system is used. Acer installed Linpus Linux Lite, which is based on Fedora. The kernel version is 2.6.23.
The operating system starts very quickly - at first sight: after about 15 seconds the startup screen. However, it then takes another 20 seconds until the icons for network connection and battery status show up in the system tray and the netbook is finally ready for use.
The Aspire One is immediately out of the box and turning productively, because Acer has partly filled with a lot of software: The home screen presents the programs divided into "Connect", "work", "fun" and "files". In all, there are three program icons. After clicking on the arrow next to the programs shows the Aspire One, all installed programs from the selected topic.
In Connecting for example, Firefox, and links found on Wikipedia and Google Maps. As mail and messenger program contributes Acer house developments and waives the standard programs Thunderbird and Pidgin. The mail client supports both POP3 and IMAP and Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange Webmail Webmail. The messenger supports only the logs of MSN, Yahoo, Google and AOL - ICQ missing. For video chats, he integrates the web-cam of the TravelMate 800 battery : In Skype, the standard tool for this purpose waived Acer.
For texts, spreadsheets and presentations is available at "work" OpenOffice 2.3. In the "fun" department, there are the media player, a photo manager, various games, and the paint program Kolourpaint. The media player but had problems playing Divx or Xvid movies.
By means of a recovery DVD can be restored to the manual says the operating system in case of damage. The test we could not, since our unit came with no DVD.
Adequate performance, small hard drive
Thanks to the clear user interface to operate the Acer Aspire One is easy. These programs run without too much delay - Open Office for example, in five seconds - and in everyday practice is hardly to that in the Acer Aspire One stick only 512 MB of RAM.
Who wants to install more programs or store your multimedia files noticed, but soon discovered that the disk space of the netbooks with 8 GB short. Especially for your own files only 3.7 GB are free net - the rest show the operating system and preinstalled programs.
As with other netbooks can be extended to the tight space at the travelmate 660 battery with an external USB disk or a memory card. The Acer Netbook provides for not only the normal card reader. On the left side is a dedicated SD card slot (Storage Expansion): If you put one there, a memory card, its capacity automatically to free space for your own files added. In this slot the SD card disappears completely by the way, while sticking out in the card reader on the right side from the slot.
