Let me start by saying that I love my job and that I'm grateful to have it. Not everyone gets the chance to work in a job they really love and get a decent compensation for it at the same time. If you came to me a few years ago and told me I would be a Tech Director for a school system, I probably would have laughed at you but I've grown a little since then. One of the best things about my job, other than being able to geek out and get paid for it, is the social network that I instantly became a part of when I was hired. Through different mediums such as listservs and Twitter, I am constantly connect to dozens of like-minded individuals who all work in education in some manner. I have come to rely on these individuals as a source of support when I need it as well as an invaluable source of research and information. No one can know everything, but everyone can know a little about something. When we all collaborate and share what we learn, it makes us all more knowledgeable in our professions. This brings me to my subject, the Acer Aspire One netbook. I am a religious user of Twitter. Twitter, in case you don't know, is one of the world's most popular microblogging apps. It's completely free and lets you communicate simply and quickly with anyone you like. Anyway, one day Dave Trask, a colleague of mine from Vasselboro, Maine, posted an offer from Acer onTwitter. Apparently Acer was offering free trials of their new Acer Aspire One netbook to educational institutions. The best part about the free trial is, once your 30 day trial is up, you have the option to purchase the netbook at a nicely reduced cost. On top of all of that, by participating in the offer, you automatically enter your school in a contest to win a new lab's worth of computers! How could I turn that offer down? Especially when all you needed to do to participate was fill out a short application and field a couple of phone calls from Acer? It was the perfect opportunity for me to test out a netbook, which I had been wanting to do for a while..without actually having to purchase one! Well, the netbook arrived yesterday and here's a quick run-down of the machine's specs:
Aspire® OA150-1126 Netbook
• Intel® Atom™ Processor N270
(512KB L2 cache, 1.60GHz, 533MHz FSB)
• Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
• 1GB DDR2 533 SDRAM
• 160GB hard drive
• Multi-in-one card reader
• SD Card reader
• 8.9" WSVGA (1024 x 600) TFT display,
Acer CrystalBrite Technology
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• 802.11b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, webcam
I've got PCs running in my school that have worse specs than the netbook. I've been using it for two days now..and I've got to say, I'm impressed. The first thing that impressed me was the combination of size AND usability. I have an iPod touch, which is a full fledged computer in its own right, but I've had some issues with usability as most people do with devices of a small size. I was worried that the keyboard would be impossible to type on and the screen may be difficult to see. After about 10 minutes of use, I found my worries drifting away. The keyboard is nicely designed, the keys are curved and typing is easy. The screen is just big enough that you don't need to squint to see it, but people fighting off ocular degeneration may need some specticles. I am using the netbook to type this blog post right now and I haven't had a problem yet. As you can see in the specs it comes with Windows XP preinstalled, which runs beautifully on this hardware. It boots quickly and programs are snappy when they're loading.
The battery life is astounding! It makes every other laptop, even the Macs, look like power-hungry fiends. Just as an example, when I pulled the netbook out of the box and started it up, I didn't bother charging the battery. It was about half charged when I powered it on and I then used the laptop for 4 hours straight before deciding to plug it in. It's now fully charged and I will have to update you on how long the full battery lasts. Amazing.
They also did an excellent job designing the mouse software. They built in a copycat type of Mac-like multi-touch support, like the pinch to zoom in..etc.
The whole laptop weighs about a pound and a half to two pounds WITH the battery. It's small enough to fit into a woman's purse. We verified this when our HS secretary thought it be funny to try to sneak off with it in hers.
The only gripe I have with the netbook..and it's the same gripe I've had with ANY commercially crafted computer...is crapware.
Crapware is all that garbage software that they decide to load on the machine before shipping it..that no one EVER wants.
The crapware on this machine was particularly bad, because it was McAfee Security Suite. I classify McAfee as crapware because, in my opinion, it's one of the worst security suites in existence. It completely takes over your machine and you usually have to have a PHD in McAfee to figure out how to get it back. So, obivously the first thing I did when I received the machine was uninstall McAfee. And, being experienced with crappy security suites, I looked up the correct uninstall procedure ..and followed it to the letter. Everything SEEMED to go smoothly..until I tried to connect to my wireless network. My wireless adapter was being funky..it would try to grab its connection info from the DHCP server but then it would fail and give me the "Limited or no connectivity" error. Well..the macbook sitting right next to me said that my wireless network was fine..I knew it was the computer. I tried a few different things before I remembered..oh..McAfee was on here. I went into the startup programs and turn off a few processes that I didn't recognize..restarted and VOILA..my connection was up and running. It took about 20-30 minutes overall..but that is way more time than anyone should spend getting a brand new computer onto a wireless network.
Oh, and there isn't any optical drive in the netbook at all. This saddened me for a moment, and then I realized that I hardly use optical drives for anything anymore..and anything that can fit on an optical drive can fit on a jumpdrive..and if it's absolutely necessary to boot from a CD/DVD for any reason...Magicdisc will work fine for me.
End gripe.
Overall this netbook looks, performs and feels like a nice sturdy machine. It makes me wonder why technology couldn't have been a couple years ahead of its time ..so I could have had this through college, instead of lugging that giant laptop with me the whole time. I think if I add some more ram to this thing, I could use it on a regular basis.
One last thing..did you guys hear about the new 32 Gb RAM modules that were created by Samsung? Holy crap! I won't be able to afford them anytime soon but...it's nice to think about all that RAM. I could find no use for that much RAM in a workstation at this point in time but man..some server jockeys must be drooling over that right about now:)
You can find the article on it here.
Photo Courtesy of Gizmodo.com
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