The Acer Aspire One will come in five or six different configurations. The baseline model will use the Linpus distribution of Linux, and will cost around £199. This version will use an 8GB solid-state drive (SSD) and 512MB of RAM.
More expensive models will have more RAM and either 3G or WiMax connectivity, depending on the region in which they are being sold. All versions have Wi-Fi. The most expensive model will be the Windows XP version, which will have an 80GB hard hard drive (HDD) and will cost £299. Because of the use of an HDD rather than an SSD, the XP version will also be heavier than the more basic Linux version, which weighs in at less than 1kg.
Acer is being very bullish on Linux, which it likes for its configurability. Morbello said the company had "made a big investment in Linux", and praised the fast start-up time of the Linux Aspire One (15 seconds). He said that, with the larger six-cell battery (a three-cell comes as standard), the Linux version would last up to seven hours and the XP version just five, and joked: "To be honest we would prefer not to sell the XP version."
The Linpus distro has a very simple presentation, and includes a unified mailbox and a unified instant messaging (IM) client — both of which aggregate various popular mail and IM brands. The mailbox also ties into (IM) client, showing whether a sender is online and linking through to IM where possible. A version of the Firefox browser is also included, complete with preinstalled media player plugins. OpenOffice comes as standard.
Talkback
According to another computer mag Acer is #3 behind Dell and HP. That said, I think this computer could bring Acer up to #2 if they keep the price down.
Yes, on the brink.
With up to 7 hours use (with the upgraded battery) this is the first serious contender for my credit card.
Ah, it's the number 3 computer manufacturer but the number 2 laptop manufacturer, a position it reached in the first quarter of this year. At least, that's what they told us hacks in a very long presentation about the company this morning, when we really just wanted to see the darn machine...
Notwithstanding that the Aspire One is small, light, convenient and attractive, I do hope that the USB ports are sturdy enough to last the life of the computer; and that they have not been sacrificed in the efforts to keep weight down.
I say this because, apart possibly from processor fans and hard drives, this is the most common hardware defect that I meet in laptops from normally considerate users.
In my own case I have two laptops (one Dell, one HP), otherwise useful and sufficent for purpose, whose USB ports have become too slack to be effective. Hence I have to use a cardbus USB device to compensate, but these do not have enough power for an external 2.5 hard drive.
This is good for 2 reasons:
1 - Computers are getting cheaper at the time when the price of everything else is going up.
2 - Another major computer maker pushing Linux, perhaps this will force Microsoft to cut their prices on future operating systems!
If you use Linux... Who Cares , what Microsoft charges, or Apple, for that matter.
Acer Aspire 5315-2153, $348 Walmart Special,Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Spring Edition. The fist Linux distro where everything worked, on this laptop, the first time !
Not only force M$ to cut prices , but maybe, just maybe, it will force them to cut the bloat, improve security, and give the consumer what they want instead of telling them what they want.
Nice to know but pointless without a link to the spec.
Brian
must be good for basic usage..more like the Eee notebooks?
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