Reader458 said:
Lets put this thread to the test.
This weekend I was at my sisters wedding and without acess to a computer for the whole time. This horrible experience has made me think about getting myself a laptop.
One that cought my eye is the Acer Aspire One 150
link. It seems to be good
and it comes with Windows XP instead of Vista.
Does anyone of you have any experience with this machine and could point out strong points/flaws? The main thing I want to know is how it handles internet. Are there special settings to compansate for the smaller screen or can I watch it as I can with my desktop?
I would also like to know if the converter is easy to carry around or is it to big?
Hmmm. Looks like this one is using the new Instant On embedded Linux for quick access to Internet based applications which are becoming a hot trend these days. Basically, you can turn on the computer and in 15 seconds be able to access the Internet and use Skype without loading Windows. I'm assuming this is also a competitor to the ASUS Eee PC which is the most successful UMPC in existence. I think some of the guys in a group I'm a part of talked about this one once. Of course, they'd immediately replace XP with Ubuntu. Special Note: The majority of these UMPCs do not have optical drives, meaning they don't come with DVD-RW drives due to the lack of space in the case. You'd have to use an external drive.
I don't have one of these but I do own an Acer laptop. The Aspire 4520, and there are a few things you need to know. Its good that the model you're looking for is XP based because Vista sucks rancid sewer water. I had shitloads of problems with my laptop when it came to the video drivers. The Aspire 4520 has the Nvidia Geforce 7000M graphics card and nForce 610M motherboard chipset. The drivers are OEM only meaning I could only get them from Acer and they haven't updated them at all. So, a few games I play crashed a lot because Acer's graphics drivers were so unstable. I had to get hacked drivers from
LaptopVideo2Go.com in order to fix the problem.
Anyway, before looking for a laptop or any computer you might want to ask yourself a few questions:
1. What am I going to be using this machine for MOST of the time?
2. What might I want to use it for in the future?
3. How much storage space do I need?
4. What software do I want to use on it?
5. Will I be playing games on this system?
What to avoid...
* Intel Celeron processor based systems.
* The Nvidia Geforce 7000M/nForce 610M (now that I know how crummy it is)
* Any video card developed by Intel.
* MS Windows Vista in general if you can help it.
* Systems with a processor speeds slower than 2GHz if they come only with MS Windows Vista.
* Systems with less than 2GB of RAM if they come only with MS Windows Vista.