Acer Aspire One 8.9″ Mini-Notebook On Sale

Product Features

• 1.6GHz Atom N270 Processor
• 8GB solid state hard drive, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM (expandable)
• 802.11b/g, Ethernet, three USB 2.0, VGA, and 3.5mm audio out
• 1.3 megapixel camera, SDHC and multi-format media readers
• Linpus Linux Lite operating system

Cases and Expandability

• Weight: 5.05 pounds

Product Description

Product Description
The Aspire one was designed to get you online in no time at all and thanks to the Linpus Linux Lite operating system, start up and shut down times are reduced to the minimum. With the Aspire one running on Linux environment, the simplicity continues with the intuitive and specifically optimized software interface. The Aspire one is built for Internet navigation and features an 8.9″ LED-backlit LCD screen that fits the 1024*600 web resolution to perfection. Smaller than an average diary and weighing less than 1 kilo, the Aspire one puts freedom in the palm of your hands.

Product Description
The Acer Aspire one Mini-Notebook- Intel Atom Processor N270 (512KB L2 Cache 1.60GHz 533MHz FSB). 512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM. 8GB NAND flash memory multi-in-one card reader SD Card reader TFT Display: 8.9″ WSVGA (1024 x 600) Acer CrystalBrite Technology. Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 802.11b/g WLAN 10/100 LAN integrated webcam Chassis Color: Seashell white. OS: Linpus Linux Lite

Asus Eee PC 701 Reviews

This past weekend a circular advertised a Vista-powered laptop equipped with a Celeron processor, 14.1-inch display, an 80GB hard drive, and a DVD drive for only $399. For the same price, the Asus Eee PC offers the same amount of RAM and Celeron processor but a smaller seven-inch display, a measly 4GB of storage space, and no DVD drive. And yet there’s no way we would give up this two-pound wonder for a “regular” notebook.

The Eee PC may be designed to appeal to children and older customers, but it should also tempt anyone looking for a lightweight budget PC that weighs next to nothing and connects to the Internet easily. It’s ten times simpler to use than any Windows machine, starts up twice as fast (no crapware!), and is only about a fifth of the cost of other systems in its weight class. It’s a little rough around the edges, but the Eee PC is a remarkably versatile machine for the price. (For a look at the latest Eee PC model, see our review of the Eee PC 4G Surf).

Refreshing Interface

The reason why the Eee PC should appeal to kids and grandparents alike is the streamlined, tab-based interface that offers only six easy-to-understand options: Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings, and Favorites. In some cases the Asus-designed menu (which runs on top of Linux) merely offers links to sites that Web-savvy users have already bookmarked, like Yahoo e-mail or Google Docs, but these choices are welcome for a target audience that may not be able to find these resources easily. We also appreciated the option of using these quick shortcuts, as opposed to opening the browser first. Users will love having a clutter-free desktop for day-to-day use and will likely find navigating the various options refreshingly simple compared with XP or Vista, as well as with Mac OS X.

Users who don’t like the simplified Asus menu, can use this tip to switch to a regular KDE desktop, which looks just like Windows XP.

Small, But Not Too Small

We found the small seven-inch, 800 x 480-pixel display pretty easy on the eyes, especially when compared with Ultra-Mobile PCs like the OQO model 02 (5 inches) and FlipStart 1.0 (5.6 inches), but most users don’t have that point of reference. A three-year-old accustomed to a 14-inch LCD didn’t mind the screen while she was having fun with Mickey and friends on Playhousedisney.com. On the other hand, we don’t see many people above the age of 50 using this device as their primary computer unless they hook it up to a bigger external LCD, which start at about $170.

Overall, the Eee PC’s design is fairly solid and incredibly travel-friendly for the price. Our white model (black and other colors will come later) features an SD Card slot, two USB ports, and a VGA port on the right. An extra USB port, Ethernet and modem connections, and headphone and mic jacks line the left side. The keyboard is cramped but is just big enough to touch-type on; the biggest annoyance is the proximity of the Up arrow key and right Shift key; we accidentally moved up a line on several occasions while trying to capitalize a letter. And although we didn’t mind the unified, slightly chintzy-feeling touchpad button that you can left- or right-click on, our kid tester found it confusing at first.

Chock-full of Useful Apps

So what can you do with this mini notebook? Practically anything you would do with a Windows-powered one. Teens and adults will likely spend the most time in the Internet area, where you can launch the Firefox browser, Wikipedia, Skype (for making cheap calls), and the instant messaging program (which includes clients for AOL, Google Talk, MSN, and Yahoo).

In fact, the Eee PC is the perfect device for households that fight over the primary PC (and its Internet connection). Why waste money on a two-trick pony like the ZipIt 2 Communicator (which offers only IMing and MP3 playback) when you can get a featherlight PC that does those things and surfs the whole Web, too? And that’s not all the Eee PC can do. Under Learn, for example, you can launch word games like Hangman and math games like Tux of Math Command (starring the Linux penguin), which gives flash-card-style math questions the space-shooter treatment.

Under the Work menu you’ll find quick links to OpenOffice.org 2.0’s various Microsoft Office-compatible apps, including Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. These programs took more than ten seconds to load the first time but only eight seconds after that, and we had no problem composing a Word document on the Eee PC, saving our work to a memory key and then continuing to work on that file on a Windows laptop. Asus also includes a file-manager utility, a PDF reader, the Thunderbird e-mail client, and a Notes app.

No, the Eee PC doesn’t do iTunes, but the preloaded Media Player and decent-sounding speakers get the job done. The device played MP3s and WMAs stored on a memory card while we surfed the Web, and the built-in mic performed admirably when making Skype calls. The Eee PC also did a nice job handling MPEG-4 videos captured by a 720p Sanyo Xacti camcorder and stored on an SD Card; the video looked surprisingly smooth on the seven-inch display. The Photo Manager took its sweet time loading large image files, however. Overall, the Media Player app looks positively crude compared to Windows Media Center and Apple’s Front Row, so a makeover is certainly in order.

Good Performance and Peripheral Support

Getting online with the Eee PC 701 via Wi-Fi was pretty painless; once you set up a profile and enter the encryption key, the notebook will automatically connect to that network the next time you boot up. Although surfing wasn’t quite as zippy as it is on our ThinkPad, it was still plenty fast. The device had no problems handling Web 2.0 sites powered by Ajax technology (like Netvibes) or Flash (YouTube). We encountered a screen-resolution issue with the new Yahoo Mail, but we still got it to work.

Overall performance was pretty snappy, even though this machine uses a Celeron processor. Most apps loaded quickly, and the 512MB of RAM is more than sufficient for an operating system with such little overhead. A mere 4GB of storage space tells you that the Eee PC isn’t going to be your primary digital media vault out of the box, but you can easily augment that capacity with an external drive. Plus, that 4GB solid state drive can withstand being dropped by Junior.

Speaking of external devices, the Eee PC did an excellent job recognizing all sorts of peripherals, from a Kingston USB drive to a USB dongle for a Logitech wireless mouse. When we plugged in a Casio Exilim camera, the Eee PC asked us if we wanted to open the images in the File Manager or Photo Manager. Not surprisingly, the device wouldn’t load music from our iPhone, but the Eee PC did charge it.

Eee PC owners will be pleasantly surprised with how well this tiny machine can double as a desktop replacement. We connected the device to a 20-inch ViewSonic monitor and used the built-in utility to scale the resolution up to 1024 x 768 pixels, and the resulting picture was nice and sharp. The Eee PC also instantly recognized a full-sized Dell USB keyboard and a wired Logitech USB mouse.

LAPTOP writer Jeffrey Wilson used the 4G Surf edition as his primary computer for five days and wrote about it in his Eee PC product diary. “As I deleve deeper into the Eee PC and learn of of its flexibility, I realize it’s going to be hard to give this beaut back,” he said.

This notebook lasted the rated 3.5 hours of battery life on our tests. That’s not nearly as good as the five-plus hours of endurance offered by the best ultraportable notebooks. Those machines tend to cost $2,000, however. Bonus: The Eee PC’s power adapter is even smaller than what most notebooks in this weight class ship with; it’s not much bigger than a cell phone charger.

Room for Improvement

Although there’s a lot to like about the Eee PC, there are some telltale signs here that the device may have been rushed to market. Take the webcam, which is launched under the Play menu. We were able to record footage from within the webcam app, but couldn’t get it to work with either the preloaded Skype program or Pidgin instant messaging program, and with good reason: Asus is still working on drivers for the webcam, which it says will be released early next year.

Finding and adding applications could also be more intuitive. When we attempted to update Skype after being asked if we wanted to do just that from within the app, the Skype icon ceased to work from the main menu. Turns out you’re supposed to update software from within the dedicated Add/Remove Software utility, located under Settings. Also, we didn’t see any new applications we could add, although Asus promises to certify applications as they become available and make them available to users via software updates. The intrepid can install applications themselves, but you’ll have to dig into the File Manager and launch them manually each time.

We have one other major complaint. Menu screens dipped below the taskbar occasionally, making it difficult to click Next or OK. This happened when we were attempting to set up an e-mail account from within the PIM application. We couldn’t move the window in question up high enough or shrink it down enough to move to the next screen, which was quite frustrating. You’re supposed to click the Alt button while moving the window with the mouse.

We’d also like to see Asus make the Eee PC mobile-broadband friendly–so you can surf beyond hotspot range–either by adding Bluetooth support (using a 3G cell phone as a modem) or by adding support for USB-powered modems.

Is the Eee PC for You?

Asus is forging a new class of device with the Eee PC. Yes, you can get a laptop with a bigger screen and better specs for the same amount of money, but this machine wasn’t designed to go toe-to-toe with bargain-basement Windows laptops. It’s an excellent secondary computer for households with children, and it’s a very good primary computer for novice PC users who never had the time or patience to master an operating system.

In many ways, too, the Eee PC is a new-and-improved version of the Internet appliance concept, as its easy-to-tote, easy-to-use design makes it simple for anyone to get online.

When it comes to road warriors, the Eee PC runs circles around UMPCs powered by Vista and XP in terms of performance, price, and ease of use, but not application support. Despite a few issues, such as a webcam not yet optimized for online video chats, the Eee PC is also a worthy alternative to devices like the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. The Nokia is more pocket-friendly, is Bluetooth-enabled for using a cell phone as a modem, and has a built-in GPS receiver, but the Asus sports a better keyboard, can be connected to a big-screen monitor, and is $80 cheaper.

As for that other famous low-cost notebook: The $188 OLPC XO laptop is a far more ambitious product in that its purpose is to educate children in developing nations. But that doesn’t mean the Eee PC isn’t a breakthrough in its own right. It brings affordable computing to everyone else, and without a learning curve.

LCD and Plasma TVs Both are better than ever. One plasma hits a new high

Bigger, better, cheaper–those three words sum up the major trends in LCD and plasma TVs this year.

The supersizing of flat-panel screens is hard to miss. More LCD sets are sporting bigger screens, so we’ve added a new size category (46- to 52-inch models) to our Ratings. In plasma TVs, 50 is the new 40. Forty-two-inch screens are still going strong, but 50-inch and even 60-inch screens have become the star attractions in many electronics stores.

More new TVs of both types can display excellent picture quality with high-definition programming, though lower-scoring models fall short of that to varying degrees. That gives you more reason than ever to use our Ratings of LCD TVs and plasma TVs .

The best sets are better than ever. The Panasonic TH-50PZ700U had the best picture of any flat-panel TV we’ve ever tested. One of the new breed of 1080p plasma sets now hitting stores, it combines “full HD”–1920×1080 native resolution, the highest currently available–with the characteristic strengths of plasma technology. Its ability to reproduce the finest detail, plus its rich, vibrant colors and deep blacks, lend an almost three-dimensional look to images.

While screen size and picture quality are on the rise, prices continue to fall. We might not see the extreme pricing fireworks we saw at the Black Friday sales last Thanksgiving, but you can bank on plenty of good deals on plasma and LCD TVs this holiday season. Prices of 42- and 50-inch plasma TVs could be about one-third lower than they were last December, predicts Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch, a research firm in Austin, Texas. LCD sets with 40-inch and larger screens, especially those with 1080p resolution, could cost you about 25 percent less.

LCD TVs outsold plasmas by about three to one last year, in part because they come in more, and smaller, sizes than plasmas, which start at 42 inches. But if you’re buying a bigger TV, don’t blindly follow the crowd down the LCD path. In some cases, a plasma display can give you a more satisfying TV-watching experience.

Whichever TV type you ultimately decide on, don’t skimp on screen size. In our surveys, many consumers said they would buy a bigger set if they could do it over. A 40- to 42-inch screen is a sensible choice for an average-sized room. A 46- to 50-inch or larger TV requires greater distance between you and the screen to ensure optimal picture quality.

Why Buy a Plasma TV?

To get more screen for your money. Inch for inch, plasma offers more bang for the buck than an LCD TV, so the same budget can buy you a bigger screen. Most of the 50-inch plasma sets we recommend cost $1,500 to $2,000. The 47-inch LCD Quick Picks cost $2,300 to $2,600, and the 52-inch sets cost $3,800 to $4,000. (Prices were current at press time but might drop this fall.)

To enjoy a movie-theater experience. A good plasma TV’s deep black levels and high contrast can do justice to almost anything you watch, including movies and TV programs with dark scenes. The strong contrast and realistic, accurate colors can result in rich, natural-looking images, especially in dim lighting. Most LCD sets have trouble displaying the same strong, dark blacks as plasma sets. On certain LCD sets, uneven brightness from the backlight can create cloudy areas that can be distracting in dark scenes.

For a wide viewing angle. With a plasma TV, as with the familiar picture-tube set, the images onscreen look the same from almost any angle. That’s a big plus if a TV will be watched by a number of people sitting around a room.

It’s a different story with LCD TVs. Though some newer models have gotten better, most LCDs still look their best only from a limited sweet spot in front of the screen. As you move off to the side, the picture quality deteriorates, appearing increasingly washed out or dim. Vertical position also matters–say, if you’re sitting on the floor or watching an LCD set that’s mounted above a mantelpiece.

On some TV sets, those problems can be obvious, especially with indoor scenes and flesh tones. The degradation is less noticeable with bright images and vivid colors such as those you’d see in a football game. Because TVs in retail showrooms often display sporting events, you might not notice a problem with viewing angle when looking at a TV in a store. Picture settings also minimize the effect of viewing angle on picture quality. TVs are usually set to vivid or dynamic mode, which pumps up brightness and color to a level that looks great under fluorescent lights but unnatural in a typical home. Ask a salesperson to reset a TV to normal or standard mode and tune in nonsports programming to get a better idea of how a TV might look at home, especially from an angle.

Why Buy an LCD TV

You have a very bright room. LCDs are generally brighter than plasma TVs, and their screens are less reflective. That makes them better for daytime viewing in rooms with lots of windows or for night-time use in rooms with bright lighting. Some plasma TVs can look a bit dim in bright lighting when set to the normal or standard mode, which we generally recommend for home use. You can switch to the vivid mode or raise the brightness control to compensate, but the picture quality might suffer. Another issue with most plasmas is that the glass screens are subject to reflections and glare. If you have the lights on while watching dark scenes, you might see mirrorlike reflections on a plasma set.

For heavy use with video games or as a PC monitor. Both types of flat panels can do the job, but with an LCD, there’s no chance static images will burn in. With a plasma TV, burn-in is a concern with video games, computer programs, and TV programming that has fixed images onscreen for a long time. That includes station logos, news tickers, even the bars alongside standard-def pictures. Many plasma sets have screen-saver features to minimize risk, but burn-in is still possible.

With either an LCD or plasma TV, consider a screen with 1080p resolution for use with a computer. The higher resolution will let you see more content onscreen with greater clarity and finer detail than on a 720p set. (You might have to connect your computer to the TV via an HDMI input to get 1080p resolution and to avoid having outer edges of the image cut off, otherwise known as overscan.)

For somewhat lower electric bills. LCDs tend to use less power than comparably sized plasma TVs. It doesn’t appear that the differences would affect your electric bills by more than a few dollars a month in many cases, so that might not be a major factor in your decision. But there is obviously an environmental advantage to using a less power-hungry TV.

When either type is fine

In some situations, either an LCD or plasma TV should do almost equally well:

For sports and action movies. It’s true that plasma sets are better than LCD TVs at displaying fast motion, but it’s not likely you’d notice much of a problem on an LCD. Our video experts can clearly detect motion blur with test patterns designed to pinpoint the problem. However, you might not notice any blur, or might not be bothered by it, when watching sports and movies. Some newer LCD models have high refresh rates (120 Hz) designed to improve motion-handling, but we haven’t noticed much improvement on those we’ve seen.

For a long, useful life. Another point that needn’t concern you is any difference in longevity between the two technologies. Despite reports you might have read about plasma’s allegedly short life span, both LCD and plasma sets should last a good 10 years or more in normal use.

For wall-mounting. Both LCD and plasma panels can be mounted on the wall, but you should attach mounts to wall studs to ensure adequate support. That’s especially important with larger plasma TVs, which tend to be heavier than comparably sized LCD sets. A 50- or 60-inch screen can weigh more than 100 pounds.

Bottom line. You have a lot of fine TV choices, as our Ratings of LCD TVs and plasma TVs indicate. Excellent picture quality is the gold standard, and you’ll find more sets that hit this high mark, some at modest prices. You might also want to consider sets with very good picture quality. It can be hard to detect the sometimes subtle differences between excellent and very good pictures, especially when you’re watching typical cable and satellite programming, which doesn’t always provide the best signals. Discerning the differences is even more challenging when you’re not comparing two TVs side by side as we do in our labs. If you find a TV with very good picture quality at a low price, it’s worth considering.