Acer Aspire One

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:56 am

So yeah I picked this thing up at wal-mart for 350. I knew it was going to be under-powered and mainly was going to use it for music playback when dj'ing, as well as net access at work and whatnot. Its mainly so I can quit lugging around my full size laptop.

Anyway this thing was rated on the website, and even on its box as only having a 120 GB drive in it, when I open up my computer its reading as 144 GB. This seems awfully close to what a fully formatted 160 GB would be right? With maybe a hidden restore partition for this thing.

I'm figuring maybe the step up model was put in the box instead?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834115519 This is the one I paid for.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834115513 This is the one I think I got.

Edit: Complete and total brain failure.

And yes the HD is still out of spec with the info pulled from the site. LOL looks like luck fell in my favor somehow.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 9:20 am

If you want to know which one you have, compare the Model and Part #'s.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 4:39 pm

and yes 144GB sounds about right when fully formatted.

also I was looking at this same exact laptop last night at Wal*Mart.. I thought this thing was kick-ass

alexz721 · Post by **alexz721** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:23 pm

I have the 160 GB one. Works fine for what I need it for, after I optimized it a bit. You're lucky you saved 50 bucks because they fucked up.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 11:20 am

So I'm looking into an external slimline DVD burner. Any good suggestions?
Hopefully something that can be powered by USB, and thin and light as well.

This is the one I had my eye on.

Any thoughts?

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:22 pm

Looks good to me

I currently have a Lite-On burner installed in one of my computers, it hasn't failed on me yet

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:44 pm

Got the LiteOn burner. Damn nice too.

Shockingly the Aspie One actually has powered USB to run it without the need for its power brick, I know most things do today, but didn't know what to expect with this. It also came with Nero 7, but don't need the feature bloat, so I just downloaded infrarecorder.

I'm also seeing no solder touch screen mods and hacking in internal bluetooth. Might have to give those a shot as well.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:05 pm

SquareHead wrote:I'm also seeing no solder touch screen mods and hacking in internal bluetooth. Might have to give those a shot as well.

Youre talking about the laptop right? If so post linkage to the hacks, I'm thinking about getting one of these at tax time.

Joe Camacho · Post by **Joe Camacho** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:24 pm

Someone from school started taking one of these to school, at first I found it quite nice, but after toying with it I found the mousepad buttons to be quite uncomfortable, I can't stand using the "tapping mousepad to click" feature, I don't have a steady hand.

But for 300 dollars, I would really could use one of these to carry documents and legal codes.

Question: If you want to format this thing, can you use an USB external drive?

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:43 pm

Joe Camacho wrote:Someone from school started taking one of these to school, at first I found it quite nice, but after toying with it I found the mousepad buttons to be quite uncomfortable, I can't stand using the "tapping mousepad to click" feature, I don't have a steady hand.

That can be disabled in the mousepad settings (or so it is for mine)

Also if ya don't like it buy a travel sized USB mouse.

Joe Camacho · Post by **Joe Camacho** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:36 pm

adventure_of_link wrote:
Joe Camacho wrote:Someone from school started taking one of these to school, at first I found it quite nice, but after toying with it I found the mousepad buttons to be quite uncomfortable, I can't stand using the "tapping mousepad to click" feature, I don't have a steady hand.
That can be disabled in the mousepad settings (or so it is for mine)

Also if ya don't like it buy a travel sized USB mouse.

Oh I know about that, but I wasn't going to fiddle around with it if it wasn't mine, I was just commenting on the button placements.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 12:09 am

Joe Camacho wrote:If you want to format this thing, can you use an USB external drive?

If you mean for installing another OS? Yes. The do not provide restore cd's with the windows XP versions.

Just to toy around I actually made a bootable USB thumbdrive with ubuntu on it and was able to boot it.

adventure_of_link wrote:Youre talking about the laptop right? If so post linkage to the hacks, I'm thinking about getting one of these at tax time.

Here is the website where I caught the news: http://aspireoneuser.com

They have sections on how to do this and where to buy the kits and whatnot.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 12:24 am

SquareHead wrote:The do not provide restore cd's with the windows XP versions.

I hope they at least provide a recovery partition or a recovery DVD or USB flash key. Otherwise $350 doesn't seem worth it if you need to reformat, given that they're pushing XP out in favour of Vista. Although it seems like it could run Vista, personally I'd rather use XP. Also what do you do about driver recovery?

SquareHead wrote:
adventure_of_link wrote:Youre talking about the laptop right? If so post linkage to the hacks, I'm thinking about getting one of these at tax time.
Here is the website where I caught the news: http://aspireoneuser.com

They have sections on how to do this and where to buy the kits and whatnot.

Nice find. Thank you sir.

EDIT:

adventure_of_link wrote:Otherwise $350 doesn't seem worth it if you need to reformat, given that they're pushing XP out in favour of Vista.

Turns out newegg is still selling copies of XP pro. Even still, the retail version is $270, and the OEMs range from $140 for a single disk to $400 for multiples.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 12:32 am

adventure_of_link wrote:
SquareHead wrote:The do not provide restore cd's with the windows XP versions.
I hope they at least provide a recovery partition or a recovery DVD or USB flash key. Otherwise $350 doesn't seem worth it if you need to reformat, given that they're pushing XP out in favour of Vista. Although it seems like it could run Vista, personally I'd rather use XP. Also what do you do about driver recovery?

There is a restore partition on the drive, but failing that you need to order their recovery disk set from them for 20 plus shipping. It uses an atom processor, so I can see why they favor xp home instead of vista. Driver and application recovery comes through their recovery software which pulls it from the restore partition for you.

I'm looking for a cheap old copy of ghost or something. I want to run a factory restore, and create my own set of disks. Though it may happen that it may be just cheaper to buy the recovery disks.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 12:34 am

SquareHead wrote:There is a restore partition on the drive, but failing that you need to order their recovery disk set from them for 20 plus shipping.

Nice. Not bad at all, can't beat that.

SquareHead wrote:It uses an atom processor,

I thought it was an Intel processor dual core?

(probably not core2duo, but eh.)

EDIT: It IS an atom. still, is it a dual core?

SquareHead wrote:so I can see why they favor xp home instead of vista.

so what, it won't run XP pro, or perhaps the media center edition or tablet PC edition?

SquareHead wrote:Driver and application recovery comes through their recovery software which pulls it from the restore partition for you.

Figured that much.. but still nifty nonetheless.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 3:37 pm

adventure_of_link wrote:
SquareHead wrote:It uses an atom processor,
I thought it was an Intel processor dual core? (probably not core2duo, but eh.)

EDIT: It IS an atom. still, is it a dual core?

Nope its a single core atom. Dual core atoms should be coming soon.

adventure_of_link wrote:
SquareHead wrote:so I can see why they favor xp home instead of vista.
so what, it won't run XP pro, or perhaps the media center edition or tablet PC edition?

I'm sure it could run those without trouble. Vista would probably lag something fierce. (This is an assumption. Have no idea how much less vista business or home basic tax the system.)

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:51 pm

SquareHead wrote:
adventure_of_link wrote:
SquareHead wrote:It uses an atom processor,
I thought it was an Intel processor dual core? (probably not core2duo, but eh.)

EDIT: It IS an atom. still, is it a dual core?
Nope its a single core atom. Dual core atoms should be coming soon.

Huh. could've swore the machines I was playing with at wal-mart were dualcores.. oh well, hopefully a dualcore will come around tax time.

SquareHead wrote:
adventure_of_link wrote:
SquareHead wrote:so I can see why they favor xp home instead of vista.
so what, it won't run XP pro, or perhaps the media center edition or tablet PC edition?
I'm sure it could run those without trouble. Vista would probably lag something fierce. (This is an assumption. Have no idea how much less vista business or home basic tax the system.)

That's good to know

I'm sure it wouldn't lag anything. If anything, that laptop might only be able to run MS Office and possibly emulators, nothing too graphics or CPU intensive.