Great, but not perfect., January 16, 2010

The Acer Aspire One 532h is a lovely little netbook, for the price it is fantastic but like all things it isn’t perfect. Let’s begin shall we?

The netbook is a great simplistic design, very lightweight and compact, perfect for traveling or school. It has an SD card slot for your Digital Camera, etc. 3 USB 2.0 ports, a VGA-out port (great if you wanna use the netbook with a projector), a Headphone and Microphone port, and a kensington lock slot (great if you wanna physically lock up your computer).

The keyboard is a chiclet key style, although this looks nice, the keyboard is forgettable, and by that I mean there is no way to physically remember what key your fingers are touching. This is definitely a shortcoming for the device.

The trackpad is pretty cool, it has your typical tracking area and vertical scroll off to the side, but what makes this interesting is Acer has bundeled software which lets you use multi-touch gestures. a two-finger swipe to the left will act like the “back” button, two fingers in a circle would be “refresh”, it’s nifty, but the lack of speed on some commands makes it more of a novelty.

The screen is bright and beautiful, of course at maximum brightness, its an LED screen so it doesn’t use alot of battery power.

The computer comes with Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g), a built-in microphone, and a 0.3Mp camera. Although the camera’s specs aren’t great, it still looked good when testing with Ustream and Google Video chat.

The other thing you’ll want to remember is this IS windows 7 Starter, so you do get some nice features that come with Windows 7 Home, Pro, etc. You are missing some basic functions. If you want to change the desktop background… you can’t, personalize the sounds… nope. It’s definitely a starter, and if you want a more “full” experience, you will have to fork out some more cash to upgrade.

The computer maxes out the processor when more than two windows are active, this makes it difficult to multi-task. One easy way to remedy this is to give your processor a break, install more RAM in the computer (1Gb to 2Gb extra of 200-pin 667MHz SODIMM RAM should suffice). The last thing is this computer is light, so light that you will find that the computer will want to tip over in your lap (not enough weight in the front), just something to mention.

So let’s cover the key things I’ve learned…

*Beautiful LED screen

*Webcam is good

*computer is pretty powerful and gets basic tasks done quickly

*wakes up from standby in less than 3 seconds

*Battery power is great and could last an entire work day without a recharge

#Chiclet styled keyboard is forgetable and a mediocre experience

#multi-touch trackpad is sort of nice, mostly a gimmick

#computer isn’t properly balenced

#you’ll want to add some RAM if you expedt to get the most out of the device.

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Elegant, excellent, and exciting, February 13, 2010

Exciting

For the first time in 25 years of portable computing, I have no worries — zero — about running out of power during a working day. This is amazing. The battery lasts and lasts… you never have to plug it in, either in your office or at customers… just at night, like a cell phone.

Excellent

As a multimedia designer, I work with words, pictures, motion graphics, and lightweight web code. Programs I use at work run perfectly on this small computer: Framemaker, Xara Xtreme Pro, an older version of Photoshop, Open Office, Audacity, and Soundslides for rapid presentations with audio. If you are a writer or an illustrator, you can do a lot with this device… anywhere you go. Everything works as advertised… the wifi is easy to use, screen quality is great, and, as a non-touch-typist, the keyboard suits me just fine.

Elegant

This PC is beautiful right out of the box. A lovely, simple, slightly rounded plastic shell. And Windows 7 Starter is a kick — it is faster and easier to use than Vista or XP. All my old programs (except Ultraedit, a text editor) installed right away. Including a contact/filing program I’ve been using since Win 95! Talk about backward compatibility! Windows 7 Starter’s only drawback: it won’t let you change the desktop background, but the default blue color works well for me.

This is the perfect way to deliver a presentation. It has a plug for a projector… but, for sales, you can sit with a prospect (anywhere) and just go through your show on the bright screen and never worry about the battery failing.

P.S.

Decided to buy this right after the Apple iPad demo, where I found out that the iPad couldn’t run Flash graphics (hey, I make motion graphics!)… and I can tell you that Apple’s HTML5 idea is nonsense… HTML5 is still on the standards drawing board, and will use H264 videos rather than interactive content. Also, turns out the iPad can run only one app at a time, can’t do copy-paste operations, and won’t run any of my work programs. Am going on about this because if you pay $$$ for a PC, you’ll be asking ‘how long will it take for this tool to earn back my money?’ … and the iPad seems to be snarled up with monthly connect charges, iTunes content charges, etc. — a lot of proprietary, non-open-source costs that can really reduce your profit margins.

Highly recommended. Hope this helps.

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Amazing little booger, February 21, 2010

By 

B. Stone – See all my reviews

  

This netbook just amazes me. Compared to Asus and Samsung netbooks that I have owned it is the clear winner based on the fact that I am carrying it with me 24/7, literally putting it next to the bed when I get in. Added the extra ram (now at 2gb) and upgraded to Windows Home Premium. The unit is lightening fast and the keyboard is easy to adapt to. At under 3 pounds it is almost unnoticeable when carrying all day in my backpack, with my verizon myhotspot wifi device I can whip out the book and connect easily and conveniently anywhere.

The only negatives I can see so far is the lack of bluetooth connectivity but I had to return a Samsung netbook due to it losing the bluetooth and wifi connections after about an hour of surfing. Also there are no recovery discs and the user needs to burn them themselves, one for system (2 discs needed) and one for the drivers (one disc needed). Having owned Acer products before I was prepared for this and had ordered an external dvd drive along with the netbook to create them before setting up and using the unit.

I have seen comments about the screen size. Yes it is small but the clarity on the Acer is the sharpest and brightest I have seen. As a person with “coke bottle” glasses I have no problems seeing the screen.

All in all a good netbook but not a laptop. I do not game and use it only for surfing, email and music on the go (along with surfing in bed using an attached usb light). It is just what the doctor ordered for my needs.

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