Battery life is unreal, January 18, 2010

Have been using the system for about a week.

The battery life is unreal. With wi-fi on I get about 8+ hours, with wi-fi off the system says it can go 12+ hours and I believe it. recharge is fast as well.

The screen is very bright although i would have spent more to get 1280 wide rather than 1024. Screen reclines way back so its fine for just about any viewing position.

The body is plastic but feels very solid – no flex like I noticed in some of the ASUS netbooks.

Speakers are fine for everyday use. Haven’t used the mic or speaker out jacks.

System is very light, and the charger is far lighter than I expected.

Trackpad is very responsive although I haven’t mastered the zoom in and out gestures. The left and right click thing is a little stiff and takes some getting used to. I don’t really like the keyboard style. It has teh flat keys with very little room in between and I’m having some problems gettign used to it rather than a standard PC keyboard (hence all the spelling mistakes in this review). that said the keys are very well arranged and none of teh common keys are hard to find or require complex ALT-FN-CTRL-SHIFT type combinations.

Keep in mind that this is a netbook, not a desktop replacement. The machine can get a little slow, usually if you are working in Internet explorer – this machine is going to have be seriously tryign out other, lighter weight, browsers.

this machine would get five stars except for the keyboard, which is a matter of personal typing style. If you are looking to all day battery life for non heavy duty computing then this machine is perfect.

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Everything I wanted in a netbook, March 30, 2010

Great little netbook, first thing I did was pop in a 2GB dimm. Very easy to access memory and hard drive on this model as you do not have to remove the keyboard like have to do on some other models (Asus, Dell, Samsung etc)

There has been some controversy over what memory that Acers will run on…on a gamble I bought 2GB of memory G.Skill F2-5300CL5S-2GBSK Zero issues, booted right up had to do nothing in Bios.

Pros: Silver color (not a finger print magnet on the outside)

Bluetooth

10 hour battery(probably won’t get that long but maybe close)

Windows XP

Ease of access to hard drive to swap out if you want to

FAST with 2GB upgrade

Great Webcam

Cons: Not really any, just observations

Glossy screen reflects a bit but don’t all glossy screens?

Inside is the fingerprint magnet but not a big deal at all to me

Had originally bout a 14″ Thinkpad for an upcoming trip but decided it was still to bulky to bring with me. This netbook will accomplish all that I need for the next few months. Highly recommend!

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Terrific Ultra-Light Netbook, May 14, 2010

The Acer Aspire One 532H is sold in many versions, with some vendors, such as Costco, having unique versions. The major differences are 160GB hard drives versus 250GB hard drives, and “regular” six cell batteries versus long-life six cell batteries. All current versions should have Windows 7, instead of the older versions’ Windows XP.

I bought the Costco version, which comes with a two year warranty, instead of the one year warranty, a 160GB hard drive, and the long-life battery. I have been able to routinely get 8 hours to 9 hours of use before needing to charge the battery. The ultra-light weight of the 532H and its slim body make it easy to carry in my briefcase all day.

When I stop for coffee, it quickly identifies available wireless internet connections. I use it primarily for e-mail and checking the news headlines. However, although the keyboard is a bit cramped, after some time to adjust, typing shorter documents is not difficult. The screen is sharp and easy to read.

The power pack and charger is smaller and lighter than usual, so bringing it along for a week-end trip is not a burden. If the battery is totally drained, it fully recharges in two to four hours, depending on whether you are using the computer while it is charging.

When I have a fast internet connection (1.3 mbps or faster) the 532H will play back TV shows on Hulu smoothly, although sometimes it is necessary to pause the show for a few minutes to enable the memory buffer to fill up.

Using the Windows Task Manager to monitor CPU use and memory use indicates that memory use tops out at 700 megs to 800 megs with eight or ten Browser tabs open, and also running another program, such as listening to music on Pandora or watching a TV show on Hulu. I suspect a program such as PhotoShop would be very slow with just one GB of memory however. The CPU sometimes tops out at 100% load, indicating that the CPU, not the 1GB of memory, is the primary cause of the computer running slowly during some tasks.

There is no reason to upgrade to two GB of RAM if you will be using the Aspire for e-mail, browsing the news, listening to music, or watching videos on Hulu. I purchased a mini-DVD unit so that I could watch movies. Using Windows Media Player, there was a great picture, but no sound. I downloaded the free VLC video software, and movies then played fine, with nice stereo sound. Then I tried Windows Media Player again, and it was also playing DVD movies with sound…I’m guessing that when I downloaded the VLC video player, it included an audio codec that Windows 7 was missing.

If I were going on a trip for a few weeks, the Aspire, its charger, and the mini-DVD player would provide me with a complete computer system that weighs less than a total of five pounds…light enough to keep with you all day. Folks would have laughed ten years ago if you said that someday you would be able to buy a computer that weighed less than three pounds and cost less than 0. A real bargain.

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