Short Version: The $399 Acer Aspire One 751h is an affordable netbook with marathon battery life, a gorgeous screen, and an excellent keyboard. As long as you don’t expect to watch high-quality video clips, this machine makes for a very compelling purchase.
Acer went all official on the 10-inch Aspire One a few days ago, but that model is loaded with XP Home. It seems however that a Linux flavor with a 16GB SSD is in the works of the same model and might be loaded with the same distro of Linux as the original 8.9-inch Aspire One.
Well, “decked out” might be a bit of a stretch as it pertains to netbooks but Amazon has an Aspire One with a six-cell battery, 160GB hard drive, and XP Home for $370.82 if you’re interested. That’s about $60 off the regular price, according to Amazon.
Not too shabby considering the 120GB, three-cell version generally retails for around $349 or so, depending on the store.
Acer Aspire One 8.9-inch Netbook [Amazon]
And the subsidization of 3G-equipped netbooks starts to slowly take shape here in the US.
Starting Sunday, RadioShack will be selling the Acer Aspire One for $99 with a two-year contract from AT&T at $60 per month for 5GB of high speed data.
If $60 sounds like a lot to be paying for 5GB of wireless data each month, it is (if you ask me). Maybe you could wait for future offerings with carriers other than AT&T, right? Wrong. It’s $60 for 5GB of 3G/EVDO data across the board whether you go with AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint unless you go with Verizon’s $39.99/month plan, which gives you a whopping 50MB of data.
My personal suspicions about price-fixing aside, if you’re a potential candidate for the Acer deal, you’ll get an Aspire One with an 8.9-inch screen, 160GB hard drive, 1GB memory, XP Home, built-in 3G, and a travel weight of 2.44 pounds. You’d save around $300 on the computer up-front, so you’ve got that going for you. Maybe someday you’ll be able to get one for free with a two-year contract, eh?
Don’t be surprised to hear that Acer is planning a 10-inch version of its wildly popular Aspire One netbook. It’s the next logical evolution, after all. Plus, you hate surprises. Perhaps you could be surprised that it’s taken Acer this long to build a 10-inch version.
DigiTimes is reporting that Acer will be rolling out the 10-inch Aspire One early next year — likely February or March. That appears to be in Taiwan, though, so we’ll see how long it takes those models to make it here. The company will also finally start producing 13.3-inch notebooks next year under the Gateway brand.
No pricing or information yet, except that “prices are expected to continue to drop” for notebooks in Taiwan, which seem to generally be priced about 20% higher than here.
Woot.com is selling the Acer Aspire One netbook for $289.99 plus $5 shipping. It’s the version with the Linpus Linux operating system, 512MB of RAM, 8GB SSD, and three-cell battery. It sells for around $330 elsewhere so if you’ve been waiting for this particular model, now might be the time to pull the trigger.
This deal is only available today (Saturday).
Acer Aspire One Ultra Portable Notebook [Woot.com]
Another day, another deal on a netbook. Today it’s the Acer Aspire One, which Buy.com has for just $309.99 – that’s cheap! You’ll get a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 512MB of RAM, 8GB solid state drive, 8.9-inch 1024×600 screen, built-in webcam, and the Linpus Linux Lite operating system. The whole thing weighs just 2.19 pounds.
Acer Aspire One [Buy.com via dealnews]
Acer, recently in the news because of its well-received Aspire One netbook, just held a press conference in Budapest—I’m only a two-hour flight away, hence my presence—talking about a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t necessarily apply to us here at CrunchGear. (Profit margins, possible acquisitions, sponsorships, etc.) One thing I want to immediately address is this slide, taken from the aforementioned, two-and-a-half hour press conference.
What I want to know, sports fans, is where you see yourself in Acer’s little chart? (Click here for a hi-res version of the photo.) My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that many of you fall into the Techno Leader profile—you troll gadget blogs all day, you actually read liveblogs of events, etc. Well, that many of you see yourself as a Techno Leader—maybe you don’t always have the money to buy the absolute latest video card or spiffy portable media player, but you would in a second if you had the money.
You’re a Techno Leader at heart, in other words.
My personal favorite from the six categories is the Practical & Value dude, who’s apparently only found in Germany (?). I guess zee Germans are all about getting things done as efficiently as possible, no fuss, no muss. And no frills, apparently. A long-standing stereotype of the German people, I think. At least it’s a positive one.
The Acer Aspire One netbook. It’s inexpensive, it’s tiny, and the base-level version only comes with 512MB of RAM. I cracked open the case, voided the warranty, and added an extra gigabyte. Watch the above video to see how. More details after the jump.
Acer’s netbook, the Aspire One, the netbook that our own John Biggs called “quite small” is getting a smaller price as well. Starting now, the base model with Linpus Linux Lite and a three-cell battery will fall from $379 to $329, the XP version will fall from $399 to $349, and a new six-cell, XP version with a 160GB hard drive will sell for $399. That’s insane. Check out that new one with the big hard drive for sure.
I looked around at all the places the Aspire One is sold and the prices haven’t dropped yet. The announcement was just made today, though, so give the retailers some time to adjust. The new Acer One, by the way, is model number AOA150-1447.
Acer’s new Aspire One netbook is now shipping in the US. Apparently Best Buy and Circuit City are supposed to have them, although I was unable to find them on either store’s website, so maybe they’re in-store items only.
CDW has them, though, with the Linux-based model going for $379.99 and shipping in 1-3 days while the XP-based model costs only $20 more and features a 120GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM versus the Linux version’s 8GB flash drive and 512MB of RAM. Unfortunately, the XP version’s got about a two week lead time.
Even so, $399 is a hell of a deal for a netbook with those specs.
Pocket-lint.co.uk has a quick review of Acer’s new ‘One’ ultraportable, giving it a so-so 6 out of 10. The reviewer cites cheap-feeling build quality, awkward track pad and mouse buttons, and frustrating operating system navigation as the main dings against the device.
On the bright side, the machine’s three cell battery is good for a little over two hours of battery life, which beats out the Eee 900, and you can increase the in-built 8GB of storage by adding a SD(HC) memory card. Interestingly, the memory card’s storage is added to the machine’s main memory, not as a separate storage device.
So there seem to be a few tradeoffs, but the expectation is that these Acer machines will be priced really aggressively, so it may be worth it for some people.
Acer’s entry into the netbook arena, the Aspire One, has apparently been seen “in price comparison engines in Germany,” according to UMPCPortal, who says that the base model (8GB of storage, 512MB RAM, and Linux) is being advertised at 329 Euro – 50 Euro more expensive than the 4G Asus Eee. The higher-end model (80GB of storage, 1GB RAM, and Linux) is priced at 399 Euro, “which is 40 Euro less than the ‘old’ and less equipped Eee PC 900.”
The base price for the Aspire One here in the US will likely fall between $350 and $400, according to earlier reports. There’s also supposed to be a 12.1-inch model coming some time for under $500. The units seen on German web sites have shipping dates of between 4 and 7 weeks, according to UMPCPortal, “although one reseller is quoting 10 days.” Hopefully, we’ll see these in the US very soon.
