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We love the original Eee: wonderfully portable, powerful enough and most importantly: perfectly priced. It was, and still is, a unique little machine. At least that was true until this machine bounced along, and won us over like the fickle tech-trotters that we are. It's time to retire the Eee, and make way for a bigger, sexier model: the Acer Aspire One.
Of course the Eee PC 901 is the official replacement for the original Eee, but this is its spiritual successor, due pure and simply to the fact that it is closer to the original sub-notebook. And while we'd be happy enough to have a few more machines that cost less than $600 in the market, regardless of their specification, the Aspire One actually improves on the original Eee 701, and brings it up to date. Not least because of the lovely (and larger) 8.9-inch display.
This is another outing for our current CPU of choice: the Intel Atom N270. Set to run at 1.6GHz, but with the capability of easing back to 800MHz in order to conserve battery life, this is truly a quality processor. It's good that it does clock down as well, because Acer has kitted out this most affordable Aspire One with a 3-cell 2200mAh battery. Those looking for a more serious travelling partner should grab a six-cell battery pack, but this should be fine for small trips.
In order to keep the price low, the Aspire One comes bundled with a customized build of Linux, called Linpus Lite. Most of the features you would want are already present, including a versatile media player, OpenOffice and numerous net tools. The OS itself is easy to use, and thanks to its stripped down nature is quick to load as well. The OS takes up just over 3GB, leaving you a reasonable amount of room for your data.
Extra storage can be added to the main drive by using the SD slot on the left of the machine (it'll appear as one continuous area), while a memory card reader on the right acts more like traditional expansion. There's no Bluetooth support as standard though, so you'll need a wired mouse unless you fancy your dexterity with the tiny touchpad. The keyboard is surprisingly usable mind.
Overall, the Aspire One is an impressive addition to the sub-notebook genre. It's powerful, versatile and affordable. We'll have to admit to preferring the MSI Wind U100, thanks to its sizable hard drive and the slightly more games-friendly Windows operating system, but if you're budget can't quite stretch to that (or you relish the challenge of Linux), than this is definitely worth the cash.
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US $495.00
