As mentioned in a pre-vacation posting, I’ve been giving a new netbook a whirl — an Acer Aspire One AO751H. This is an 11.6″ screen model with an Intel Atom Z520 1.3GHz, the particular SKU I purchased came with 2GB RAM and Vista Basic but was otherwise your basic netbook recipe. The pokey CPU speed made me nervous about its usability so I made the purchase thru Costco.com because their return policy on computers and electronics is superb.
From the physical perspective, the AO751H is nearly perfect. The 11.6″ screen is a nice step up from the 8.9″ screens of earlier models and the keyboard is exactly the same size as Apple’s compact / laptop models. It had all the usual ports, 3 USB, three-in-one memory card reader, etc. The only faults I have with the design are the keyspacing — the keys are larger than on Apple’s keyboards, the minimal gap between keys makes it slower to touch-type on than an Apple — and that the touchpad doesn’t support the ubiquitous two-finger right-click action. Oh, and of course, the damned screen is glossy but I find that to be less annoying on smaller displays.
Unfortunately the great physical design is marred by the fact that it is a completely unreliable computer. It regularly locks up. No blue screen, just a straight-up freeze. I downgraded to XP, side-graded to Vista Ultimate, and even gave Windows 7 Premium a whirl, all with the same disappointing results. Using the out-of-box Windows drivers, the latest WHQL drivers from Windows Update, and bleeding-edge drivers directly from the vendors involved had no impact. I also applied several firmware updates without any improvement.
Reading several netbook-related forums it appears that freezing problems with the AO751H are not uncommon but not so widespread as to imply that the entire platform and drivers are flawed. It’s just the luck of the draw — probably you will get a good one but many are bad.
Needless to say, I took my work MacBook Pro on my trip — wasn’t about to jeopardize my own MBP for nearly 4K miles on the back of a motorcycle. I took the AO751H back to my local Costco warehouse this afternoon after another round of driver and BIOS updates this week failed to improve the stability.
I’m still in the market for a new netbook. Right now the Intel SU4100 has my attention, a real Core2 Duo @ 1.3GHz, presently available as an upgrade on the Dell Inspiron 11z. It is a little pricey right now for the configuration I want but I expect we’ll see better deals once more systems with that CPU are available, I think there will be a flood of them after the Windows 7 launch. I’m also keeping my eyes peeled for a good deal on a Lenovo IdeaPad U110, a nice little ultra-portable with a bit more punch than the SU4100.
