So I bought a netbook. I’ve been wanting something small that I could use with a real keyboard, and being home sick and unable to sit at a desk finally made me look into my options. I wanted something like a Macbook Air or maybe one of the Windows ultrabooks, but the $1000+ price tag was more than I wanted to spend. I did some poking around on Newegg and found a netbook that looked perfect.
I ended up with an Acer Aspire One 725. It has an AMD C60 dual core processor, a 320 gb hard drive (not solid state), 2gb of RAM, and a Radon 6290 video card. It also had Windows 7 Home Premium. Oh, and an 11 inch screen. When you consider that most of the other machines in the $300 price range had single core processors, 1gb of RAM, integrated video, a 10 inch screen and they were trying to run Windows 7 Starter Edition, this one seemed like the best value BY FAR. From the reviews I read, Windows 7 runs terribly with 1g of RAM, so one of the big selling points to me was that this had 2gb AND it had Home Premium.
So those are the specs, but how does it work? Really well. I’ve been using it non-stop since Friday afternoon when it arrived. The 11 screen gives the case a little extra width, so I have a nearly full size keyboard. The hardware specs have left me with no complaints. I’ve been doing a lot of typing and a lot of (too much) web browsing, and everything has been snappy. I haven’t seen any of the slowness that was a major complaint for other netbooks. Granted, it doesn’t take much to run Word and Chrome, but I’m not getting any lag when switching programs or poking around in Windows Explorer.
Even the battery life is good. I’m getting about 6 hours on a charge. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to write for 6 hours straight, but if I did, it’s not really a hassle to plugin somewhere and keep going. If I wanted to go outside and brave the 100 degree heat, I even have outlets on my deck. The only time I could see the battery life being an issue is if I’m traveling and the airport has no outlets. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. (To be honest, I’ll just run the battery down and then break out the Kindle.)
How does it handle games? I have no idea. I am conscientiously avoiding installing any on it. I really do intend for this to be my writing machine and I’m trying to avoid distractions. I hear that siren call of Football Manager, but I have my body lashed to the mast.
I have two complaints so far. I use the Home and End keys frequently when I’m in Word. On this keyboard, Home and End are only accessible by pressing Function and then Page Up or Page Down. To make matters worse, Page Up and Page Down aren’t on the top right where they belong—they’re on the bottom right tucked in with the arrow keys. I’m working around it, but it’s irritating. The second issue is the touchpad. I find myself typing along and suddenly I’m typing in the middle of a word somewhere two paragraphs above where my cursor should be. I think the problem is that my thumbs are brushing against the touchpad occasionally when I hit the spacebar. The touchpad works fine, but I really wish I had some easily accessible button that I could use to disable it when I’m typing. The worst case is that I end up plugging in another keyboard, but I’m going to try to adapt for a week or two before I take that step.
Overall, I really like it. It’s perfect for my needs and the price was excellent. I’ve already told Carissa that I’m planning to give it to Sophia in a year or two and buy myself an ultrabook of some sort, but in the meantime, this little Acer will do nicely.
