Home > Consumer Reviews > Acer Aspire One AOD150-1165 10.1-Inch Sapphire Blue Netbook - 6.5 Hour Battery Life

Hey, I recommend this little gem to all my friends and co-workers. I own both the 8.9" Acer in Bronze and this 10.1" in Ruby Red. I like this newer version better because it's so easy to upgrade, and UPGRADE I DID. With hardly any effort, I switched out the 1GB of RAM for 2GB (Crucial 2GB 667 Mhz CT25664AC667 DDR2 200-Pin SODIMM card approximately $25.00 on Amazon), then slapped in a humongous 500GB Western Digital (Western Digital 500GB Scorpio Blue 2.5 SATA II Laptop Hard Drive, approx $99.00, also from Amazon). Just a tiny phillip's screwdriver is all that's needed for the exchange of physical components in the bottom of the case. You need to download the Acronis TRUE IMAGE Home Edition trial (or similar cloning/backup software) to the smaller drive and clone the original drive to the new drive before you swap them, but believe me, it's simple and my new configuration works like a dream!!! (You will also need a 2.5 SATA drive enclosure, roughly $10-$20 on Amazon or eBay to hold the new drive while you clone the internal one to it before transfer to your computer, but you can use it to hold the drive you take out and have even extra external storage) I prefer the slimmer suave 3cell battery and bought a couple of those online for about $26.00 a piece. (After all, who in the world would ever stare at such a small computer for more than 1-1/2 hours, the avg use of the 3-cell before recharging - without taking a break - and the batteries pop in and out so very easily) No worry, the 6-cell battery charger seems to be working fine with them. So for under $500, I have one RUBY RED 500GB, 2GB ram, video taking-chatting, movie/song playing, office-working behemoth I love and carry it with me on-the-go everywhere. I own a MACBOOK 13" Intel, and while I love it too, believe me, this little baby is every bit as powerful, only in a miniPC package and a whole lot lighter. And if you wanna top it off with a nice genuince leather case (3 different colors, smooth or crocodile) you can always find them (PDair) online to fit this little baby too.

I bought this computer in january at Costco mainly for travel. I fly at least once a month and my regular laptop is 17" and a real pain to lug around. I figured this would be perfect for travel since I don't require it for much more than the net. I also bought a new IPOD and didn't want to back the entire library onto my regular computer and felt this would be perfect for this.

After only about 40 uses the hard drive started makinga grinding sound and I had to shut it down. It will not reboot now. Costco gave me a number for acer and their customer service is awful. They told me I could ship it to them but it could take a couple weeks to get it back. Here is the REAL rip off, I have had this computer less than six months and am told I have to pay the shipping costs to return it. I had problems with an HP once and they handled the shipping fees and overnighted it back to me.

A friend has an HP netbook and I wish I would have spent the extra $[...]. If you want this just for emailing and the web I would recomend getting an IPOD touch instead. It's about the same costs and a lot more convenient.

We bought this notebook for my husband to use for light computing and connecting to the Internet. He was very happy with it for those uses. However, a few weeks (less than two months) after he got it, it started having errors on boot-up and wouldn't boot. I reinstalled the operating system and got the same error messages. So far, we were upset, but things do happen.

HOWEVER, when I called Acer Customer Support, they indicated that this was an unfixable problem (by me, anyway) and we would have to send it in for repair. Here's the problem: We have to pack it up and PAY OURSELVES for the shipping to their repair center in Texas, and it will take up to TWO WEEKS for repair.

I contrast this with my Sony laptop, which I use for work. It also had a problem a few weeks into its warranty period. Sony arranged with my local FedEx center for me to take the laptop in and that was all I had to do! FedEx packed it and shipped it 2-day air at Sony's cost. Sony fixed it and had it back to me in 2 more days, for a four day total turnaround. ACER LOOKS PRETTY BAD IN COMPARISON!

Anyway, just beware - if you have problems with your Acer, YOU are going to have to pack it for shipment, and YOU will pay for the shipment, and it's going to take a LONG time. If you can live with that possibility, my husband has been happy with the notebook otherwise.

Anyway, I'm giving this one star because of the cost and hassle with Acer's Customer Support. If they had stood behind their notebook (as Sony did) with timely no-cost-to-me customer support, I would have given them four stars out of five instead.

I took delivery of my Acer about a week ago. I am compelled to write this review because prior to buying this I had owned two other netbooks. The original ASUS 701, and then later the HP2133. Both of which were great for varying reasons. But I want to focus on this netbook.

There are several import features any netbook user will soon realize have great value. First, it needs to be reasonably powerful. It needs to have a reasonable keyboard layout. And it needs a good battery life. When you choose what is best for you, take my word for it. If any of those three items are not up to your expectations, you're not going to be happy with your choice.

Let's cover the powerful part first.

This particular ASUS has 1 GB of RAM, and it's a single SO-DIMM which you can replace very easily with nothing more than one screw and a Philip's screw driver. The cost of the DIMM at the time I purchased mine was $25 for a single 2 GB SO-DIMM. And just like that, I went from 1 GB to 2 Gbs for the Windows XP Service pack 3 install on this netbook. You'll want to do the same. Jumping from 1 GB to 2 Gbs changes the whole experience and it's not a lot of money. Just do it. You'll be glad you did. Or more to the point, you'll not be as happy as you could be if you don't.

Next is the processor. This one uses the Atom 1.6 GHz CPU from Intel. On battery it scales back to 1.0 GHz and extends the life of the battery. On AC it jumps up to 1.6 GHz. Even at 1.0 GHz, I didn't realize it reduced in speed at all. My use of Open Office on this felt as it always feels.

The battery

The battery life remaining time indicator ranged from 6.5 hours to a whopping 9.4 hours. I have yet to even see the battery die because I have not had the opportunity to use it on battery long enough to actually kill the battery. It just lasts and lasts. Virtually every single laptop or netbook I have owned doesn't come even remotely close to the battery life of this thing. And I have to tell I have been disappointed many times in the past over this single issue. I need a laptop that can last a while on battery, otherwise I am lugging something around for no real reason and I don't like that. You will get plenty of battery time on this.

The keyboard

I hate to say this, but the keyboards on the ASUS line are the worst. And this ACER and the HP netbooks out there are superior. Both the HP2133 and this ACER have 92% sized keyboards. But just as important as close to full size is, it's not the total. It's the keys themselves. You simply must have a right shift key under the enter key and it must be larger than the enter key. Why? Because that's the muscle memory you have when you type. All keyboards have always been this way until the dawn of the netbook when vendors such as ASUS changed that. And it makes the eeePC difficult to work with. Some keyboards put the UP key right under the Enter key. And you will intend to shift, but instead will cursor up and start inserting text into a previously finished sentence. This will drive you crazy. Always look at the images of the keyboard layout before you buy a mini. This Acer has the proper layout.

Some notes on other netbooks.

You should know that many netbooks have just 1 GB and are not expandable. Do not assume you can drop 2 Gbs into any netbook. You'd be wrong in that assumption. Do not assume that SSD is always better. I happen to own an SSD drive, and I paid a fair amount of money for it. It's not so much better than a hard drive at this point. Not until the lower cost ones dump the old JMICRON controller which causes stutters in loading is resolved. The more expensive ones use an Intel controller but cost more than this netbook does. And JMICRON only recently announced a new controller that resolves this issue. For now, a cheap 2.5" standard laptop hard drive is still a better bet for the money. Be sure your netbook can use a standard 2.5" laptop drive. They are so cheap these days. You should easily have 160 to 250 Gbs of storage. Many believe less is fine, but we all say things like that early on, and then demand more and more from our purchase as time goes forward. So just go for something spacious to begin with and you future-proof yourself. This particular ACER has a nice 160 GB hard drive.

The Mouse Pad and button

I read many reviews that talk about the mouse pad and button. They all scared me by being so very negative about it. Claiming it has a life of its own, etc. And how hard the button is to press. I am sorry to say I think those reviews are written by, shall we say people with no brains, or something. The single button is really two buttons. You press the left side of the single button to do a left mouse, and you press the right side to press a right mouse click. The center is the rocker bridge. If you press the center, nothing is going to happen. Like a teader todder, the center is what is holding the button in place. You are not meant to press there. You are meant to press the left side and the right side. Sorry but, dah. How dense are people not to realize this. And the mouse pad itself. I have nothing short of perfect results with it. I am happy to discover this after I bought it, but those who wrote such poor reviews of it need to stop drinking or smocking whatever they are abusing so early in the morning. These must be the same people who think that tray on a CD drive is a coffee cup holder.

Screen real estate. This Acer has 1024 x 600. A web page as wide as the Wall Street Journal will have no problem at all. From left to right, you see the width at 100% without problem. But the up and down resolution of just 600, a common size in most netbooks is really the minimum. Some newer gen netbooks are starting to offer higher resolution. My HP2133 does 1280 x 768 in an 8.9" screen. It's too tiny in my opinion, but you get used to it. Problem is, my HP2133 uses a VIA processor, not an Atom. The Atom is by far the better CPU for these minis. A 10.1" screen at 1024 x 600 is large. You will be able to read the screen easily. You just don't have a lot of top to bottom real estate. So limit things like tool bars so you leave enough room for the content itself.

I paid a total of $365 for mine with shipping and the cost of changing the memory to 2 Gbs. I feel like I got much more than I paid for. So much so I gave my HP2133 away to a friend in need of a netbook. This is my 3rd purchase of a netbook, and so far I finally feel like I got it right.

Alex Alexzander

It's amazing and I love it. The battery life is four times any laptop I've ever owned. Just to cycle the battery a couple times I had to run my virus scanner for 5 hours, after changing the power settings to "always on." That's five hours of the hard drive spinning almost constantly.

I recommend you spend an extra $25 for a 2GB memory stick. I've regretted not max-ing out memory on laptops in the past. But I've never regretted spending a few extra bucks to max them out up-front.

Obviously, this is the perfect airplane companion. Even if it's your second laptop, for the airplane only, it's well worth the $350 if you travel a lot. You don't even have to worry if the person in front of you puts the seat back--it still fits. And you certainly don't have to worry about the battery life.

The keyboard is NOT a problem. I'm 6 feet tall with large hands. After reading these reviews I thought it would be an issue. I just plunked down my hands and started typing, and it was fine! That leaves only the tiny screen size as the only thing less-than-ideal, but you know what you are getting -- it's a netbook, not a laptop.

Performance is snappy -- It seems to be better than my 2.4Ghz Celeron laptop. The thing preventing lots of multi-tasking is the screen, not the CPU. If you are at home, you might consider an external monitor.

Here's a tip for would-be buyers. If you don't want to spend money for a USB CD drive, just download "Alcohol 52 Free Edition". It allows you to rip installation CDs and DVDs to image files, and to mount those files into a "virtual" drive. Just transfer the image files onto this baby using a thumb drive or over the network. Of course, some installations are not particular about running from a CD, and you can just install by copying all the files to a thumb drive. I use my thumb drives for other things, though, and it's more convenient to move 2 files across to get the whole CD, and then be able to easily clean it up after.

The first thing you'll want to do when you get this machine is uninstall all the trial software. That's pretty quick -- maybe 20 minutes. The second thing is adjust the touchpad sensitivity and speed in the control panel under "mouse".

If I can figure out how to get it to boot up with the WiFi disabled, I'll be 100% happy about it (instead of 99.9). I checked the BIOS, and didn't see anything there. Of course, flicking the button once is not much of a big deal.