Higher forces made it necessary for me to hunt for a mobile computing solution for my everyday needs. I started creating a list of things the hardware needed to offer and fastly realized that a netbook is favourized over a ordinary notebook. I began ivestigating the market and soon I found out that you have to decide which way to go. Most of the netbooks up to 10″ display size use a N270/280 Intel Atom CPU with mostly 1.6GHz which is quite fast. The netbooks with 11″ and above use the Intel Atom Z520/530 with 1.3GHz which is quite a bit slower than the N-Type Atoms. Intel thinks that netbooks shouldn’t use big displays, because they think the user expects to have more performance at a netbook with a larger display. In my opinion: Bullshit. I’m convinced this is just a flimsy excuse to protect the entry level notebook sales. But back to the point: I tested some of the 9″ and 10″ netbooks and found the displays being too small even to surf comfortably. The 11″ gives you a resolution of 1366*768 pixels, which is a lot on a display of this size and more than sufficient for surfing and all kinds of office works. I found out there were several netbook with a 11.something” display and took a closer look at them through online reviews from magazines and users. It was clear now that you have to decided what is of importance for you when buying a netbook: Speed, big display, battery consumption?
I decided for the big display and excellent battery life and focussed on these machines. After some more research I decided to take a closer look on Acer’s Aspire One 751
I bought the AAO751 during my lunch break and charged the battery so when I came home after a stressy day I was able to install and use the netbook without the need for charging the battery. Installation of the needed applications were without problems. The WiFi connection works as expected and I instantly loved the keyboard and screen – both for it’s size and quality. BTW: I decided to get the AAO751 with the white and black case and it looks really valuable.
The Z520 processor is compared to the N280 around 10% slower, but up to now I couldn’t find something it didn’t do in a decent speed. Some users were reporting even youtube videos are stuttering when changing the volume, but I couldn’t discover such problems up to now. Possibly the reason is I already use the most current display driver that can be downloaded at Acer’s support area, even for WindowsXP. Even Photoshop works quite fine. One thing I will do soon is exchanging the 1GB RAM with a 2GB one to get some more performance out of the system. The AAO751 uses DDR2-SDRAM-PC5300-SODIMMs which are priced around 30 Euros for 2GB at the moment. Quite fair I think. When it comes to battery life the Z520 shows all it’s qualities. When used for surfing the netbooks runs without a ‘refill’ slightly over 8 hours (with the default energy saving setup) and even when watching DivX movies the netbook still runs for sensational 7 hours.
Accessories and extension:
Having a stylish netbook with shiny white finish makes you also want some fitting accessories. It took me some time to find a bag and mouse for my netbook, but finally I fully can recommend you the Saitek Notebook 800dpi mouse (white/silver) and the ELECOM Zeroshock Sleeve
Conclusion:
Even though the display is not coated with an antireflection surface, it’s brilliant in colors and size. The battery life is outstanding and even though it’s not a fast processor working with the netbook is flawless and comfortable when you keep in mind to not run too many applications at the same time.