AA1 w/ Linux: Good enough for law school multitasking?

Hello everyone
I am very interested in buying an Acer Aspire One, largely because of my previous experience with Acer (this would be my third Acer machine). However, after seeing the benchmarks for the HP 2133 in both Windows XP and Vista, I've become more interested in trying Linux. My main concern is that the laptop may not be fast enough to do these at the same time:

1. Open PDF files (could be large).
2. Surf the net on maybe 5 tabs using Firefox.
3. Keep a OpenOffice Writer screen open for... writing.

Is the Aspire One w/ Linux and the 8gb fast enough to do these without bothersome lagging? Thanks.

 

And just to make it clear, I do know the HP 2133 has a Via C7-M processor and the AA1 has an Intel Atom one (and that the Atom has larger L2 cache). It's just that I read an article at Anandtech, and they benchmarked the Atom and found it to be the equivalent of a 2004 800mhz - 1200mhz mobile Pentium processor (I think it was a Dothan), and I don't think that kind of processor would be able to handle the mentioned workload comfortably (of course, i could be wrong).

So do I buy the AA1 with Linux, wait for the XP version and cross my fingers... or do I have to spend more money on an X300 or a Macbook Air w/ SSD?

 

As long as you don't mind the small Screen, the AA1 (Linpus) will be all you need.

It comes with Acrobat 8, enough even for large e-Books. Openoffice and Mozilla Firefox. Just started Firefox with 5 Tabs, OO-Writer w 1 Doc, OO-Calc w 1 file, an 220 Page eBook (pdf), Thunar (instead of Win Explorer) and System Monitor: User-memory used is 245MByte, my AA1 is not even swapping. More than enough to do more; even an additional Eclipse and a started LAMPP (Webdesign/Java-Programmer-Tool and Webserver) will not use the complete RAM of the aa1. Everything runs quick and responsive. More RAM is Money for nothing.

The only drawback ist the short Screen: 600Pix high is damn small. (Same with Windows and/or Asus eeePC 90x even worse with eeePC 70x).

Get one and use it.

 

Thanks a lot for the reply. I have just ordered the Aspire One. As soon as I put it through multitasking I'll post videos. Thanks a lot for the help and I expect this machine to be as reliable and productive as my Aspire desktop and Travelmate laptop.

 

The Atom N270, while relatively slow, sports hyperthreading which greatly increases responsiveness especially when multitasking. You may also try some lightweigth alternatives to OpenOffice and Adobe Reader as described here, maybe not recommended if you're new to linux. You will be fine either way.

 

Well... After using the One for almost a full day non-stop I had about 1.3 gigs on RAM in use and 200 free...

I upped the RAM to be on the safe side even when multitasking and doing memory-intensive work on my machine, and I'd say it was 20 euros well spent. For a price that low I see no point not upgrading the RAM. by doing so, I was enabled to disable the SWAP completely and free up a gigabyte from my SSD.

But maybe that's just me, we all have different needs...