Acer One Experience to-date

For the UK consumer, with some IT savvy, I think I've got a recommended approach and advice here :-

1. Aspire One A150-AB - Blue Linpus Lite - From Amazon £217.99 delivered

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-One ... 746&sr=8-2

2. 1Gb SODIMM memory stick - From Crucial - £11.74 delivered

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartsp ... B9A5CA7304

OK, regarding the memory upgrade. As someone who has built half-a-dozen PC's and repaired a fair few laptops, this was the single hardest, complicated upgrade I've ever accomplished.

Best advice I can give is, study the various pictures and videos very carefully, and watch for the following :-

1. Do not use a screwdriver on the keyboard, persevere with the non-damaging credit card method
2. Be 'very' careful with the keyboard clips, don't force them back through the casing, patience and technique is your friend
3. Keep careful track of the screws, some are different in length, remember where they go

Firstly, have to say that the Linpus Lite setup looks very nice and accomplished, and I gave it a go for 3 days, but the tinkerer in me got the better of me. I will also say that to get my 3G T-Mobile dongle was a nightmare, and being a non-Linux person followed various forum advice in blind faith. I trashed the thing twice, necessitating a full restore each time, after installing/upgrading various Linux dependencies trashed the networking. How anyone 'really' believes Linux is anywhere near challenging Windows on the desktop is deluded. It's compatibility with all available 3rd-party peripherals and applications that is Windows blessing and curse.

The current 'difficulty' of out-of-the box compatibility with all the 3G mobile broadband services, is a major, major oversight with the out-of-box experience with this notebook currently.

So I tried to dual-boot with Windows XP, but seemingly impossible to do this with my level of experience, as Linpus does not use the traditional Linux bootloader, so all the guides you can find are flawed. Secondly, the Acer restore CD wipes/deletes the whole disk, so the only way is to restore, shrink partition, install windows, install a bootloader to restore access to Linux and multi-boot with Windows. I gave up, because I couldn't find a way to do it.

Installing XP from USB took ages to get right, and 'all' of the various methods around lack the benefit of 'preciseness' that you really need. In this circumstance, an external CD\DVD is a must-have, but I didn't have one, nor did splashing out £70 on one tempt me.

So having settled with Windows XP as the sole OS, all was well. Apart from XP is a bit unimpressive, now I'm used to Vista.

So the next choice was to try out Vista. Thankfully, this was simple as copying the Vista DVD to the hard disk via USB stick, and running an 'Upgrade' from within XP.

What seemingly will get Vista 'good enough' is the 1.5Gb total upgraded memory plus a SD card with 'Readyboost'.

I thought this was a bargain from Amazon reseller at £4.36 delivered

4Gb SDHC Card Class 6 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000JMJWV2

I have to say Vista works perfectly, and speed running this and Office 2007 is absolutely fine. I don't know if Readyboost is the winning factor, I think other posters are swearing it is, and some even say VISTA feels quicker, and manages battery life better. I can't attest to that yes, but I can certainly say currently, aside from a longer boot-time to when the desktop is more responsive, I'm not finding it slower than XP in use.

As for accessories, I would also recommend the following :-

1. Belkin Bluetooth Mini Dongle - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/147293 - £7.99
2. Logitech Bluetooth Notebook Mouse - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136345 - £31.02
3. Proporta AcerOne Case - http://www.proporta.co.uk/F02/PPF02P05. ... t_mode=des - £14.95

Of the above. to add Bluetooth is flexible, cheaper dongles can be had, but Belkin is reputable, and why settle for a mouse with a seperate wireless connector, when the Bluetooth one is a near-match to the Acer Blue. And for me, the Acer Sleeve doesn't add any protection, but I want to be able to throw it in a bag, with some reassurance.

The only unsolved dilemna is the meagre 2-hour battery life. The 6-cell is a monstrosity and far too expensive, so I'm looking for a standard replacement to carry as a spare as long as I can find one at a reasonable price, or a portable universal battery back at an affordable price, which could have use for mobile phone and MP3 player as well. I haven't found either solution at a practical and realistic price yet.

Finally, I 'will' one day go back to trying to restore the original Linpus partition as an option, and I'd love to get OSX triple-booting, but I'll only do that if it stays on the broadly 'legal' side, which will need a strategy change from Apple first.