Capabilities?

Hi,
I'm giving a lot of thought on buying the aspire one with 11.6", the one with the Z520 Atom processor and 1gb ram... specially because I don't like small keyboards and I love the big resolution it has, but I'm a little concerned about the CPU and the RAM memory... is it enough? I don't want to do anything special, but would I be able to do all those at the same time: listen to music, have some PDFs open, browse on the web and IM people? This would be on Ubuntu, would it get too slow doing all that stuff?

By the way, can I really see 720p videos on it?

Thanks a lot in advance guys!

 

I hope you know a lot about Linux because the GMA500 video core is hard to incorporate into a Linux environment. Last I heard, Kosmic will not support this chip, which is a bad thing. Intel licensed the part and as such they are in no position to release engineering or driver details to the public. A combination of proprietary drivers, badly written drivers, and no information about the guts of the hardware have combined to stall GMA500 development in the Linux community. It is best not to think of this as an Intel graphics chip, and don't expect the same level of support that you would expect, because so far we have not seen it. That said, some people have gotten some level of 2D performance from it and some have even claimed that 3D is possible. Think of it as a work in progress.

Made by Acer using the same basic case, but with different mobo's and cpu's, you might want to look at the Gateway LT31 series netbook or the Aspire 1410 laptop (I know, how can one be a netbook and one be a laptop if they are in the same case...shrug), both about $380-400. The increased performance of either of these will also help to keep you from hitting any performance limit.

 

Hi, I'm no expert, but I have checked ubuntu wiki and there is a way to get support for GMA500... anyways, is it possible, even on windows to listen to music, have some PDFs open, browse on the web and IM people all at the same time? What I wonder is if the Atom processor can do it's job or if it would more suited to have a Acer Aspire 1410
Thanks in advance

By the way, couldn't find the LT31 anywhere for sale... not in JR, Compusa, BestBuy... it did seem like a very nice netbook though

 

If I didn't need the battery life, I would definitely go for the 1410 with your profile of multitasking use. That said, you might want to check the related Acer User Forum related to the 1410. I am pretty sure that there was a discussion about installing Linux on the machine.