Curious free upgrade

Hey all!
I just got my AAO today, a blue one running XP, the box says AOA 150-1570, Model ZG5. I picked it up at office depot for the standard $348, plus about $25 for tax. Upon firing it up and getting it all set up, I noticed that the the space remaining on the HDD was 144GB, not around 109GB like I was expecting. The webcam is also significantly higher quality than my friend's aao, which was presumably the same model as mine. Mine has but 1GB RAM, so it's not the higher end model put in the wrong box. The box also says it's only got a 120GB HDD, so I'm not sure what's going on. I'm surely not disappointed with this surprise upgrade, just curious about it. Is acer possibly upgrading stock, or did I just get a very convenient glitch?

Aside from that, I've been loving it so far. This is probably one of the best investments I've made in a while.

 

I picked up the same model and also have the larger hard drive. Definately not disappointed

 

been said before. Seems there are a lot of them these days, must be phasing out the 120's

 

Huh. Curious that they'd do that. Now I'm starting to wonder if my webcam really is a 1.3MP one, or if my eyes are just deceiving me. Is there any sure way in ubuntu or XP to tell which model I have? Neither hardware manager nor lsusb seems to be definitive.

 

http://majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

This has varying degrees of information with different hardware but it's almost always more extensive than other hardware profilers.

 

Wow, you're lucky! I paid for 120 and I got 120...

 

Well I didn't find anything out for sure from everest, I guess it doesn't really matter that much as I'm very pleased with it.

 

What do you mean by the webcam is better on yours? Mind showing a comparison? That sucks; I would love a better webcam...This one is not that great...

 

I don't know if mine is better at all, all I know is that the preview stream (the thing you get when you double click on the webcam in my computer) was bigger on my AAO than my friend's AAO. The next time I alk with him I'll have him either take a picture or screenshot of the window.

 

I got the bigger (160gig) hard drive too

I bought my acer one netbook from Bestbuy

Spec was for 120 gig hard drive netbook with xp and 1 gig RAM unit that was shipped has 160 gig hard drive

Even better - Bestbuy had a one day special deal - netbook was priced less than $300

Ordered last Wednesday received it Friday

 

WHAAT! I never even checked to make sure I got the same specs that I bought it for. I ordered mine off walmart.com like 2 weeks ago and it was supposed to be a 160gig hardrive with 1 gig of ram. so I just checked and I only have a total of 144 G and 0.98 G of ram. I know the ram isn't that much of a difference, but 20G is a lot of space to be jipped of! What should I do? Should I return it? :?

 

When buying a hard drive, you never get the exact disk space, for example my "120GB" HDD is 111.79 GB.

 

hmm how do I check how much space I have? I right clicked on my C: drive and clicked properties. It says the total size is 144GB. But I only have 135GB free. I dont even have anything installed on it. I understand that you won't get the full drive space you ordered, but does that sound right? Shouldn't it say my total size is 160GB?

 

There are two different types of gigabyte:

10^9 = 1,000,000,000 bytes
2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Hard drives are advertised as the first kind so it seems like there's more space. Windows reports hard drive space as the second kind. So Windows will show a "120 GB" hard drive as 111.76 GB (120,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824). Get it? I know, it's kind of weird.

 

A big HDD will also show as smaller because of formatting. This is what my drive looks like in Norton partition magic:

http://i39.tinypic.com/soq2b6.jpg

I can never remember the full explanation for why a drive never shows up as exactly what it's advertised as, all I know is that it's a combination of what Jerm78 said, as well as formatting.

 

hmm ok so nothing to be worried about? How do the people know that they got the "160GB"'s if the computer doesn't specifically say how many GB's you have?

 

Well, the easiest way to know what physical hard drive you have. You can use a program like speedfan to get the hard drive model number, then paste that into google and see what comes up. For example, speedfan sees my hard drive as a WDCWD1600BEVT. WDC I know means western digital corporation, and by general assumption, one could assume 160 means 160GB, though not all hard drives are like this, so it's always a good idea to google the model number if you're not sure. The first hit I get is this, a western digital webpage explaining the features of the hard drive, including the data rate and capacity.

 

Because just like you when I select properties - capacity is shown as 144 gb ( typical of a 160 gb drive)

a 120 gb drive would show a capacity of less than 120 eg 111 gb

 

Alright! Solved the webcam question!

Yesterday I popped a 1GB stick of RAM in my aspire, and I decided, what the hell, I might as well back up and install XP pro just to see what a USB stick installation is like. Then install went just fine, and when it came time to install drivers I found that acer provides two webcam drivers: Suyin and LiteOn. I remember reading somewhere that Suyin is the lower end model, so I figured that's what I had, and I ran the installer for it, but it hung at the "please connect your webcam" step. I momentarily panicked, but then decided that I might as well try the LiteOn driver.

To my complete enjoyment, it installed perfectly- which I presume means I have the higher end webcam.

If any of you other guys that purchased the lower end A150X and got a 160GB HDD decide to re-install XP, please make note of which driver works for you. It would appear as though they're going to get rid of two models altogether, and only ship the higher end model. The only difference is what battery it comes with.

 

Don't forget the Aspire Ones come with a recovery/restoration program. The occupy a hidden partition of the hard drive. This partition plus formatting will always show less available capacity that the "nominal size" of the hard drive.