First Impression of Aspire One XP/6 cell/160GB/Sapphire Blue

A standard mouse is definitely my first choice over the touch pad, however after having studied a bit on the Multi Touch and reconfiguring the touch pad options...the touch pad works pretty well.

For those that don't know--browsers like Firefox can Zoom a page, not just the text on it. If you put both fingers down on the touchpad and pull them apart to the sides of the pad, you zoom on. Move both fingers togethers towards the center of the pad and you Zoom in.

For scrolling pages up and down, slide you finger up and down on the right side of the pad. Not all the way to the edge but about 1/4" in from the edge. You might have to position the cursor/pointer near the scroll bars to make it work. If you draw a circle in that scrolling mode, you can scroll up or down depending on the direction of the circle you draw.

Richard

 

You can use a livecd for linux and use the DD command to copy the partition to an image file on a stick.

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/sdb1/file.img

hda1 is the recovery partition of the AA1 hd and sdb1 is the supposed name of the first partition of a usb stick. File.img can be whatever you want.

EASEUS worked quite well resizing the partition. There is a tutorial on their website.

 

Thanks for the informative topic/post.

I am going to purchase one of these acer's for my small business.

I need the portability and love the compactness.

please msg me back at jetttstream "at" yahoo.com (I wanted to ask you some off-topic questions on the HTC TILT--currently I have a blackberry 8800 and am looking for a new device..either the BB curve or HTC-TILT)

Thanks!

-Mike

 

Thank you for all the information. Just received mine as gift from my husband on Friday night. I'm getting used to the smaller design but love it. I'm trying to get used to the scroll feature on the pad but sometimes it doesn't always work. I think it's just going to be practice. Good forum to get answers!

 

I find that being too close to the edge of the touchpad makes the scrolling somewhat flaky. Try moving a bit farther to the left, it works wonders on mine!

 

Buy a small USB mouse. It solves A LOT of the problems hehe.

 

I agree that a mouse is superior to the touchpad, however, sometimes you don't have the space. Although I recently did use an optical mouse on my leg as I sat down, lol. The touchpad works decently. Like I said in an earlier post, to scroll, slide your finger up and down about 1/4" in from the right side of the pad. Once the scrolling begins, draw a circle with your finger and you can control speed and direction of the scrolling just by drawing the circle in one direction or reversing it.

To zoom, put the index finger of your right and left hand together in the center of the pad, and push them apart to zoom out, or push them together to zoom in. Pretty cool. Tap the lower left corner of the touchpad and the Windows Start bar is pulled up.

Richard

 

By the way guys, any issue with the fan noise? A LOT of people complained about noisy fans for earlier models.

 

Although I've only been running Linux on mine, wiping XP without booting into it, I have had no issue with the fan. I don't hear it, actually.

 

Ah finally I got my Aspire One. It's awesome. The only two things I don't like are:

1) You can really play CSI on it and become an expert in lifting finger prints off the damn thing

and

2) Screen is really reflective

Other than that it's pretty much what I expected it to be. It is going to take a while to get used to the small keyboard and screen (especially screen) but I'll be fine.

 

I googled the fan noise issue...there is a bios update version 3304 available at the Acer Support website. Worked great once I created a bootable usb dirve for the installation.

 

Fan is a non issue for me. I don't hear it.

I just bought a Logitech Nano Laser mouse. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. The nano receiver is so small it sticks out about 1/4" from the Aspire One such that you can leave it there for good. Since we got 3 USB ports, you can put it on either side. The mouse runs on 2 included AA batteries. No cords to deal with, no plugging/unplugging the mouse. I love it, and still loving my Aspire One.

 

Finally got around to taking some pix of the Nano mouse and receiver. With the receiver always plugged in, the mouse is ready for use instantly. I love being cordless.

Also I've been doing more video playback--AVI files encoded in DV as well as 720x480 WMV files play back perfectly.

(pix will return--have to move them to my new webhost)

 

There is also a patch available at the Aspire One Wiki that claims to help. I haven't tried it, as my fan is virtually silent.....Jake

http://aspireone.wikia.com/wiki/Quieting_the_Fan_Noise

 

So today I experienced the dreaded Wireless LAN problem. Although the wireless lan was enabled--confirmed by the onscreen display, the light would not stay on, and my router was not visible. I shut the Aspire One multiple times but had no effect. This was the same both at home and at the office. I ended up just plugging a CAT5 cable all day.

After much reading and people talking about updating the drivers, I found a solution that worked great.

Shut the Aspire One down. Remove the battery (release the tabs on each side). Hold the Power Button down for 10 seconds. Attach battery, and my WiFi light was lit and found the router again. Considering this is the first time this has happened since I wrote my first review, it's a solution I can live with.

Still loving my Aspire One to death!!

 

It's a small , or should I say, a MINI world <g>.

Just received my Blue Aspire one /6 cell in the mail yesterday , and have been reading thru the forums.
Noticed this thread... and was tickled when I saw the name OctaneGuy.

Not only have you been a great help over on the detailing forums of NAM... now your helping here as well.

I guess my most important question is, will you be developing a new product line of cleaners geared to
the netbook market place <g> ? I figure I can use something in the PRIMA line for the Sapphire Blue
case (Which kind of matches my Lightning Blue Mini <g>), but may need something for the keyboard
down the road.

Great to see you on here Richard.
Oh, should mention this is Vince, the Coordinator of Country Roads MINI's over in the NAM club forum...
I've been mainly lurking on NAM lately.. but will get more active come spring, I hope.

 

Heh hee... I see all the MINI geeks here. I also took notice of the username "OctaneGuy" and was going to PM him until I saw the NAM webpage on his laptops. Great to see you guys here as well.

Back to AAO
I've had it for about 3-4 days, but didn't have too much time to play with it (not going to be my primary computer). It seems that I do have a noisy fan... I'll do more testing tonight and try to find a solution, patch, etc.

Cheers!

 

You MINI guys are funny. I had fun reading the posts. Well, I think I should say that I've had a change in direction of my AAO Sapphire Blue. I had an unfortunate accident with mine that necessitated buying a new one! So I got a black AAO headed to me on Monday via Amazon. There was a price drop since I bought my first one so that was nice. With my Prime membership for next day shipping and an Amazon certificate I had---total came to $357.99.

So back to my incident--I've been loving my Aspire One and Acer support has been the best ever. Not sure why I've read so many complaints. Maybe I had a special "Direct hotline" or something because I always got the support I needed. Anyways---a couple of nights ago, I woke up to my horror to see a half empty bottle of water sitting on top of my AAO---knowing the bottle was full the night before. Somehow it got knocked over, and the cap got loose...and my AAO was in hibernation mode. Needless to say within a couple of days it was completely dead. I'm glad the AAO's aren't prohibitively expensive like a $2100 Sony model. I've now fully taken apart the AAO--the keyboard is a cinch to remove with the right tool---a jewelers flat bladed screwdriver. All the exterior screws can be removed using this same screwdriver. Use can see they are held in with blue loc-tite. The screws underneath the keyboard can also be removed this same way. But the screws that hold the motherboard and daughter board down are very tight. I used a very sharp phillips bit to a 1/4" socket driver to break them free without damage. I used little plastic bags to keep track of all the screws.

Yes my work bench is a little messy right now, lol...





The hard drive that's inside of my AAO was a Western Digital Scorpio--160GB. I found that I can get a 320GB Scorpio for $80 or so. Not sure if it will just drop in though. I also ordered a 1GB memory card. My plan for the new AAO will be to swap the old drive in the new unit since I've got all my files and applications on it--hopefully Windows XP doesn't complain about the different hardware and upgrade the memory to 1.5GB. Memory was becoming more and more of an issue as time went on and I had more applications running. That card was only $20 with next day shipping from Amazon as well. I bought a NexStar SX external 2.5HDD enclosure to transfer the files from the AOO hdd to my desktop via USB 2.0. That was about $20 from my local Fry's.







If you've been thinking about taking apart the AAO, it's really not that hard. Just keep track of the screws like I did in the baggies and you won't lose them.

Richard

 

Ok, so I should probably edit the thread title as I now have a Black AAO with the same specs! The black casing is the same glossy plastic that shows fingerprints. Since I had the AAO apart, I swapped the face plate around the keyboard so now I've got a black body with the blue plate and touch pad. Come to think of it, I could do the reverse, and use the blue case since it was just the motherboard that I replaced.

Regardless, I've now got a spare AAO for parts. I would HIGHLY recommend the 1GB upgrade. XP runs much better once you start loading it with applications. It only cost me $20 including shipping, so it's not a big deal. Also the HD swap from my first AAO tot he new one went without a hitch. I'd like to see if the 320GB WD Scorpio will fit inside or even the 7200RPM drive might be cool.

If you take your AAO apart, and you find that it's not reassembling properly, check the fitment of the motherboard to the lower portion of the casing. You can check alignment simply by sighting through the external holes. The first time I put it together, I noticed my power jack wasn't lined up with the hole on the outside, so I had to take it all apart again. Once that was fixed and reassembled, I found that that my USB ports weren't aligned, so once again it came apart. That's when I noticed the alignment of the wifi On/Off switch, also on the same board as the USB ports---something to be aware of. Once they are all properly fitting on the AAO casing, everything else snaps together very easily.

Richard

 

Just thought that I'd give an update. Since I made this first post, I've had two Aspire Ones. The first I killed by accident with a bottle of water. The second just died on its own. Don't know why. I updated my iTunes installation, told me to reboot...I did and computer wouldn't restart. Just black screen. No beeps, no hard drive clicking noises..just the fan inside spinning. I tried pulling the battery off and leaving unpowered over night. Spent 3 days trying to get it to power up but nothing. Fearing the hard drive was toast....

I ended up pulling the drive and using an external USB housing...moved the data off onto my old laptop that I was originally replacing the Acer with.

The Netbook was fun and wonderful as far as portability was concerned, especially on an airplane tray table. It was great for using a USB charger to charge my iPhone as well on those flights. But my days with the Netbook are done. Now that I've been back on my old laptop for a week, it truly feels like a speed demon. I didn't realize how much my productivity slowed down by trying to use the Netbook for more than what it was designed for.

It's a web browsing machine..and leave it at that.

Richard