Need To Ask Some Questions Before Buying

I am so glad to have found this forum. I've been searching online for the past 24 hours (with very little sleep) researching on the best netbook to buy. It is a toss-up between the Acer Aspire One and the ASUS Eee PC100H. I saw so many reviews on both these netbooks, and all seem to be very good. I like the 10" screen and how easy it is to upgrade the RAM on the ASUS, but many reviewers say that the touch pad buttons on the ASUS is horribly stiff and hard to click. That turned me off to it...big time! So I am back to the Aspire again. How is the touch pad buttons on the Aspire as far as how hard you have to push the right and left buttons.

It looks so cute....does anyone have the pink Aspire? I cannot tell from the pictures if it is a really nice pink or just a mauve (puky pink). Also, does anyone have the white keyboard version...if so, does the keyboard get dirty looking? My husband was concerned about that.

Do you know when the new Aspire 10" is coming out? And does anyone know how much RAM it will have, and what the price might be? Maybe I should wait for the new Aspire....can't decide. I really want one NOW! LOL

Sweet-P

 

Buttons are ok, positions are unusual but reasonable. My AA1 is blue, so I can't help you regarding the color. I strongly recommend heading on down to a local retailer and trying out the AA1 (and any other netbook you're considering) to see how the keyboard, touchpad, and mouse buttons feel. If there's a Microcenter store near you, they have a good selection of netbooks.

 

I found the trackpad buttons to be pretty awful. The good news is that you generally don't *have* to use them. You can just tap to primary click in every OS. In OS X a ctrl-tap will get you a secondary click. I'm guessing there may be something similar in Windows and Linux. But (hopefully) you don't use the secondary button nearly as much as the primary, so even if you have to use the physical trackpad button for that, it's less of an annoyance.

 

With the latest Synaptics driver I have my touchpad set so tapping in the lower left acts as right clicking. Now I only need to use the buttons for rightclick-dragging.

 

I find the touchpad nice and easy-to-click buttons. Overall I love this netbook...

 

Touchpad buttons are pretty bad...They are tiny, and flush with the rest of the AspireOne. You have to actually look at it, to find where the button is. It's hard to "feel" it. Same with the touchpad. It's the same texture as the rest of the AAO, and it bothers me...However, I use a USB mouse all the time, so...Haha.

Your choice whether to get it now or not. On one hand, you will probably get better hardware, a better deal, waiting for the newer netbooks, but who knows if you can hold out that long. :lol:

 

Hi!

I am owning a AA1 linux version, the overall performance is good, the mouse pad is rather small and the buttons are not really difficult to push, but you will have a very nice typing experience as it fits with a very large keyboard, for me, it is nearly the same experience as typing one my desktop's full sized keyboard. I am owning a white version, the surface is "flat" and you can clean it easily, if i use the touch pad or keyboard for a long time, the dirt from my hand may get on it, but i can't just wipe them off easily, if you would like to purchase a windows version, every thing will be all right, but if you want a linux version(cheaper), than you need to realize that Acer offer a very "close" linux, considering the size of the hard drive, many libraries are not included, so when you install software, you always need to install a lot of dependence from the internet(automatic), before you can use it. However, acer offer some popular software including skype, gimp, and also a Blue tooth driver for download on http://www.acer.com/aspireone/updates . installing third party software other than the one offered by acer will be a little bit difficult, but it is the matter of time. mine is a 8.9inch one, and i think that the screens is very bright are sharp, and very beautiful, but the battery life is a little bit lower less about less that three hours(using wifi). also, the wifi only supports WPA2-personal encryption, it won't work with enterprise one.

also, a little reminder, ASUS's Eee pc is most likely to be supported by other linux distro. for example Mandriva, and AA1 one is still not yet fully supported.

I hope i can help you choosing your netbook!

 

wtf ???
You do realize that Acer has the best-selling netbooks, with 26% more market share than Asus, don't you? Furthermore Fedora and Ubuntu already support the AA1, and there's a Puppy 4.10 derivative that's very close. I can't speak to the support provided by Mandriva, Suse, Slackware, Red Flag, or any of the other thousands of distros out there because I don't use them.

 

RockDoctor:

surely i know that Acer Aspire One is the best selling notebook in the world, but here, I am talking about more dist. will work with ASUS, less in Acer so that the buyer can have more choice on dist. and I am not talking about market share, and the fact is ASUS is the first to develop the netbook, so more dist. will support it, please take a look carefully before you say "wtf",

 

a little bit more data, here, I mean 100% out of box support, Fedora only offer a bit support and configuring it is a bit difficult for beginners

What doesn't yet work

* Wireless (works with new Atheros driver in 2.6.27 rawhide kernel, or madwifi otherwise)
* Everything working after waking from suspend
* Suspend, Hibernate in general on F10 Beta.
* Dual Head Monitors, F10 goes into a loop trying to set resolution.


source: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Acer_Aspire_One

 

The web page you cited was posted a month before Fedora 10 came out, so is a bit out of date. Not your fault - for that the Fedora Project itself must accept responsibility. Too bad because some things were fixed between the time of FC10-beta and the final release. For example, the Fedora 10 kernel is
vmlinuz-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686, which works fine with wireless.

 

In the past, I hope that the projects will release distro. that support aa1, but the only thing i worry about expect battery life, is the messenger software, as I know(may be I am outdated), no instant messaging software on Mac and Linux can have voice or video chat with MSN, except the one developed by Acer. Also, I think that the Linpus burdened in AA1 is not a bad OS, but only too "close" users are unable to do configuration of install software easily, if Acer will improve that, I think more people will stay with Linpus rather than install other distro, even they have to work all day to tweak it.

 

aMSN which is on all platforms does voice and video AFAIK