New To Aspire One - Not Worth It To Buy XP SSD Version?

Hi,

I just picked up an Aspire One, XP SSD version for a great price at a boxing day sale.

Reading all of the posts here, it sounds like everybody is going to quite an effort to make their SSD version of the Aspire One work well with XP.

Is it even worth doing or would people suggest going with the 100+ GB from the get-go?

(Is there any advantage to having the SSD?).

I have 14 days to return the computer so I am deciding now whether to do so.

Thanks for your insight.

 

It depends on what you are using it for. If you are web browsing, and using skype/msn then the SSD version tweaked is fine. If you need a bit more space then you can use a couple of high capacity cards in the two slots. If you want to be able to watch videos/play some games then get the HDD version.
I think the SSD version is a bit lighter than the HDD version so its more portable. Other than that, the HDD version is the better choice - and is portable enough as well.

 

I wouldn't say that the A110 8GB SSD version works very well with windows XP SP3.
I installed it formatting the drive to NTFS, and I'm still trying to apply tweaks (without turning off the write feature, since that's too much work right now) but I wouldn't say my Aspire One works well as a web browsing device.

I've turned off the SSD disk cache, pagefile, prefetch and some other minor tweaks. (I've also got an additional GB of Corsair 667MHz RAM)

I've installed a portableapps.com version of Firefox 3.0.5 but I still have issues with Firefox doing small lockups loading web pages and such.

I like the idea of a SSD in a netbook, but unless I read that people get good speeds and a smooth windows experience, I might buy a small 1.8" HD.

 

I installed an nLited XP SP3 on my SSD. But I used the more recommended FAT32. After tweaking XP (no pagefile, very limited Restore, no indexing, no diskcache) I find XP to be very responsive. Not much different than my desktop when doing normal surfing, documents, etc. FF3 works fine for me. But the SSD and little Atom will never be a speed burner doing video editing.

 

I'm planning on installing WinXP Pro SP3 on a FAT32 formated SSD, will post back my experiences here...but I don't have time for that today I think.

 

Like many here, I installed Ron's TinyXP (1 GB including MS Office) and even with 512MB memory it seems to work fine (web browsing, word processing, MP3's) I even have a few videos on SD cards and they play fine! I ordered a 1GB stick before I put XP on there and now I don;t really need it! But I'll get bored one day and install it anyway!

 

It really depend on how you plan to use it.

Mine is SSD XP version and althought I was bit sceptical at first, now I am more than satisfied with its usefulness and practicallity. With some tweaking windows respond OK, and with careful maintenance it should be fine. But I use it only for web browsing and basic office applications. It is probably not suitable for advanced gaming or video processing, so if you need it for such purposes than SSD is not the right choice.

And SSD version has different housing than HDD version. SSD is missing HDD bump underneath, which means 7 mm less in height (which is a lot). Therefore it is more portable, and portability is one of the main issues for anyone looking to buy this model.

And I suppose SSD version consumes less battery power aslo (even if only marginal).

 

This is true. However you only need to go through that once, then you've got a fully functional system. My AAO behaves just like my old laptop with a 40GB harddrive now. If choosing between HDD and SSD, and the price difference is small, go with HDD though. More storage space and higher write performance. The advantage of the SSD are no access latency, no noise (from the drive), slightly longer battery life and slightly lighter.

 

I hated my SSD one. Purchased an xp version with 120hd and loved it. Sold that and finally ended up with the aspire one 6-cell version.

 

With all you've already disabled or turned off, I wouldn't advise you to use the portable version of Firefox. It is painfully slow. 99% of my apps are portable and on the SDHC, but I had to give up and install a proper Firefox - I moved its cache to a ramdisk though and it's now doing fine.

 

Firefox runs like a dream if you move the cache to a ramdisk. Mine never locks up, even when I didn't have EWF. EWF makes a big improvement to the speed and with 1 gig of RAM or more, it's perfect.