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Netbook for my travels - does anyone have first hand experience with these?

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Well that sounds pretty good - glad to hear that you're managing to convert RAW with no troubles with the standard 1gb of RAM.

Glad to hear that you used to use the sigma 18-200 OS on your canon set up. I bought one of those before christmas. I was toying with getting the 10-20mm too, but i thought that would be overkill at this stage - its the first time I'm gonna be using an slr, so I got the 18-200 so I could cover most angles with the one lens. Cant really afford to shell out £300 for the wide, plus it adds yet more weight to my pack! I might pick up a cheap used 50mm though. Did you just use the 18-200 for portraits?
 
stewart hull said:
Glad to hear that you used to use the sigma 18-200 OS on your canon
set up. I bought one of those before christmas. I was toying with
getting the 10-20mm too, but i thought that would be overkill at this
stage - its the first time I'm gonna be using an slr, so I got the
18-200 so I could cover most angles with the one lens. Cant really
afford to shell out £300 for the wide, plus it adds yet more weight
to my pack! I might pick up a cheap used 50mm though. Did you just
use the 18-200 for portraits?
Click to expand...
While I was in Japan, Thailand, and Cambodia the 18-200mm OS as my main lens. Take a look at my photo galleries here:

http://www.bakubo.com

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Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com
 
I have CS4 Extended installed and the performance is great. Didn't hiccup one bit. I had to get a wireless mouse to accurately manipulate the images since the built-in mouse pad is kind of quirky and not as precise. The screen is bright and has a matte finish. This to me is better than the glossy screens.
 
Henk

"To just put the records straight, I am a grey haired old geezer, just short of the official retirement age, and I do need assistance with my official company enforced Windows XP. I had no problem, when I were still allowed to hook up a private laptop with an alternate OS. Since then, it went quickly downhill. What is easy in my chosen OS, it is a pita (pain in the rear) with Windows."

Do I understand that you use the Madriva version of Linux? Yet again another new name to me! Any reason why you opted for that flavour and not one of the many others?

Tony
 
Tony,

well integrated, KDE user interface, easy and fast to install. The 2008 Spring and 2009 Powerpack are specially geared for the Eee and Acer netbook. I always buy the commercial version, as it includes licensed software. Mandriva belongs to the RedHat/Fedora branch (rpm).

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Henk

Donde una puerta se cierra, otra se abre
 
thanks to all of you who got in touch, I'm now the proud owner of an acer one A150 which I bought for next to nothing in currys digital yesterday. now I need to bump up the RAM and swtich it over to windows xp. after that i guess i'd best buy a case and maybe a cheap, spare battery or get a 6 cell. any suggestions?
 
stewart hull said:
thanks to all of you who got in touch, I'm now the proud owner of an
acer one A150 which I bought for next to nothing in currys digital
yesterday. now I need to bump up the RAM and swtich it over to
windows xp.
Click to expand...
Great! I hope it works out well for you. Let us know about your experience getting WinXP installed and working. Also, about the ease of upgrading the ram.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com
 
stewart hull said:
thanks to all of you who got in touch, I'm now the proud owner of an
acer one A150 which I bought for next to nothing in currys digital
yesterday. now I need to bump up the RAM and swtich it over to
windows xp. after that i guess i'd best buy a case and maybe a cheap,
spare battery or get a 6 cell. any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Great! I would go with the 6 cell battery but a spare 3 cell wouldn't hurt either. Just a pain to carry the extra battery. Get a Neoprene padded sleeve for it, a tiny usb bluetooth adaptor and a Microsoft Bluetooth 5000 mouse. Works great and travels easy. The Neoprene sleeve doubles as a mousepad which comes in handy in more places than I care to remember. Also check out http://www.aspireoneuser.com for great user forums and a TON of good info on your AAO. Good tutorials on ram upgrades as well.

More tips: Install Lexar Image Rescue 3 in case you have to recover a bad memory card in the field. Set the task bar in WinXP to auto-hide to give you a little more screen real estate. Install Truecrypt (free) and encrypt the entire hard drive so you don't have to worry about data theft if you lose the Netbook. (you'll need a portable usb burner though to make the recovery CD) and use the AES encryption with the Atom processor. Buy some cheap SD memory cards and then you can back up your images to the hard drive and do a second backup to the SD cards. Keep the SD cards seperate from the Netbook in case of theft or loss then you at least have your images.

All the drivers and software for XP can be dowloaded from the Acer Europe website if you don't have those. Also upgrade the firmware to the latest version and info on how to do this from a usb key is available at the Aspire users group. Enjoy!

James
 
Stewart,

Write to Raúl, at [email protected]. He has dual loaded XP and Mandriva on three Acer Aspire One 150. One has to install Windows XP first, and he knows what you have to do. He is a Méxican and a Mandriva convert, but always willing to help. And no, he doesn't speek Queens English, but you will be able to converse with him. Just mention, that his Belgium brother Hank has pointed you to him.

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Henk

Donde una puerta se cierra, otra se abre
 
i've reviewed the similar offerings of MSI and Asus against Acer's. I agree Samsung seems to have a better product, but its limited availability in most markets is a turn-off for now.

Why Aspire One? Build quality is good. Boot up time is less than half a minute. Acer after-sales support in Asia is very good. Hard drive is spacious enough (160Gb) and RAM is also more than adequate for an XP OS (max of 1.5Gb). Best of all, I got it for just around $300 in Thailand during a recent trip. Sweet!

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Noogy
 
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Right, I finally made my decision and managed to get a great deal on an Acer One A150 (£152!). Loving the tiny dimensions. I've ordered a couple of cases to try and a 1gb RAM upgrade.

I still need to source a second battery (anyone selling a cheap 3cell?) and a dvd burner. I've seen a couple that come in at the lower end of the price band; LG GP08LU10 and LiteOn eSAU208-16. If anyone has used either of these or has any other suggestions of similar budget options then let me know.

Cheers.
 
cancel half of that last request, i've bought the lite on through amazon, so its just battery advise now please guys...
 
it wasnt clear to me if you got yourself an Aspire One with 3-cell or with 6-cell battery. Mine was a 6-cell, precisely because it offers about five hours of power from full charge.

on battery advice, the best way i have kept my lithium-ion batteries is to store them at 70-80% charge level, especially if I am not using the battery for a week or two. I also drain them completely once every 30 days. however, there is a mixed review out there re what prolongs battery life. the one universal thing seems to be this - the batteries hate high temperatures. so as soon as i charge my batteries (especially ni-cd), i put them in a cool and dry place.

i wont recommend buying a battery that is not supplied by acer, that might invalidate warranties, for one.
stewart hull said:
cancel half of that last request, i've bought the lite on through
amazon, so its just battery advise now please guys...
Click to expand...
--
Noogy
 
henkster said:
Stewart,

The Acer Aspire One is a good choice. Had one as travel companion and
it performed well. 512 MB, that sounds like the one with the Linpus
OS, lightweight and easy to use. Mine had 1 GB and I replaced Linpus
with Mandriva Powerpack 2009, as I am using Mandriva on all my other
machines,, which installed in about 30 minutes and found everything,
right out of the box. Another 20 minutes to get the updates and it
was set. WiFi worked right out of the box for my e-mails, and I used
it for photo storage. Left it with a friend in México during my Xmas
vacation. She loved to have the extra security when surfing. Two more
Acer Aspire 1 served as Xmas gifts.
With the money saved on the refurb, spend it on extending the RAM and
an extra 6 cell battery to give you more flexibility and time when
not near an outlet.. You can even add a lightweight external USB DVD
Rewriter, I have a Plextor (PX-608CU), which weighs just 250 g and is
137x143x16 mm in size. I will get another Acer A1 in two month time,
when I will be back in México, as I want to have the LatAm keyboard.

--
Henk

Donde una puerta se cierra, otra se abre
Click to expand...
I was quite impressed with the spec for the Sony P series 2GB ram and a 60GB HDD (or a 120GB SSD) a decent battery life....but Vista...... What do you reckon Henk?

Mike

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http://www.thephotographer.me.uk
 
Mike,

Vista on a 1.33 MHz powered machine, it is not a good idea. MS and Sony may have cut out functionality, to make it a bit faster, but it will still be a dud. If you an Windows user and addict, XP will be the best option. The site http://www.drivers.com will allow you to find all (or most) of the drivers to get it running. On the other hand, you could try out Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva, as they are the more desktop driven Linux versions. Try out the live CDs, and find out, which suits you the best. The Acer A1 with Mandriva, it is a marriage made in heaven. It just works out of the box. Mandriva is not Windows, but it is a similar to Windows with clicking on an icon.

Vista, our own corporate software policy does not support it, and there is no intention to do so in the future. Vista machines are not allowed to connect to the network at all (guess, a supporting issue).

The Sony P is overpriced too. For that money, one can buy a powerful dual or quad Dell notebook.

--
Henk

Donde una puerta se cierra, otra se abre
 
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