Here’s a riddle. Why are little Ion PCs sporting Atoms and low-power GPUs being touted as such versatile machines? They are capable of the basics, like a Mac Mini, but not much beyond that. I’m skeptical of their actual capabilities. 1080p? Call of Duty 4? Does it slice and dice, too?
The AcerRevo promises a lot, and to be honest, I’ll believe it when I see it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that 1080p playback is limited to certain bitrates, file formats, or players. Likewise gaming. The fact is this thing has the guts of a high-end netbook, and I haven’t heard of anyone playing CoD4 on an Aspire One or Dell Mini. Maybe on OnLive?
That isn’t to say it’s useless, but let’s not get carried away with everything the companies that make it want us to think. I’ll tell you what this thing is: your HDTV’s hub for streaming media and, if you’re into it, emulators. Get a couple wireless 360 controllers, load up a nettop with games, and you’re laughing. As for the other stuff, well, we’ll see.
We’ll keep our eyes open for AcerRevo pricing and availability.
Acer Aspire One AOD150-1165
I was looking for a compact laptop that I could use between home and work and also take on my frequent road trips to visit my family. My biggest gripe about laptops in the past has been the short battery life, so I was very pleased when my Acer came from Amazon yesterday (April 9th) with the 5800mAh battery. I don’t know about speed with the standard 1GB memory because I replaced mine with 2GB (so easy a caveman can do it) before I ever turned it on. But it boots up fast and is surprisingly quick. I love the size. It fits perfectly in my leather notebook. I touch type and while the keyboard is a little small it is very easy to get used to. Like some have reported, the touchpad buttons are a little stiff but they have a positive feel to them. It’s a non-issue with me because I hate touchpads in general and use them only in a pinch. I found a nice little Logitech USB mouse for about $19 that’s even a perfectly matching cobalt blue. The first option you will need for most any of these netbooks is a good USB DVD burner to load your software and make backup emergency disks. I bought one just before I bought the netbook. The 10″ display is bright and extremely sharp. The setup was simple I was up and running on my wireless network in less than 5 minutes. Most of my time was spent removing bloatware and building emergency recovery disks. This is really a great little computer with a solid feel and very attractive to look at. At the price you cannot beat this little netbook.