Customer Reviews

Acer Aspire One AO751h-1145 11.6-Inch Red Netbook - 6 Cell battery

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

We have had the Aspire for a month now and my wife and I really love it. We each have our own notebooks that serve as our primary computers. The Acer was purchased for my wife to take on the road and when we travel for vacation or family visits. We are able to keep connected to the internet, get email, and carry as many digital photos as we like. The one area we use it the most is when we are watching TV at home and you see something you want to check out online. We just grab the Acer and in about one minute we are booted up and on the web. The 11.6" screen is great and the keyboard is large enough that you don't have to use two fingers to type. This is not a desktop replacement, but for what we do it is a great computer.

I've had many netbooks over the past year and this has the largest screen. It is thin and the battery life is great. However, it is slooowwweer than the other netbooks. With all the pixels it packs and a slower processer than the N270, things kinda drag. But for $299 (half the price of the original iphone 8 gig!!), you can't beat it! I tried Windows 7RC and it was SLOW so put back on XP (from the back up discs I made- they don't come with them so make sure you do that FIRST THING) and then it was much faster. Can't complain but you won't be watching HD videos or high performance games!

The price is low because the reviews are limiting sales, but the poor reviews are based on the pre-BIOS update version. This one, the one they are shipping now, all have the BIOS update, eliminating the freezing problem. Still, the processor is slow, but it seems to me that processors are severely limited by the read/write speed of their hard disks. So when I bought this netbook I got a Cavalry Storage Pelican Series 32 GB solid state drive at the same time. The switch was as simple as it could be: two screws, a simple and gentle sliding out of the stock drive, then reverse the process with the SSD. I swear, it's like I've got a dual core in here now! The delays and stuttering I got with the stock drive are gone, and now it's just fast, fluid, accurate. I also just as easily upgrade the RAM to 2GB. And, as I get Windows 7 Enterprise through my work, I of course loaded it right on this baby to see how she ran -- and she runs great. I also have MS Office, Adobe reader, Avast antivirus, and a plethora of small programs and personal files -- but I still have almost 17GB of space left on the drive. You should also know that I have tried two Acers before this one (the 150 and the overrated 1410) as well as netbooks by Dell and Asus, but this 751 is the only one I haven't sent back -- and won't.

This was a replacement for a worn out Gateway laptop and it was a gift. I have had no issues what so ever and reccomend this for travelers and folks that want an reliable little machine.

I use computers a lot :) I'll keep this short:

Good points:

1. Price
2. Size (even with the extended battery, its very thin and light)
3. Good screen size (BUT the screen needs to be color calibrated.)
4. Decent keyboard...take a little bit of getting use to.

Bad points:

A few people on here commented on lack of speed and at just 1.3Mhz it could be a little slow.
The KEY to performance is the same as on any computer: Get raid of all the crap they load into it.
Remove ALL programs you don't need e.g. McAfee anti-virus etc. every program that is running in the
background burns up CPU power. Once you strip the computer down to the bare essentials the performance
is perfectly fine for what it needs to be. After all, its a netbook not a desktop replacement.

***The Good***
For the price, this netbook is a good buy w/ excellent screen size, battery life and sleek looks.

***The Bad***
-Returned the first one because there was an erratic fan noise which sometimes came on as soon as the netbook powered on. The new one has no issues.
-Acer Support is weak. You will be on-hold a long time calling the 1-800 number, easier emailing them.
-Video performance is lacking, watching Hulu videos on full-screen is choppy.
-Need to remove a lot of unwanted pre-installed programs. In all fairness, most new machines comes w/ the same.

I would have rated this higher if not for the return and bad customer experience.

I run Ubuntu on this and it never ever crashes. However, my wife has problems with Vista constantly freezing up. Not my problem. This is a great little computer. It's a little slow but not bad if you don't run Vista. It has everything. Plenty of ram, hard drive space, web cam, microphone, 3 usb, external video port, ethernet port, wifi, battery that last 3 hours (when I get the 9 cell, I could be online all day), EVERYTHING. Can stand in as your only computer, if you don't need to do serious computing. However, I program in Netbeans and run a database and web server on this little baby. I also listen to music and watch videos on it fine. For the price, this is the best computer I have ever bought.

We liked this netbook at first. It was shipped and received quickly and arrived in good condition, from RCS, through Amazon.

It arrived on 1 November and we put it into operation immediately. It functioned beautifully on our wireless home network. We were very pleased to find that its battery life exceeds 8 hours.

But, on 16 November, the display started behaving strangely. The normal blue background color on startup became red, with some circles and other artifacts. Everything we looked at seemed almost solarized, with lots of pink and red overtones. We like the red color of the netbook case, but we did not expect the display to follow the same color scheme. Except for the display anomalies, the system continued to work very well.

I am reasonably computer savvy, so I tried all the things that might conceivably affect the display properties. Removing the battery and using only the AC adapter did not change anything. Starting up in safe mode changed nothing. There were no driver problems, etc.

So, we went online on another computer, to the Acer website and entered the appropriate information--we had already registered the netbook with Acer--; I was in the process of e-mailing Acer's customer service to get some help, when the site told me a customer service chat was available. We quickly verified that the problem lay with the monitor of the netbook and that there was nothing we could do on our end. The chat technician quickly provided us with a prepaid FEDEX shipping number and detailed packaging instructions for returning the unit to them in Temple, TX. We were advised that it would be repaired and returned within 7 to 10 business days of the date they received it. In a few days, we had an e-mail telling us that they have received it. Now, we will wait and see when it gets back to us.


Update 1: The netbook was received back from Acer's Texas repair facility on 30 November, with total turnaround time 10 days; the return would have been sooner had not the Thanksgiving holiday intervened. The monitor problem was corrected. The report said an LCD cable was replaced. UNFORTUNATELY, THE INDICATOR LIGHTS ON THE LOWER LEFT OF THE KEYBOARD DO NOT FUNCTION NOW, AND THEY FUNCTIONED PROPERLY BEFORE REPAIR. IN OTHER WORDS, A NEW PROBLEM WAS CREATED BY THE REPAIR.

We got another online chat, and the technicians suggested reloading the BIOS, which we did; that had no effect. They also suggested doing an e-recovery but that had no effect. The only other alternatives they could suggest is local repair [any computer repair shop, AT OUR EXPENSE], or return it again to the repair facility. We told them we are disappointed that no one checked the lights when the monitor problem was corrected. Since the battery indicator and wireless LAN indicator lights are not essential to function, we chose, for the moment, to continue using it as is, with the provision that the problem will be corrected if we have some additional reason to return the unit for warranty service. We hoped there will be no reason, seeing that we had now had it for less than a full month. We do give Acer good marks on the chat assistance, but we wish they had checked TO BE SURE THEY HAD NOT CREATED NEW PROBLEMS while they had it. In this instance, THE REPAIR CREATED NEW PROBLEMS.

Update 2: After several attempts with Acer customer service, we are told that the only option to correct the indicator lights problem--WHICH ACER'S REPAIR OF THE MONITOR CREATED--is to return the unit again to Texas for repair. We have no assurance that another session with the repair center will not create some new problem or malfunction, so we are pretty much reconciled to living without the indicator lights. Besides that, we don't need to have this unit out of our hands and use for another couple of weeks. I suggested that they send a fully functional new one for exchange, but they ignored that request.

WE ARE THOROUGHLY DISAPPOINTED that Acer cannot provide us with a fully functional unit, seeing that we ordered and paid for one. I would recommend that people read more reviews before purchasing any Acer product. Had we known what our experiences would have been with repairs, or even the necessity of repairs in a new netbook, we would have chosen some other brand.

I already have a Dell Mini 10 white, 1366x768, so the text is very tiny. This cool red one's screen is 1.6 inch bigger with the same resolution, so viewing is much more comfortable than the Dell. The Dell Mini 10 gets hot quite easily, and this Acer is the same but just a little less hot, maybe due to the slight larger size. I bought a large battery, but size and weight don't matter. I strongly recommend you to buy large battery, just about $20-$30 more. The big downside is the power adaptor's cable. The adaptor itself is quite small, but the cable to the outlet is very thick and takes a lot of storage when carrying in a bag. To make it clear, 110V wall outlet --- thick cable --- adaptor --- thin cable --- laptop. I can't understand why the thick cable is necessary. The Dell Mini 10 doesn't have the thick cable, like cell phone chargers, 110V wall outlet --- adaptor --- thin cable --- laptop, so it is quite handy. That is why I rated 4 starts, since it really hurts the netbook's mobility.

My husband bought this for me so I would give his computer back to him and for my ebaying I do. It's the perfect size for me since I run around the house a lot with it. It doesn't have a cd drivce but most items I've needed to download I've found through their sites or copied from the other computer to a usb. One downfall I found was how impossible it is to find a computer case for this size (11.6")-so I just made my own. Great product, fast and convenient-well worth the money. :-)