Customer Reviews

Acer Aspire One AO751h-1346 11.6-Inch Black Netbook - 3+ Hour Battery Life

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've really enjoyed using this little laptop for the past 1.5 weeks. The size is perfect. You get a full-size keyboard and a beautiful 11.6" high resolution screen. And unlike other netbooks, you never feel like you are viewing the internet through a mail slot.

It's not perfect however. Remember, this is still a netbook, not a full-powered laptop. Here's the rundown of pros and cons. For me, the pros outweigh the cons, but others may prefer to wait a few months for similar size machines from Lenovo, Dell, Asus, and others to hit the market.

Pros:
- Beautiful screen with great horizontal viewing angles
- Full-size keyboard
- Lightweight (2.7 lbs with three cell battery)
- Only slightly larger than many 10" netbooks and significantly thinner than many of those 10" models
- Very sharp looking machine
- Reasonably solid in terms of build quality


Cons:
- Slower 1.33 GHz processor
- Flash videos from YouTube and Hulu are choppy (dropped frames and stuttering). This is a problem with most netbooks, but a little worse here because of the 1.33 GHz processor.
- three cell battery only gives a bit over 3 hrs of runtime (the 6-cell would fix this, but would stick out of the rear of the case a bit)
- touchpad rocker button is harder to push than it should be
- touchpad surface has some drag (turn the pointer speed up to help with this)
- keyboard keys are very flat (I got used to this and grew to love the keyboard, others may object).
- arrow keys are tiny, despite full-size keyboard
- ships with lots of bloatware and trial software pre-installed
- Graphics chipset is not Linux friendly. Don't expect full graphics acceleration in Linux anytime soon.
- Fingerprints show easily on the glossy case

Overall: It's the first 11.6" netbook available in the U.S. and the *form-factor* is a winner! However, you'll have to live with a few quirks. For me, the benefits of the larger screen and keyboard outweigh the downsides. I can never go back to a 10" netbook again. It has enough power for me to play music while browsing the internet, while working in MS Word and MS Excel. That's my standard working situation. The only performance issues come with streaming media. Still a good choice for those who want a netbook they can do real work on.

(I purchased mine at Walmart with Windows Vista, 2GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, and 3-cell battery for under four-hundred bucks).

I was waiting for a netbook with higher resolution with 100% full size keyboard.
Acer aspire one 11.6 inch was the first solution.
It is very light, quite, and reliable.
And it has 16:9 HD ratio LCD. Perfect for watching movies with wxga resolution.
Full size keyboard is very comfortable to type.
It's perfect for everyday casual use.
But, I miss two thing.
First, CPU power. It's only 1.33 Ghz.
I even play avchd video(1440x1080) thanks to hardware decoder with 60-70% CPU usage.
But, that's it. It only plays video with no sound with pre-installed PowerDVD 8.
After I add audio codec and play it with sound, it fails to play avchd smoothly.
My 6 years old IBM T41 (1.4Ghz) manages to play avhcd with avivo, but this one doesn't.
If CPU is little more powerful, then it might play hd video without any problem.
But, what can I expect for netbook under $400. It is endurable.
Second, the mic. is too week. I enabled the mic boost option with 100% volume.
But, when I run audio setup in live messenger, it never reaches to yellow area.
As a result, my wife often says "I can't hear you" during video conversation.
I think microphone volume is the only problem. Acer should use a littler better mic.
In conclusion, this is very nice netbook with fancy feature with reasonable price.
But acer should improve the microphone gain.

***

Extra comments on avchd play and Windows 7 RC.
After I installed Windows 7 RC with aero interface off, it plays avchd smoothly with windows media player without installing any extra codec.

All the drivers and application for Vista on acer webpage works fine with Windows 7 except video driver. But, Windows 7 downloads the video driver automatically using windows update and everything works fine.

With aero interface, OS itself gets very slow although net book manages to run it. But without aero interface, it is fast (not as fast as XP though).

I also bought one at Costco. I enjoy being able to read the screen. My son got my 10 inch Dell, that performs just a bit better than the Acer, but the fonts were a bit too small on the Dell for my older eyes. Are there better note books out there?? sure, but this is perfect for the quick lookup at the kitchen table or laying in bed watching tv with the wife. Not near as hot as the HP Tablet or The HP Bronze. It is a bit slow, but I've loaded MS Office Essentials and it works great. I don;t plan on playing games, as do some other reviewers, but might watch a few YouTube "educational" clips from time to time. The wife also enjoys being able to enter her rebates at the kitchen table with the Acer... She is a big fan of "Myrebates.com" LOL

The touchpad is a bit "Touchy" But for under 3 lbs I can make do, and not fry my lap with those other bar burners.... iwould like a better battery life than the three plus hours The build seems to be quality, Even for the weight, Better than some much more expensive. I remember the early Compac portables and have to laugh at the difference..

I originally purchased the 7" eeepc and later graduated to the 10" 1000 series. I loved the performance of those computers but had one problem, the keyboards were too small! I found myself avoiding any moderate typing and switching to my desktop.

When I saw this 11.6 Acer and its full sized keyboard, I was immediately interested but was concerned about the Z520-Vista performance comments. I couldn't resist so I ordered the AO751H-1346 with a 250HD, 2GB RAM and Vista Home Basic. For 299.00 and free shipping, I figured I couldn't go wrong and I could always downgrade to XP.

I received the computer from Amazon in 3 days but the performance issue was instantly apparent. It was very sluggish, took 2 minutes to boot and was almost unusable by my standards. Thought I made another horrible mistake and should have believed all those other performance reviews.

I started to uninstall all the pre installed bloat. The installed size of Home Basic was 25GB and I reduced it to about 12GB and boom!, it runs perfect. The main culprit is McAfee Security Center and now the computer is quick and boot time is down to about 40 seconds.

I took it a step further, I shrank the single C partition and created 2 additional partitions...ended up with C-D-E drives. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate on the D drive to dual boot and use the E drive for data.

Windows 7 installed without a hitch, about 7GB and no drivers were required. It runs perfect, even with aero enabled. The only changes I made were to remove Internet Explorer and Media Player and replaced them with Google Chrome and Klite Mega. These are personal preferences and not necessary. I just find Chrome faster and Media Player Classic simpler and better performing on slower processors.

My only complaints are minimal. For some reason, I couldn't burn the recovery disks. I tried 3 different burners and ended up with validation errors. I gave up and instead of wasting money on disks, ordered one from Acer, which arrived in 2 days. I also don't care for the glossy black finish, too many fingerprints but no big deal.

All in all, this is a fine machine and couldn't be happier. It doesn't replace a desktop but it does everything for which it's designed, travel, browsing and light duty applications. You don't need to do what I did, just uninstall all the bloat and you should be very satisfied.

The slightly larger screen and full-size keyboard are defintely a plus. So far, it seems to be a great little computer. My only complaint would be the lack of a CD drive so software must be downloaded directly off the internet or you need to have an external drive. This is the case with most netbooks however, so it's not really a ding against this one in particular. The processor could be alittle faster but it's an extra for taking to classes etc. so most work will be done on a faster desktop anyway. It's fast enough for what I need. The price on Amzon was great...best I could find.

Great deal, perfect for traveling, so light, lots of computer time without recharging, love it

Bought one of these at Costco. Initially the wireless networking was very sluggish, and the system locked up frequently - requiring a power off and reboot. A visit to Acer's website yielded lots of new drivers and a new BIOS. After installing these the networking was much improved, but the system continued to lock up on a regular basis. After a couple of days we gave up and returned it.

I can't believe I've been asked to review this! I never got what I ordered! The computer was sold as new yet the box I did get had been opened, Vista had been replaced with Ubuntu, and there were even hand prints on the laptop case. All this despite printed matter on the box wrongly confirming specifications I ordered but didn't receive. One would think that a shipping department would at least carefully inspect the returned junk that they restock before reshipping it to the next unsuspecting buyer. I'm in no hurry to buy again from Amazon!

I love this little Acer. I use it for everything. My music, movies and for games. Speed is great. Its neat and compact. Fits into my purse for use on the go. The price is good for a small system that packs in 250GB. I bought mine in black. The only negative is that it wasnt available in Pink.