laptop reviews

The recent Amazon sub 239 tariff keeps this form factor relevant, as does the battery life, but be sure to check out the Acer Aspire One AO756-2808 11.6-Inch Netbook (Ash Black) as well, at least when Amazon has it back in stock for 3 bills or so. 7-19-12 note

The best reasons for buying the Acer AOD 270:

* One of the best netbbook screens - pretty evenly illuminated, and sufficient latitude in viewing angles so that when you are centered, none of the corners or edges are showing signs of diffracting.

Don't laugh, on some netbooks and even notebooks, the viewing angles can be SO limited that even if your head is centered relative to the screen, some part of the screen will be shaded, washed out, or diffracted.

Videos look pretty good on the AOD270 (but not as good as on a flat screen tv).

(If you want "great" video, you will probably have to move up to the much more expensive Macbook Air or shift to a completely different experience in the form of an iPad with its multi-angle IPS display.)

* Very thin design, very light, especially with the 3 cell battery, which can be purchased separately if you start with this 6 cell version. Note that this netbook and almost all non-Apple laptops come with somewhat short-lived batteries, good for two to four years (depends on charge cycles) before the loss of battery life drives you to buy a new battery (which you can replace yourself, cheaply, which helps compensate for the battery mortality). (Since the review I took the 6 cell battery off an earlier Acer netbook and put in on this newer unit, and it works fine and adds a couple of hours of battery life; it doesn't stick out for the bottom too much.)

* Screen tilts back far enough so that you won't have viewing angl e problems if using this on a kitchen counter while standing up.

* Larger keys with acceptable spacing. Intuitive "break" on the keys so tactile feedback is there that your keystroke was accepted. (A little noisy though.)

* Plays 480p (DVD quality) video smoothly, with fewer minor glitches with downloaded vs. streaming content (since streaming imposes an additional processing overhead)

* HDMI port lets you hook this up to your (modern) flat screen tv to play Hulu content, which you can't get on a Roku (without paying a subscription fee, although the fee includes additional video content).

* Great alternative to an iPad if you are on a budget, or a great supplement to an iPad if you type a lot. Despite the many accessory keyboards for iPads, the keyboard on most netbooks is superior. Pros for the iPad? Instant on, superior viewing angles, incredible screen on the "new" or "3" iPad, incredible battery life. Cons - won't run Windows p rograms (huge if you have wordprocessing and other office needs, or want to run a blog).

* Great alternative to a Macbook Air if you are on a budget, if you worry about theft or damage (netbooks are priced so low as to be a "no worry" item), or if you worry about getting the wrong type of attention. Of course the Macbook Air weighs the same but has a larger screen, larger keyboard, and the keyboard is back-illuminated for easy typing in low light or the dark, making it the ultimate production netbook (even though Apple denies it is a netbook, LOL).

Finally, this Atom N2600 netbook is incredibly zippy once you clean out some of the bloatware and install a leaner antivirus program (Microsoft Security Essentials is completely free and very efficent, both in detecting threats and having a small footprint in RAM).

Here is my routine for setting up a new netbook (this applies to versions from other makers as well):

1. Don't accept the of fer to install the commercial antivirus program which has a "free" trial offer. It's designed for computers with a lot more memory and processing power, and is the number one cause of sluggishness in netbooks. Don't worry about the "unprotected" messages you will get because you will fix that right away.

2. After booting up the first time, open Internet Explorer and say "no" to the guided tour and any other options, then enter "download Google Chrome" into the search box (or Chrome Beta, which has always been stable for me). Note how much space Internet Explorer wastes on the top of the screen, when Chrome opens you will see a much cleaner but highly functional browser window).

3. Install Google Chrome - just follow the simple on-screen instructions.

4. In the Google search box (Google lets you choose among search engines when you install it, I like Google best although Bing from Microsoft is also quite good) search for "download MSE" which w ill take you to the Microsoft page to download Microsoft Security... Read more

For 0, this is a great netbook. It won't replace your home machine, but it's small, light, and the battery really does last for six to eight hours. Using a 4GB memory card for ReadyBoost makes it fast enough to be useable for Office and internet, while the machine is already capable enough to stream video.

Picked up one of these little Acer N2600 netbooks for my wife to haul around on the road. It's actually an impressive little machine, especially after some upgrades. Probably the biggest need is to upgrade the memory to 2 GB. They only install 1 GB in order to keep the price down, but that amount of memory is just too borderline for many needs. Memory is cheap these days, though, and it really can improve the user experience. Changing the memory can be a little intimidating as you need to take the machine half-way apart to access the memory slot(including disconnecting the keyboard temporarily). The previous comment had some tips on that.

I also did the in-place upgrade from Windows Starter to Windows Home Premium. The upgrade code can be purchased on Amazon for about half of the listed retail price. Just makes it a better user experience in many ways. The Windows upgrade probably took about 30 minutes from start to finish but then security patches needed to be downloaded also.

At first I thought the netbook didn't contain a microphone but that was a minor issue with Skype (user error). My wife is using an external mic plugged into the mic port to get a bit higher quality sound.

The wireless N is kind of a "light" version that is capped at 72 Mbps maximum download rate. It's enough for most internet needs, however, and it seems to have good enough range.