Heh, Joe, I almost never look at the authors of Bit's articles, but I can always tell when you write an article...

i find most laptops are lucky if thay get to 1hr 30 mins of bat time (norm use)

Thanks to the register, i like to use the term "laptots". Baby laptops :D

And since reading about the frankly amazing battery life of the atom flavoured EEE, 2 and a bit hours sounds pathetic.

what's the atom eee get? and is it a real-world number or a "claimed" battery life?

The Register says the Eee 901 can run for 4.5hours with wifi on and screen at 100% brightness. But then it comes with a 6600mAH battery.

I'm quite temped to get one of these for work, its a pain in the ass using the horribly shlow desktop at work and then draggging all the files onto a USB1 pen stick to bring them home each night....but im sure as hell not gunna commute with a big bluky laptop....this could be the asnwer.

So for an under £300 subnotebook - is this king?


As tjis is open office on a linux based system is it a complete strech to imagine I'll be able to open MS office documents on it?

"Depending on what you're trying to do with the Aspire One at half-past three in the morning in a dirty LA motel that smells of old dishwater and rot, that can be an issue."

Sure sounds like the motel I stayed in on Santa Monica Beach (Would name it, but scared of their lawyers :D )

Nice review - im for getting one of these babys, but i think i will wait for the 6 cell battery version!

£330 - £370 for the MSI WInd? I bought the 4211 for £279.99 for PC world, not sure where you're paying £370 for it

Originally Posted by DougEdey
£330 - £370 for the MSI WInd? I bought the 4211 for £279.99 for PC world, not sure where you're paying £370 for it

Based on Google Shopping searches and surveying the average prices. Fairer than looking at specific retailers.

As for is this the king? Maybe. I have an Eee 701 and I'm very much considering selling that to pay for one of these.

Originally Posted by DougEdey
£330 - £370 for the MSI WInd? I bought the 4211 for £279.99 for PC world, not sure where you're paying £370 for it

4211 is ugly, but still does the same job as the nicely finished MSI wind..

4211? dont think i have seen that...


this looks so tempting but with two laptops and a computer on my desk and soon to be a Cybook Gen 3, can i really justifiy this? lol!

I am waiting for my paycheck to come and then I am buying one. Costs 317€ in Finland and IMO perfect for Uni to type up notes. You can even stick in a Ipod HDD as the SSD in the One uses a ZIF connector. If you guys want more info check www.aspireoneuser.com. the forum is full with mods and hacks.

awesome, really tempted now!

Any idea if there's a 6 or 9-cell battery available?

Picked up one on saturday from pcworld (I couldn't be bothered to wait for play to deliver). About the only things that I'd add to Joe's review would be:
No Bluetooth - bit annoying this.
Battery life is quite rubbish, but the 6 cell battery will be available separately soon.
Track pad - I got used to this pretty quick
Upgradeability - you do need to almost completely disassemble the One just to put more RAM in, but it's not to bad. Inside there is quite a lot of space, apparently more than the EEE, and I'll be trying to solder in a bluetooth adapter fairly soon.
All in al lI'm pretty happy with mine, I've managed to install ubuntu, which works quite smoothly (Linpus was more stripped down), and if you need any more information the forums at aspireoneuser.com are great (especially the instructions for installing ubuntu).

Couldn't agree more, Joe. The One is definitely the nicest looking and feeling netbook I've used and the blue finish is gorgeous. Such a shame about the batttery - needs a minimum of six cell.

If I look for the Aspire one, I get several variants:
A110L, A150L and A150X

So L and X are Linux and XP...but which one did you test?

A110L, I believe.

Thx for the quick reply

Building an ultra-portable notebook - or UMPC or sub-notebook or whatever the hell you want to call it – shouldn't be all that hard, but the sheer number of companies out there struggling to get it right seems to imply that there are hidden complexities to the task.

They're called "netbooks".

I've heard them called many, many other things. Beside, I think Intel actually owns the rights to the phrase Netbook.

My favourite is one I heard from an EVGA rep on Thursday - Babybook.

Subnotebooks works too. Defnitely not UMPC though.

I guess you can consider "netbook" to be a subset of the Subnotebook category.

Just looked up who owns the trademark to the phrase "netbook", and it belongs to Psion and they've had it since at least 1996.

Intel just reused the phrase and don't appear to own it at all.

I heard also webbook as a name and I quite like it.