Tobold's Blog
Saturday, September 20, 2008
 
Acer Aspire One 150

My Dell XPS laptop is sitting on my desk and rarely moving. Charger included the thing weights several kilograms, and even with "only" having a 12" screen, it is too big to fit into my briefcase. Great solution to take with me on holidays if I want to play games. Not so great on a business trip where I just want Office and the internet. So I decided to spend €399 on an Acer Aspire One 150 netbook, as it was said to be even better than the eeePC. I got the Windows XP version, with 1 GB RAM and 120 GB hard drive (in addition to a 8 GB flash drive).

I'll have to test drive it in normal business day application, but up to now I'm quite happy with it. It is small and lightweight enough to fit into my briefcase, but the 9" screen, keyboard, and touchpad are big enough to work with. The A150 comes with WiFi, but I do have an USB 3G modem recently acquired for when there is not WiFi signal to be found. Europe doesn't have all that many free WiFi spots, often you need to pay €10 or so for one hour of WiFi connection. So my 3G modem costing €5 per month plus €1 per day of use is actually cheaper as long as I only use it in Belgium. Roaming charges for data are horrible, so I'd only use it for emergencies outside Belgium.

I was laughing about this Acer Aspire One 150 review, where they even managed to get World of Warcraft running on it at 800x600 resolution and 24 frames per second. I don't think I'm going to use it for that.
Comments:
No mentioning of WoW on that netbook in the linked review. Can you look into it?
 
2. page, 2. paragraph

"...but we were able to run World of Warcraft at a relatively smooth 23.9 frames per second (albeit at a low 800 x 600-pixel resolution)."
 
I've got a rebadged MSI wind that plays WOW happily at about 18 fps 1024x600 in real- world play (rather than best case). Now I wouldn't want to raid or PvP with that, but it's great for soloing on boring nights in the hotel when I'm away for work, and the machine weighs next to nothing. It's hard to imagine any other modern MMO being played ok a netbook. In a few years I can see these little beauties being good enough for almost all WOW needs. They're cheap enough to upgrade regularly too.
 
Hey Tobold - I'm in the UK and I've got a 3 data modem, and apparently these roam quite well. According to the '3 Like home' my mobile data allowance is still inclusive in several different countries - useful when I'm working in Italy as well! (Honestly, I do *work*)
 
Post a Comment

<< Home
Newer›  ‹Older

  Powered by Blogger   Free Page Rank Tool