Acer Aspire One Computer

Acer Aspire One vs IBM Thinkpad T23

The Model

I needed a small, very portable laptop for use in the car, and on photo expeditions, and in hotels. I had been watching the market since before the Asus Eee PC came out. Then I had to wait another year for the screen and keyboard to grow, and for the price to be right. Now dozens of companies are making these things.

I chose the Acer Aspire One over the other small laptops largely based on price and the large keyboard. I opted for the model with the real 120GB hard disk and Windows XP for versatility. The Solid State Drive would have been nice for ruggedness, but the small capacity, slow speed, and limited life weren't appealing. Besides, someday when they get cheaper, I can replace the hard disk with an SSD.

Sudden Death

My first machine lasted 5 days before it died. It was working fine, and I tried to reboot it. It went down but then never woke back up, no matter what I did to it. The power light would come on, but nothing else. I took it back to the store and got another one, which is working fine (so far). I found some discussions on several forums about this, and it seems that a lot of people are having this problem. I hope this one lasts.

Acer Aspire One running Windows XP

Operating System

Of course, Windows XP needs some help from a real operating system.

I ran Windows XP, got it all set up, deleted all the junkware and installed my software, and then made a backup of the system using Ghost. I wiped the hard drive, created a 20GB partition, and reimaged WinXP into it. I created a 70GB FAT32 partition for data storage and easy access from WinXP or Linux. Then I installed Zenwalk Linux 5.2 into another 20GB partition and a 1GB swap partition.

Acer Aspire One running Zenwalk GNU/Linux

The machine will boot from an external USB drive (floppy, hard, CD, etc). I use an external Passport drive for backup of photographs on trips and for OS imaging. I have also installed alternate operating systems on it, which makes a snappy test environment.

Note: This information is here just for fun, and is not supported in any way.