Design:
Beautiful is one word to describe the Aspire One. No doubts the highly metallic color schemes, the chrome accents and stark bezel (although rather large) it seems to fit in with the niche that looking good for mobile devices might surpass the purpose they were developed for. I do admit that the glossy screen and paint finish is nice, but attracts dirt and fingerprints like kids to a candy store. The trackpad also offers some confusion. I’m at a loss as to why they put the buttons where they did, it is a little awkward so be prepared for that.
Being that this is an 8.9” LCD model, one would hope or expect that the actual dimensions of the unit would be smaller than other netbooks with the 10” display. You would be wrong – the bezel makes up the big chunk of space that provides the extra dimensional space, and when you pick up the 6-cell battery version as we did, the depth of the unit is actually larger than some of the 10” modeled netbooks out there! That’s because Acer opted to protrude the extra capacity to the rear (not down as in the MSI Wind) it makes for a bulky back that doesn’t offer lift, and might make the dimensions hard to find a “bag” made for such dimensions. If it’s one thing that I do love on the design, is the simple LED status lights which are located towards the top rear of the unit – making things visible no matter if the LCD is open, or closed. One thing I also dislike is the way Acer implemented the Wireless radio button – slider thing. It’s cumbersome and should have been a plain button instead. It’s too easy to accidently trigger, and when you really want to trigger it, it’s hard to tell with the slider if you have “slid it all the way” to disable / enable it.
