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Acer Aspire One Linux OS

Rohan Naravane, Aug 28, 2008 1226 hrs IST

The OS in the Aspire One is highly customized and claims to make Linux user-friendly for the common man.

Expert Rating:

Neat and Organized interface, Attractive, Decent selection of built-in applications.

There is a lag at times, No package manager, Default player does not support DivX video format, Wi-fi connectivity.

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EXPERT REVIEW

The Work tab has got the OpenOffice Office Suite applications for Word documents, Spreadsheets, Presentation files and is one of the best freely available Office suites. It is compatible with MS Office file-types. Other tools include a Sticky notes app, calculator among others. Adobe Acrobat 8 is pre-installed to take care of PDF files. A calendar app is provided for basic Personal Information Management (PIM) tasks.

The Fun tab includes a Media Master tool that handles all multimedia files. It has an easy-to-use interface, supports album-art but has no equalizer options. It played back MP3 and WMA files. There's also another video-centric application called 'MPlayer'. But neither was able to play a movie encoded in the DivX format, which is a shame considering it's such a popular file format for videos.

The Photo Master tool is similar to the Windows Live Photo Gallery or the Picture viewer of Windows Vista. It lets you slideshow pictures from a folder with smooth transitions. Next to it is the web-cam application, which lets you record video or take a snapshot from the sensor built into the Aspire One. This application delivered somewhat better output than the Windows XP-based one.

There are 11 games pre-installed. Some of them like 'Puck', which is like virtual Air Hockey and a Mario remake called 'Super Tux' were fun to play. While there was a paint application that resembled MS Paint of Windows, I was surprised to see that the Gimp (which is a free Photoshop alternative) was not bundled with the OS.

USER COMMENTS

The linux version of this netbook is available for 20k in India, on the contrary Acer sells laptops with proper 80gb HDD and DVD ROMS for 21-22k This beats the whole purpose of acer launching this netbook in India. Another interesting observation is that in the US market this netbook is now selling for approximately 350$ which is about 14.5k here in India. Although there might be differences in duties and taxation but a 30% price increase is certainly no possible due to these alone. Such marketing poilicies by Acer make this netbook as worthless buy. It is a sheer waste of money buying it in India, Although it is a great product in itself but the pricing policy is a sham on acer's part and is actually surprising considering the fact IBM is looking at India as one of the major markets of its soon to be launched S10 netbook.

by Girish Singh, Delhi, on Sep 14, 2008 09:02 PM, Report abuse Reply

Notebook is very fun... But I want install Windows XP on it. And my installation is not complite(((

by Voodoo, Saratov, on Sep 02, 2008 06:06 PM, Report abuse Reply

No package manger? There's RPM, you just have to enable the advanced mode to use that. I'll install Skype the minute I get mine.

by Henrik R Clause, Brabrand, on Aug 30, 2008 02:23 PM, Report abuse Reply

My boot results were very different from yours. From an XP/120GB machine 75 seconds. From a Linpus/Flash machine, 15-20 seconds. Both machines were in stores in the U.S.

by David Friedman, San Jose, CA, USA, on Aug 29, 2008 09:09 PM, Report abuse Reply

Has something very important been missed in the conclusion is the million "$" question?

by techtree, techtree, on Aug 28, 2008 12:58 PM, Report abuse Reply

It's just a review of the OS, you can either choose to buy the version with XP and pay 2000 more for just the OS or you can get the version of the aspire with linux, same hardware, 2000 bucks less.

by Anonymous, chicago, on Aug 28, 2008 01:58 PM, Report abuse

Its not really the same hardware - AFAIR the Linux version has less memory and SSD disk

by flywheel, Broendby, on Aug 29, 2008 01:01 PM, Report abuse

They copied the MS window decorator....that's ridiculus. They could have done something more inovative...

by zelrik, winnipeg, on Aug 28, 2008 09:39 PM, Report abuse Reply