List Price: $301.99
Sale Price: $290.07
Today's Bonus: 4% Off
I bought this laptop because it was about the cheapest full-blown laptop I could find, and because its OS was listed as Linux. It's not as cheap as some of the Chromebooks, but you can install any OS you want on it, which was the main draw for me.
It is supposed to come with Linpus Linux preinstalled, which is a distribution based on Fedora, according to their website. However, whatever was on the hard drive was text-only, and root only. As far as I could tell there was no rpm command or yum command installed on the system. I couldn't even add a non-root user. I find it odd that Acer would sell a laptop in this state. It didn't really bother me because I was going to wipe it and install Linux Mint anyway, but this would be a very bad experience for a novice user. Perhaps it was a production hiccup or something. I don't know.
It comes with an installation CD, which I assume can get you a working OS, but since the machine doesn't have a cdrom, unless you have an external USB CDROM or something, it's kind of useless.
Once I got a working OS installed on it (using an installation image written to a USB thumb drive), though, the hardware really started to shine. Its processor is fast enough (dual core 1.5 GHz Intel), its video rendering far exceeded my expectations (it is able to drive its built-in screen as well as an external 1080p monitor at the same time without hiccups), and it's got a lot of memory for such a cheap machine (4GB). The battery life is good. I can get 4-5 hours of use between charges.
The trackpad is also the mouse button (no separate mouse buttons), and it will detect a two finger press so you can right-click, scroll, etc., but that's something to get used to. It also has a webcam, but I have yet to use it, so I won't comment on it. One small annoyance is the spacebar; it's hard to get it to respond to being pressed.
But all in all, it's been a good experience.
PROs: price; unlocked bootloader and BIOS (with option to disable EUFI); acceptable sound; good screen; nice CPU performance; excellent video performance; good battery life
CONS: linux experts only; no hard disk, caps lock, or num lock indicator LEDs (very strange); funky battery form factor (raises the laptop at least a half inch in the back when placed on a table)
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I needed a small portable laptop to take with me during travel. I had originally purchased a Lenovo S400 but that was a nightmare and the original selling vendor took it back after it spent ten weeks in the Lenovo service depot where they broke more than they fixed.After reading the end user license agreement (EULA) for Windows 8, I decided that it was not acceptable. A Mac airbook is great, but I just cannot afford that. I did much reading and decided to buy this machine from Amazon. It took about a week to get it, I think that it must be a special order item from Acer to Amazon. At that time, the product listing said that it is sold and shipped from Amazon, but it will take an extra 1 to 2 days.
The unit came and I tried it out. The Keyboard is the right size and I can touch type on it just fine. Smaller netbooks will not allow touch typing except for people with very small hands. The screen is also of adequate size to use and is quite functional.
The installed linux is not installed. A loop device has been created and a stripped text mode only linux live disk was copied onto the hard drive. This is the same as putting a live disk in CD drive, except that this machine has no CD drive. This is a very nice small machine and is very portable.
In other words, they wanted to put something of an OS on it to ship it, but they realize that Linux users each have their own favorite distribution. I put Suse 12.3 on it and it took about 20 minutes. Of course, I needed an external CD drive for this. I spent about another 20 minutes putting in the applications and programs that I wanted and adjusting the settings for my preferences.
The included CD that came with the machine is a batch of drivers for Windows, I do not know why they included it with this machine.
The machine has 4 GB of RAM. Some of it is shared with the graphics. The installation did use all of the RAM. But since installed, the system monitor shows that it rarely goes over 2 GB during use. This is a machine for carrying with me. When I want to do some heavy computing, I use a big machine. I did not see an access panel for adding any more RAM, but it is supposed to have two sockets and allow a maximum of 8 GB.
This unit has a large battery in it. On the negative, it adds a little weight. But not much. On the positive side, it adds much usable time between recharges. Another neat thing about it is that it is in the back bottom of the machine and lifts the back up, giving the machine just the right incline for touch typing (I am using it for this review) and it also allows for air flow under the machine.
I have used this machine for about a week now and have found it very stable, very usable, and one of the best little laptops that I have ever seen or used. It has full power, (unlike a netbook), it has a long battery life (will see, One has to charge it all the way up and then run it down to 20% several times to cycle it properly to give it good life), a normal size keyboard, a usable screen, and it works very well with Suse Linux, and in all, I am extremely pleased.
I will have to say that someone who knows what they are doing will have to install the Linux, this is not for an amateur who does not read instructions. Once it is installed, it is a great machine, and I recommend it to anyone. It is Linux, not Windows, so if you are looking for Windows, then buy a machine with that on it.
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