First Impressions of the Acer Aspire One 751h 11.6″ Netbook

Calling it a netbook is an insult.  It’s more appropriately called an affordable ultra-portable. That’s how I’d sum up the Aspire One 751h.

This Crunchgear review of the Acer Aspire One 751h netbook is dead on. My experience jives completely with the review.  But the advice to disable (and not replace!) the antivirus software horrifies me.  Just ignore that part.  Everything else is spot on.

(AVG is a good free antivirus you can use to replace the bundled trial McAfee.)

The 11.6″ Aspire One line might be the perfect on-the-go work machine.  It’s light and skinny (1″ thick), but big enough to do real work. The 600 px height of 7″ netbooks feel claustrophobic. I carried it in my messenger bag all day, along with the power brick, with no problems.  Sub 4-lb laptops are nice.

It’s very nice, but it’s not perfect. A more powerful processor and reconfigured trackpad area in this chassis would be the perfect portable work laptop.

Four cons you should be aware of:

1. Not for watching videos. It’s underpowered and/or has crappy drivers. Mine comes with Vista Home.  Some users say upgrade to Windows 7 makes the machine speedier and video watchable.

2. It’s a fingerprint magnet. On the top cover and around the trackpad. See pictures at Crunchgear to understand the ridiculousness of the situation. What’s the point of a pretty, glossy cover if it’s always covered with smudges?

3. The trackpad buttons suck.  Being depressed and stiff, you have to lift up your entire hand to get a good clicking angle.  This is only a problem for right-clicks since you can tap the touchpad for left-clicks.  But still. The mouse buttons really suck.

Plus the buttons are placed in a bad position.  The touchpad is short because the buttons are below it. If the buttons were moved to the sides, they would solve two problems at once.

4. The reflective glossy screen makes it hard to use outdoors.  It’s impossible to use in sunlight and hard to use even in shade.

Wishlist:

1. I’d like to see an SSD version. Personally, I’d prefer the speed and fault tolerance of a SSD at less than 100 gb versus a 5,400 rpm 160 gb hard drive. 5,400 rpm is slow and I feel like I’m going to break it if I’m walking around with the machine on. 5,400 rpm spinning platters suck.

Tagged as: Acer Aspire One 751h, review