After one month of use I can say that it's a fairly decent netbook, when you consider its price. The quality is again fairly good, although I have a strange feeling that you could get more quality from Asus products (I'm a former Asus Eee user, who dumped an Eee for Acer's big screen). My model came with 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, Windows Vista preinstalled and 3 cells battery, that provides up to 2.5 hours of intensive use.
You can summarize the pros and cons as follows:
Pros: excellent screen, large and bright, visible even in direct sunlight, very comfortable keyboard (with better ergonomics that Asus Eee), plenty of storage space for a netbook (250 GB)
Cons: weak Z520 processor(due to Intel's a restriction on the use of N270/N280 processors for netbooks with screens larger than 10"), unable to play HD content, no Bluetooth, potential for screen cracks with the lid closed when is very hot.
If you intend to keep it only for Internet use and some word processing while you're on the go, this netbook is by far superior to anything else on the market. The screen is simply gorgeous and allows you a very comfortable view of the web pages, without any excess scrolling, as on other netbooks, the 10 inchers included. Very thin and very light for its size, it will pass almost unnoticed in your handbag while you're traveling. Delivered with Windows Vista Home Basic, plenty of unneeded software and McAfee antivirus, the system is almost unusable. In order to get the most of its power, it needs a bit of tuning, including the removal of the terrible McAfee antivirus that literally kills the machine. With some Vista tweaking (including disabling of some useless services) the netbook runs fine, and definitely better than some older full size laptops. With its 2 GB of RAM and Windows 7 I'm sure that it would perform much better.
However, the worst disappointment was the netbook's inability to play any HD content, despite its 1366x768 screen. Simply any HD video (including the Youtube ones) is too much for the combination of Z520 processor / GMA500 graphics chipset - any HD video plays in the best case very choppy, although the normal MPEG2 (standard DVD content) would work fine. This situation is created by Intel's restrictions on the use of the more powerful Atom N series 1.6 GHz processors on netbooks with screens larger than 10", which led to the use of the slower Atom Z520 1.3 GHz.
The most worrisome issue of this netbook, as I found it on an Acer forum is its potential for screen cracks with the lid closed when is very hot. Later the user complaints were deleted by the site administrators but it seemed to be credible. Shortly, some users described situations when the closed the lids and left the netbooks to charge overnight to find the screens cracked in the morning due to the tensions induced in the LCD by the uneven heating of the screen. It seems a plausible issue, as I noticed that the keyboard becomes very warm during the usage, posibly because of the HDD or because of the battery charging. As a precautionary measure I never leave it charge over night with the lid completely closed and after use, if is very warm, i leave it cool for a while before closing it.
Get more detail about Acer Aspire One AO751H-1401 11.6-Inch Netbook - White.
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