3 Months with My Acer Aspire One Netbook
I’ve had my Acer Aspire One netbook now for about 3 months, and while I initially thought I’d rarely use it, it turns out I use it quite often. It’s small enough that I can throw it in just about any bag that I carry and I otherwise just keep it in the car so I have a computer with me anywhere I drive. Being able to tether it with my cellphone means I have internet connectivity anywhere I go, so for long trips when I’m not driving, I can browse the web, or find directions or reviews for restraunts quicker than I could on my mobile browser.
The battery life is decent, and I can bank on about 2 hours of usage per charge. The size and weight are ideal and I can use the keyboard quite effectively. The mouse buttons on the side leave something to be desired, but I usually just use the double click feature of the touchpad, and only use the buttons when i have to right-click. The Aspire One is pretty durable. while I haven’t dropped it from any great height yet, it’s been bounced around in the drunk and thrown in bags that aren’t given the greatest of care. I haven’t had any problems with the hardware.
I have Windows XP on my machine and it runs at an adequate speed. The lags would probably drive me insane if I was using it as a primary computer, but the size, full featured OS and low price are worth the trade off. What I thought would be a novelty has turned out to be a productive (and novel) tool that I use daily.
Category: Uncategorized 30 comments »
March 10th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I’ve had mine for a while too, initially I used your blog posting to get XP onto the SSD but the delays drove me crazy.
I found a forum discussion about shoehorning a 2.5″ sata drive in there and so I took the plunge and did the mod. it now has an additional 512MB module and an 80GB sata 2.5″ in there.
I had to butcher a fair amount of plastic to get the HDD in there but the results are tidy and performance is no comparison.
I’m now much happier with it and use the thing daily
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:50 am
Speed tips: Asus Aspire One ZG5 uses Intel’s 8G SSD which has very decent read speed, but write operations to Intel 8G SSD is very slow, hence all operations with writing files will bog down the Asus Aspire One ZG5. Therefore optimisations include: do NOT use paging file, use Windows XP RAM disk, move internet explorer cahe to faster SDHC card, move FireFox cahce to faster SDHC card for Aspire One ZG5. Consider installing some apps on faster SDHC card rather than Intel SSD (D: vs C:) it works. IMPORTANT: Windows XP writes Event Viewer logs, which can be optimized, by setting log size to 64K and stop write after Event log is full. Turn off unneccessary services, especially Windows XP Themes service. Get rid of silly rounded window corners with Windows Classic look. Turn off all GUI show offs with “best perfomance” option in Control Panel System applet. Finally: Windows registry optimisation: turn of system restore feature.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:26 am
Also: move “My Documents” root folder to SDHC card, for example write files to folder structure D:\USERS. See Microsoft article: “How to Change the Default Location of the My Documents Folder” support.microsoft.com/?id=310147. You would be surprised how many files are hidden under this folder structure, including temporary applications data (=writes files). Note: if laptop has for example two user accounts “a” and “b” then folders D:\USERS\a and D:\USERS\b are needed, to allow independently stored files, for multiple user accounts on your Asus Aspire One.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Acer Aspire Battery life: the powercfg.exe can be used for tweaking profiles. I used powercfg to create the no-nonsense High and Low power profiles, and deleted a myriad of silly power profiles (SSD, no harddrive turnoff). Too bad that the Acer Aspire One ZG5 does not provide a LCD backlight dimming applet that could be launched up by the battery threshold alarm (ala Thinkpad T40 style). Search keywords: Acer Aspire ACPI LCD Backlight PWM Intel 945 Express Chipset LVDS LBB LBES. The Intel 945 manual 8.2.26 LBB – Legacy Backlight Brightness (page 315) mentions IO-write to bits 0..7 in the DWORD formed by address range F4..F7 of 945 Express chipset of Acer Aspire ZG5. Maybe somebody could cook up a driver that allows easy setting of LCD backlight, controlling the PWM value for the backlight LED.
April 18th, 2009 at 6:22 am
I have purchased an Acer Aspire One ZG5 netbook and I carry it where ever I go. The menu lags sometimes and turning programs off sometimes lags. But the item is superb for carrying around, as the battery time lasts hours. Its just ideal like you said, to take on long drives. It also has a fast SSD drive, faster than a Hard Drive, though only 16GB thats plenty of space for me to store thousands of songs, and tons of hardcore BBW porn videos. Enjoy.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:26 am
i had mine last 2 days
June 29th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Ah, the 8.9″ Acer Aspire One. I bought mine back in October and it (gasp) STUCK to me. (Though the color sucks – I got stuck with the nasty navy blue one with the black keyboard. Avoid it, there’s nicer colors out there!)
Honestly, I bought it for kicks. $349.99?! For everything it can do? Who could resist? I was just switching completely over (uh, again) to Macs and I knew that if it could run Linux that it would make for a good Hackintosh. (It doesn’t, at least until you swap out the wireless card since the one in it isn’t supported by 10.5) but after finding out that someone hated the fan just as much as I did (and downloading and installing their AA1 fan program) I had little else to complain about. It has a 160GB hard drive in it, 1 GB in memory and runs a full version of Windumb XP… And runs it quite adequately, I’ll freely add!
Not much to make it better, but I figured since I was cracking it open to swap out the 512MB of 5300DDR2 memory for a full 1GB chip, I might as well turn it into a freak of nature and upgrade the hard drive… just a little… and found me the biggest of the big – a 500GB 2.5″ SATA hard drive. I now think of it as a iPod on steroids. It has (quite literally) ALL of my music on it, along with several other people’s music on it. (How did THAT get on there?!) And it does NetFlix and Hulu beautifully, so it’s my TV when I’m away from my TV. It also has video output, and it looks much MUCH better on my 37″ LCD TV than it has any business (or right) doing. It also (weirdly) comes with DVD playing software pre-loaded from software, so if you can ‘ignore’ the whole doesn’t come with an optical drive you can uh, nicely make use of that aforementioned DVD playing software. I also bought a micro USB Bluetooth module (skip the internal mod) so I mated that with a fully featured bluetooth GPS from Delorme with street and mapping software. Nice! Add to all this a nice pair of bluetooth headphones (I use and like the Moto S9 set, mainly because they also work as a remote control for volume and changing tracks from within iTunes) and you have (gasp) a fairly awesome, fairly kick-ass little matchbox of a computer.
So add a few bucks and it’s not just a low-end computer – it’s a e-mail getting, internet surfing, DVD playing, street finding, music playing… Thing… that nearly fits in your pocket.
I liked it so much that when the girlfriend of ten years needed a laptop for her new promotion, I went straight to craigslist and found the perfect laptop for her – a 8.9″ Acer Aspire One. Only in white. Just make sure you get that 1GB of memory ASAP for being able to effectively run windows XP, you’ll need it. The 160GB hard drive is more than enough.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I’ve had mine for 8 months and just had to do my first reinstall(the dreaded agpcpq.sys), but no hardware problems apparently. It choked on my windows product key, but so far no major problems on reinstall. I love this dang thing. I rescued it from the microcenter repair center after 2 days(they quoted 5) and jumped through the xp reinstall hoops.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Hello to everyone.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Hello, I just bought my acer aspire one zg5 (AOA-150) lat week on ebay for $100! I’m going to be upgrading the ram to 1.5gb, hard drive to 128 ssd, the wireless card to 802.11n and adding a mini bluetooth dongle. I also purchased a 9-cell battery on ebay for $45. The 9-cell battery’s add tons of bulk unfortunately and probably some weight but hey it gives me over 6 hours of battery life so I can’t really complain and it was cheap! I also upgraded my os to windows 7 and if you haven’t tried it yet I encourage everyone to try it! It is way more efficient and light years better than vista. Also it runs as smooth, if not smoother than xp and the acer aspire one handles it great! The boot time is a little slow-at least for my taste-at around 40 seconds, but the overall operating system is great and looks awesome on the aspire one!
Does anyone know how to make the acer aspire one gps capable? Do i need software? Any help would be great and I know this isn’t the right place to ask, but I thought I’d give it a shot…anyway I love the acer aspire one and would recommend it to anyone!
July 24th, 2009 at 5:39 am
I love the netbook you couldnot ask for a better” mobile device” im an engenieer when i got mine i took my acer in and reformatted the drive to only programs that i use but over all its great . love the free panarra bread wi fi !
August 25th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Some great tips in these comments, I just purchased an Aspire One myself so ill be giving some of these ones a try!
I actually bought an Acer Aspire One 751 from a UK company called SaveOnLaptops – http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk. It had XP Pro, 160GB HDD, and 1GB RAM, but I think I’ll be changing the hard drive and 1GB RAM out as soon as the parts arrive lol!
The one I got was this one :
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/Black_Acer_Aspire_One_Pro_531_631370.html
Anybody got oen of these? Or even got any tweaks/mods I can do to it?
Thanks.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
I used to love my netbook. Then the motherboard died. I found that out after it spent about a week in the shop. They tried to call Acer so that it could be replaced. No luck. Acer insisted that I, personally, had to send it back. When I tried to call, to verify this, Acer insisted that I was not the person who had registered the computer, but they would not tell me who it was who had registered it. Since I bought the machine, new, this machine has not been outof my possession. So, called the shop back and they called Acer, to no avail. The amount of time quoted by Acer to “reregister” the computer in my name, with proof of purchase, would put it one day out of warrantee. I also tried to register for service on the Acer site, with the same results that they don’t recognize the combination of my name and the serial number. My dealer–who no longer handles Acer machines–thinks this is an attempt by the company to avoid making good on their warrantee. At this point, I’m beginning to agree.
November 19th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I’d passion to ascertain that too!
December 17th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
If you want to use gps with a device like this you may have two options.
Option One which I know works and is compatible is buying a gps dongle that hooks up to the usb port. This gps on a wire basically sits on the dash that way it has line of sight (sky).
Option two install that item permanently under the hood. Dedicate one usb port for it and splice into it connecting it directly to the gps attenna. Mount this inside. I do not recommend this option but if you are trying to hide it to later recover a stolen netbook, this maybe the way to go.
EM
December 17th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
OH yeah option two may not be so accurate, if the gps is mounted inside the casing.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:50 am
Heh James, I got my Acer Aspire one from Save on Laptops too.
I didnt realise you could actually change the memory and hard drive in them. Is it an easy thing to do?
August 5th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
The freeware program flashfire also gives it a huge boost in speed.
At first xp home took like 10-15 secs to even show the desktop after clicking my login, after that it was around 5 secs.
Really worth a try, it was a huge speedboost here.
August 8th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Thanks for the tip, Stoney.
Installing FlashFire has finally made my daughter’s Aspire One ZG5 usable. Without FF, the performance of the SSD was totally unacceptable.
November 15th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
i bought my aspireone from a pawnshop for 160$$ canadian.. it came with 1Gb ram and a 120 GB harddrive.. the Artheros 5005 wireless adapter was not to my liking because it cant capture and inject packets with Cain and Able.. i initially restored it to factory settings.. (xp-home) but im a fan of xp-pro.. so it didnt take me long to install pro.. i found all the needed drivers on the acer website and had no problems with the install.. i partitioned the 120 gb HD into 3 segments.. one for XP-PRO one for RedHat Linux and the 3rd for BackTrak Linux.. yup i said BACKTRACK the best wifi hacking tool set out there.. i upgraded the artheros 5005 to the 5007 so i could capture and inject packets.. and now i can hack any WAP2 network in under 45 seconds.. so im always connected. i have about 3k songs on this lil netbook and about 40 movies.. i use this wicked tool as my main computer since im rarely at home.. its also my primary downloader now.. and the speeds i can hit surpass my home desktop pc’s wireless state by a huge margin.. i regularly hit 1.8MBs down and 850KBs up.
i have installed a few games also.. WOW DDO and a few others(CoD4 was a lil to choppy so i xnd it maybe with a full 1.5 GB of ddr it will make a difference??).. everything runs fast and smooth once the vid settings have been tweaked in the games UI..
for $160 i got the netbook, a rapid charger, and 2 batteries (standard 3 cell and a 6 cell) so im good for over 10 hours of gaming anywhere i want to be..
i also use it to check and secure friends wireless networks.. and to actively hack back into the unwanted guests.
my next mods i will make to it will be maxing the RAM to 1.5 GB and to mod the wifi antennas to full range reverse sms external antennas ( gonna mount 1 per side) with 75db gain antennas it might look a lil odd to the average observer.. but those in the know that see the BACKTRACK desktop will undoubtedly cream in their pants knowing im able to hack a WAP2 from over 500 meters away.
i run a full xp-pro for general use and FF to browse.. divx plays wicked, itunes is a dream on this lil guy and syncing on the go is just awesome.. and if i cant find any usable wifi.. i tether my iphone and im surfing.
prior to buying the AspireOne i was using a ASUS A6000.. but that things so dam bulky, heavy and power hungry.. its not perma connected to my tv as a media center.. and my lil AA1 is with me where ever i go.
November 15th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
ps my only complaint with it is to swap the wifi card and ram you have to completely dismantle it.. the designers should of made access ports so these items could be easily swapped out.. and i am not a fan of the touck pad.. so im using a bluetooth 5 button full size MS gaming mouse and have disabled the touchpad with the Fn F7 because its so dang sensitive
November 22nd, 2010 at 10:50 pm
If some of you people got concerned and alarmed about your wireless security after tony’s BS, don’t be
tony is just a n00b script kiddo with oddly long antennas on his little toyish netbook. He is full of crap.
You can “hack ANY WAP2 network in under 45 seconds”? Really tony?
First of all tony it is WPA2, W-P-A, not WAP. Secondly, you are bruteforcing a password (potentially 64 characters long for WPA2 PSK) on an underpowered Atom-based netbook? Even if the password is 1 letter you won’t be done in 45 seconds. Normally passwords are by far more complicated (unless people are stupid), so you better write your will now, cause by the time you crack a 64 characters long password on this thingy you will be long gone from this planet. lol
July 7th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
hi i am using acer zg5 for 7 months app and it is good to have one , i have installed flashfire to boost ssd and memory is upgraded to 1.5 gbi love this machine battery timing is app 2 hours’
October 7th, 2011 at 10:06 am
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November 13th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Not very pleased with mine. It was cheap, but seems to be just that. Slow. Can’t type normally, have to be slow and careful or it jumps all over the place. When I close it, I come back to multiple windows open, which hangs the system until I reboot. Not sure what’s up with it, but for a new machine it’s not very impressive. Once my old Dell is repaired, I’ll go back to it.
November 15th, 2011 at 12:40 am
Can I still ask for the Product key from Acer. I can give them the serial number of my Acer AspireOne netbook.
I can’t access all of the Microsoft Office programs. Any help??? please…. I don’t want to buy a new installer of Microsoft Office.
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