System 13

I received my replacement Acer Aspire One a few days ago and have had some more time to play with it. I’m glad I got a replacement, as after using this one a lot, it’s clear there was more wrong with the previous one than just the sound:

• In comparison to the new one, the original netbook I received ran hot – really hot. The bottom of it was rather hot to the touch after an hour or so of use.
• The first one didn’t like standby much; sometimes it would work, other times when I tried to use standby, I’d end up having to reboot the computer, as it would go into standby but not come out of it.
• I’ve not had a single lock-up with the new one, even after using it for a number of hours. The first one locked up three or four times in the limited time that I had it.

In hindsight, it’s clear that there was something very wrong with the first one, but I think my judgment was clouded by the fact that I didn’t want to send my new toy back. Can’t blame a guy, can you?

As I said in my first post about it, if you’re looking for a laptop to take notes on and use for other light duty, I can’t recommend one of these enough. While I did my homework, I still had reservations about it when I purchased it. I don’t now. The little thing rocks. I’m moving all of my note-taking for class into OneNote 2007, and syncing things up between my computers with Dropbox. I just wish I’d had one of them when I started college.

One other note which is not specifically about the Aspire One but is related: Kudos to amazon.com for once again pulling through as a wonderful company to deal with. I had no trouble in submitting my request for a replacement, and I got the replacement netbook the very next day, as they upgraded the shipping on it to one day shipping for free. They also supplied a prepaid shipping label to ship the defective one back.