• 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.

While I’d love to say that it worked right out of the box, I can’t – in fact, it was DOA. I took it out of the box, looked over the quick start guide, and then followed the easy instructions: plug it in, open it up, and hit the power button. In the instructions, the picture for the next step showed a person logging onto Windows. Instead of being greeted with a booting computer, however, I was shown a black screen, a green power light, and no hard drive activity. Following rule number one of dealing with computers, I tried turning it off and back on again, but still just got a black screen. I tried increasing the screen brightness, thinking that perhaps it was set to 0, but that didn’t do anything either.

While I certainly wasn’t overjoyed, I also didn’t freak. It’s a computer, and DOAs happen. I poked around online to see if there was any information about the problem (beyond “It’s dead, Jim”), and came across a post about the Acer Aspire One’s BIOS occasionally becoming corrupted, causing the unit to not, well, do much of anything. Apparently, the Aspire One has a built-in BIOS recovery routine, which allows you to flash the BIOS even if the machine won’t boot up. Figuring I had nothing to lose – what am I going to do, make it not boot up? – I gave it a try. I followed the linked guide, and after a bit of tinkering, it actually worked. I had to try it multiple times because the computer kept ignoring my flash drive. When it started reading though, it took perhaps 20 seconds, then the computer rebooted, greeting me with the Acer screen followed by Windows. Success!

All’s well that ends well, however, and things didn’t end quite so well despite me being able to revive the little thing. While it works quite well, there’s something wrong with the sound. If music is playing while I’m typing, the sound often becomes staticy or cuts in and out. Last night it cut out completely. The “fix”? Lightly tapping on the unit below the keyboard. I found that if I had music going, I could reproduce the static / cut out problem by resting my hands on the unit in a couple of places. I’m not really sure what that means – a loose connection, maybe? – but I know that if tapping the device fixes it, it’s something I don’t want to mess with.

I’ve filed a replacement claim with amazon.com, as I really do like the thing – I just want one without any bizarre issues. I had the chance to use it once in class to take notes (the primary reason I bought it), and found it to be infinitely better than taking notes by hand. I caught every word, and my right hand wasn’t aching at the end of a 50 minute session. Other thoughts: The battery life seems excellent, and the screen is much clearer and crisper than I expected. I’m definitely not going to be playing Call of Duty 4 on it, but for the internet, taking notes, and other light duty, I think it’s perfect. Someone in my class remarked, “That may be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen – it’s so tiny!” While I don’t know if I’d say coolest, it is pretty awesome. For those of you who have been asking me via Twitter if I’d recommend one – most definitely. Assuming my replacement doesn’t have any issues, I’ll be very, very happy with the purchase.

One other little oddity about all of this: my original package wasn’t shipped from “Amazon.com”, but from “Amazon.com Returns.” I’m not really sure what the explanation for that is; in all my years of buying from them, I’ve never received a package from that address. Perhaps they sent me one which another customer had returned, which might go far in explaining some of the issues I ran into. Has anyone else ever received a purchase “Amazon.com Returns”?