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I've set up three of these critters for friends this fall. Two Acer Ones ( ~400.00 cad) and an Asus ( ~325.00cad). Both good little machines, sturdy, small and light with marginally acceptable keyboards ( I hate all Laptop keyboards but these were closer to full size key and layout than lots of larger laptops ). The Asus had a solid state hard drive with a lower capacity, only 8 GB, a bit cramped but it was a specific purpose machine intended to be used on heavy equipment. I rather liked the little guy but the screen resolution was to low to allow me to install one of the programs. The Acers were set up to be used for general applications, accounting, web, photo storage, etc. 120(?) GB drive. One of them is traveling through Southeast Asia in a backpack and is doing fine, the other is running around in a pickup in -36 weather and I haven't heard that it has been a problem either.
All of these were set up with 3 cell batteries, 6 cell available, and would last at least 2 hours in use on wireless lan. Pretty impressive when compared to my old IBM T42. They aren't very fast and I wouldn't even consider putting vista on them, but that said they are fine for things like Quick Books, Word, and smallish spreadsheets. Probably take to much patience for photo editing (but fine for storage and viewing) or even my huge accounting/cost calculating/confuse anybody/else swiss army knife spreadsheet I use on the farm ( there is an annoying 1.5 sec pause on each entry for autocalc on the Acer, didn't try it on the Asus).
There are no cd or floppy drives on these machines so I just used the drive in my "real" computer over the wireless to install programs and taught the owners to use USB flash sticks for file transfer and backups.
Overall I liked both brands and I think I will probably get one for myself. I don't know if they are capable of replacing a full size machine but my PDA will be gone in minutes. Not quite as portable as a PDA but not as complicated as the IBM, heck the power supply for the IBM weighs about the same as the whole computer. I will probably spring for the 6 cell battery when I get one and unless they change the specs I will go with the Acer as it has a slightly larger screen.
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Mini Laptop
