In case you needed more Aspire One info for your gadget gossip fix, Laptop Mag got to spend some quality time with a pre-production model and wrote up the most revealing review to date of the Mini-Note (at least in English - no offense blogeee:)). Overall Laptop Mag ruled it as a “Good Value” and were excited at its $379 and $399 price points.
Details of interest:
The SD card reader on the left is for expanding system storage automagically. Stick an SD card in and your root drive will show as that much bigger. You won’t be able to copy large files that would need to span across the built-in storage and the card though. Presumably this is done via software (eg, the OS) and not hardware.
The speakers (or speaker it seems like to me) is located under the motherboard in the center of the machine. They are pretty quiet and real treble blasters. Not a big deal, but still good to know.
The web cam is designed for low light situations so it works surprising well (note it’s still a .3MP (300K) though)
They’re going to do some more testing in the coming days which will be interesting to see. We should find out battery life and operating temperatures along with the results of their typing test again. I wonder if it will beat out the MSI Wind?
French site blogeee.net was able to review at least three Aspire Ones. The article is in French and Google Translate wasn’t cooperating with me tonight so I can’t really tell what it says yet. Lots of great pics though. I’ll follow up on this tomorrow.
Tech Digest got some one-on-one time with the Aspire One, and were thrilled with it. This is probably the best video I’ve seen because it really gives us an idea of how big it really is. Being able to see them hold it gives a nice frame of reference.
They complimented its good long battery life and the cool and quiet operation, but weren’t so thrilled with the .3MB webcam. So if you’re looking to a lot with the webcam, this might be a deal breaker.
Over at Crave they have a pretty good picture gallery and mini-review of the Aspire One. Rory is super impressed with the One and goes so far as to say “On the surface of things it’s better than an Eee 900, and might even have the upper hand on the the MSI Wind.” MSI’s Wind has been the most widely praised netbook so far, so saying the Aspire One may have the upper hand is saying a lot.
Laptop Mag and Engadget China both had some hands on time with Apsire One at Computex yesterday. Both reviewers seem pretty impressed by the AO overall, but are disappointed that it has a smaller keyboard like the eeePC.
According to Engadget China the Apsire One will be available in the states starting in September at $399. Hopefully they don’t miss the boat with such a late release date.
