Acer AS1410: first impressions

I recently bought an Acer AS1410 netbook/small notebook. Here's a bit more about my thought process while buying, and my initial review.

Deciding what to buy

I've wanted to get a netbook/small notebook computer for a while now. My Dell Inspiron 1501 was nice and fast with a dual-core AMD Turion 64 processor, but it was a very bulky 8 pounds and not fun to schlep to and from campus or on trips.

The main things that made me hesitate about a netbook were:

• Small keyboards. I have large but not huge hands, and I have tried several 9" and 10" netbooks, even the ones that were well-reviewed, and found their keyboards to be intolerably small.
• Small screens. The 1024x600 resolution of the typical 9" or 10" netbook screen seemed too small for me. Running the GNOME desktop under Linux, I like to have both top and bottom panels on the screen, and room for a couple non-overlapping terminal windows.
• Slow processors and 1gb RAM limits. Pretty much all the netbooks use Intel Atom N270/N280 processors. Apparently the 1gb RAM limit is Microsoft's fault, since they refuse to sell Windows XP anymore to OEMs offering better-spec'ed systems. I want to be able to do some number-crunching and software development on my portable computer without tearing my hair out as the computer swaps to disk and bogs down...

I noticed the recent crop of 11"-12" netbooks with interest. The first one that caught my eye was an Acer 751h, back in June 2009 or so. Costco was selling 'em for the astonishingly low price of $300. I tried it and found the keyboard somewhere between tolerable and pleasant, appreciated the higher 1366x768 screen resolution, and enjoyed the aesthetics overall. However, the flaw of the 751h is that it still has only 1gb of RAM and actually uses an even slower Atom Z520 processor, which has been panned by all the reviews I've read.

A couple of weeks ago, two very new entrants to the netbook/mini-notebook market caught my eye (reviews linked):

• the MSI Wind U210: 2gb RAM, 250gb hard drive, HDMI output, 6-cell battery, and an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 processor at 1.6ghz. Free upgrade to Windows 7. Selling for about $430 online.
• the Acer Aspire AS1410: 2gb RAM, 250gb hard drive, HDMI output, 6-cell battery, and an Intel Core Solo SU3500 processor at 1.4ghz. Free upgrade to Windows 7. Selling for $400-430 online.

Being a longtime AMD fanboy, the MSI U210 appealed to me most. However, it turns out that it's slightly less power-efficient than the Intel SU3500 processor, and that coupled with a lucky price break pushed me towards the Acer AS1410.

Last week, 1saleaday.com (pretty self-explanatory...) offered the Acer AS1410 for $405 shipped. Best of all, they were selling a slightly improved model with 3gb RAM rather than the usual 2gb. You could get any color you want, as long as it's red :-P. So, I sold my Dell laptop on Craigslist and sprung for the AS1410.

And today, it showed up on my doorstep...

My review

It turns out that I got the "Canadian version" of the system, with French and English keycaps and "Toronto" as the default timezone. Okay by me... I speak French and having the accent mark keycaps might come in handy at some point.

The first thing I noticed, after removing all the protective plastic, is that it's a pretty nice-looking little computer. The battery doesn't stick out despite its fairly high capacity. The screen is very bright and about as sharp as my old Dell, with a similar resolution despite its smaller size. I'd guess the 11.6" screen could be a touch larger (say, 12.1" like the MSI U210) and still fit the case, but that's not a huge deal.

I plugged it in, turned it on, and went through the motion of completing the setup for Windows Vista Home Premium. This took a looong time, probably an hour, and constantly thrashed the hard drive light. Also, the fan came on, although the computer never got too hot, and its sound was louder and "crunchier" than I'd expected. I think I'm going to blame this part on Vista, rather than on the computer.

Once I got the system up and running, I realized there was a rather large quantity of junk software on it: a dozen or so crummy games, some crummy IM client, some crummy file encryption software, a trial version of MacAffee antivirus, etc. I plan to mainly run Ubuntu Linux on this machine, but it's still really annoying to have Windows preloaded with all this crap. I uninstalled all that as fast as I could, and then installed both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox to replace the default Internet Explorer browser, which I loathe.

While puttering around with Control Panel, I heard some system sounds and realized that the speakers on this thing are not too bad for being so small.

I connected to my home network with no trouble, getting a good signal with the Intel a/b/g/n wireless adapter. And I've been playing around on the web since. What I'm really noticing about this computer are the ergonomics of the keyboard and the touchpad.

The keyboard is pretty good. I mean, I'm getting used to it already, which is a good sign. There are a couple of annoying features, though:

• The left shift key is foreshortened, excessively, to accomodate... an extra "|\" key?!?!? WTF?! Why are there two of them??
• The L-shaped enter key is nice and big, but unfortunately it "hooks" up-and-left rather than down-and-left. You'll never guess what's in the lower-left corner of the Enter key. Why yes, it's the other "|\" key! Someone at Acer has a strange sense of humor...
• The left Control key is too small. I wish they'd made it twice as wide and shortened the space bar somewhat.
• The arrow keys are half-height, so they can cram in the Home/PgUp and End/PgDn keys as well. This might be the most annoying, since I typically move my hands when I need the arrow keys, so a bigger "landing zone" is most helpful here.

I don't know why Acer didn't stick with the sensible looking keyboard layout of the Acer 751h, which is otherwise an identical form factor:

Frankly, although the AS1410 keyboard's quirks are annoying, I've only been using it for an hour or so and they're already a lot less annoying. My pinkies have gotten used to the placement of the Shift and Enter keys, and I'm working on the Control and arrow keys...

The touchpad on this thing is pretty nice. It's small, but frankly I don't see any way around it. It blends in with the surrounding case visually, but from a tactile standpoint its surface is easily distinguishable. The separate left and right buttons are a nice feature, although they are very "short" vertically. I think I'll soon get used to that as well. I don't really care about multi-touch, but the scrolling feature seems to work fine.

I've been on battery for the last 2.5 hours, with the default "Balanced Power" setting under Vista, and I still have 66% remaining. It looks like the battery should deliver on the promised 6-7 hour life in normal usage.

I tried listening to some music via Last.fm, and the speakers are, again, decent. The bass is fairly loud but gravelly, and vocals are perfectly pleasant to listen to. With headphones, everything sounds great as expected.

Conclusions

The good:

• A good, modern Core 2 processor
• 3gb of RAM
• A high-resolution, pleasing 1366x768 screen
• HDMI output (if I ever get a TV...)
• A reasonably-sized keyboard that feels nice to the touch
• Free upgrade to Windows 7, which presumably sucks less than Vista
• Battery sits flush and runs for 6-7 hours
• Runs very cool
• a/b/g/n wireless is flexible and future-proof

The bad:

• Loaded with a whole lot of junk software
• Fan is loud when it turns on, and the noise is slightly grating on the ears
• A few questionable keyboard layout choices, annoying at first but probably not dealbreakers for anyone
• No built-in Bluetooth, although there's an LED for it?! I can buy a mini USB Bluetooth adapter for $2.50 these days. Not having one built-in to every netbook/notebook wireless card seems inexcusable...
• No eSATA. Hard to blame Acer for this one, because very few notebooks have eSATA yet. But there's already a SATA controller for the hard drive, and it'd be really nice to be able to connect an external hard drive or CD drive with better-than-USB performance. Notebook makers would simply have to find room for one more small external port: seemingly a smart and reasonable thing to do.

To do:

• Install Ubuntu. Since Intel provides excellent Linux support for their graphics and wireless adapters, I foresee no problems!
• Test the VGA and HDMI external monitor outputs.
• Test the webcam and internal microphone. I've heard they hold up well in low-light and high-noise conditions, but I'd like to find out for myself.