Acer Aspire One D250 Netbook Review: Great for Travelers!

When I started this project I was originally planning on taking my 6 year old laptop on the road with me under the theory that since it is falling apart, a year on the road would bring it to it's end. It wasn't until my tower recently misbehaved for a few weeks that I realized my Tangent laptop, that is larger than most encyclopedias, does not have enough memory to even upload pictures to Facebook and would definitely not be suitable for travel blogging. This made me begin a search to find the perfect travel notebook that could accompany me on a journey around the world. Unfortunately since it was not originally in the budget, I wanted to find something that was cheap but included a great deal of high end technology. I set my criteria to include at least 1 GB of RAM, a large hard drive greater than 100 GB for photo storage, Wi-Fi built-in, and a webcam so I can talk to my girlfriend while I am away. (Pictured: Acer Aspire One D250 Netbook)



Before now I had heard about netbooks but was still under the impression that they were not as powerful as their laptop counterparts. Last time I looked into them they were 8" screens with little RAM and less than 8 GB solid state hard drives. I couldn't imagine typing on one that small, the keyboard sounded like it was smaller than what anyone could function on, and I would definitely not want to relearn how to use the keyboard again. Then there was the technology advancement argument running through my head. I am not leaving for another 10 months, do I purchase now, or do I wait for a better model to hopefully drop in price when the next generation comes out? Well, Black Friday sales changed my viewpoint as one netbook I was looking at, the Acer Aspire One D250 dropped to $229 in pre-black Friday sales on Amazon, $70 off average sale prices. With only going on specs and customer reviews, I put my Dell bias aside and purchased one. A little bit about it's specifications are below:


Specifications

1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor
1024MB DDR2 SDRAM [upgradable to 2 GB, single channel]
160GB SATA Hard Drive, 5400 rpm
Windows XP
3 Hour Battery Life [upgradable to 6+ hours]
10.1" HD LED Display with Webcam
~2.5 pounds

I could list more specs, but these give a clear enough picture that basic model netbooks have come a long way from their first iterations. Sure, they don't have a DVD player and cannot be loaded with a TB hard drive or 4 GB of RAM, but this model already doubles my RAM capacity from my old laptop and brings my hard drive space up 8x higher than what I had before. It is sad to say that the "basic" model netbook is more powerful than both my antiquated laptop and my 6 year old tower. But that only means that it is a great bite sized computer to take for those who can deal with not having a DVD player or super high processing capacity.

Pros

-Upgrading from an older laptop, the netbook is more powerful
-HD LED screen displays very impressive quality
-Keyboard is just the right size for typing, I barely miss a stroke
-160 GB Hard Drive is enough space for a backup for 30,000+ photos
-Webcam displays streaming good enough with Skype (separate review later)
-3 USB ports and memory card reader (all types) gives a lot of freedom
-Small, so very small. So small you can't tell its in a bag small. (Pictured: My hand vs the netbook!)

Cons

-Screen is still small with low max resolution. 10.1" means things get cluttered, fast
-No DVD drive means that all software must be downloaded online, and no movies
-Battery upgrade sticks out some, whereas the 3 hour battery is seamless in back
-Still getting used to the touch pad over a mouse. For the most part it is great, but there is some combination of movements and clicks that will push the browser page back. It has only happened a few times but I am in the process of figuring out how to not do that in a middle of a blog post. It might be beneficial to get a small, cheapy USB mouse to accompany.

So far I haven't had any terribly bad experiences with the netbook, and I am really happy that I made the purchase. Someday soon I'll definitely be upgrading to the 2GB RAM and larger battery, but for now it is really a pretty good machine. If you are looking for something powerful to use around the house, laptops are a lot cheaper now and pack a whole lot of power, but if you are looking for a good travel companion then a netbook is likely all that you need and the Acer Aspire One D250 is a great little machine. If you haven't bought new hardware in a few years you will probably only see improvement from what your current machine gives you, which is an amazing thing to say for a machine in such a small package. Keep an eye out on Amazon, they seem to fluctuate the price of this particular machine a lot due to the Christmas season, a great sale may come and go within a 6 hour period so it is best to watch out to get a great price on this netbook!

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