Acer Aspire AS1410-2285 - Best Value in a Shipping Netbook?

If you are looking for the best value in a shipping netbook, today is your day. For around $400 plus shipping, you can get the Acer Aspire AS1410-2285 shipped from Amazon, and if you’re willing to spend extra, you could have it on Friday.

What does $399.99 plus shipping get you? Quite a bit actually, it will get a dual-core CPU with Intel’s 4500MHD graphics, an HDMI port, Windows 7 Premium, and an 11.6-inch display.

Full specifications: Acer Aspire AS1410-2285 (Black casing)
- OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
- CPU: 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 Dual-Core CULV CPU
- RAM: 2GB DDR2 667MHz
- HDD: 160GB SATA Hard Drive
- Networking: Intel WiFi Link 1000 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N
- Graphics: Intel 4500MHD Graphics (GMA)
- Display: 11.6″ WXGA LED-Backlit Display
- Battery: 6-cell Li-ion Battery (4400 mAh), up to 6 hours according to Acer
-Weight: 3 pounds/1.4 kg

In addition to the above, it’s coming with three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, and a Multi-gesture touchpad.

Looking at Acer’s other Windows 7 listings at Amazon, it looks like HDMI out will finally be standard. Most of the Acers should be expandable to 4GB of RAM.

While this is a Celeron, expect non-Celeron-based netbooks with dual-core CPUs to be out in the next few weeks. Amazon is showing the Acer Aspire AS1810T-8679 with a Core 2 Duo SU7300, up to 8 hours of battery life, and 4GB of RAM shipping in November.

AT&T to Offer Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and 12, and LG Xenia with Mobile Data Plans

Looks like the reports from the middle of February concerning AT&T offering multiple netbooks/sub-notebooks, or “mini laptops” as the AT&T press release calls them, are indeed true.

AT&T will be offering the Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Mini 12, and LG Xenia (aka X110) in prices ranging from $49.99 USD to $249.99 when purchasing an appropriate mobile broadband package (along with the contract). If you want something more powerful, such as the 12-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X200, you are looking at $750 to $850 depending on the plan.

AT&T has put together what it’s calling an “Internet at Home and On the Go” plan that covers several situations (mixing mobile data and DSL), and included with that is access to AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots. The standard 5GB a month for $60 plan is still available for those who don’t need DSL.

In the reports from February, the HP Mini 1000 was mentioned in that mix of devices, but it’s been left out for now.

There is a catch to all of this (besides the standard contract) - for now, it’s only being offered in select stores in the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas, but it looks like it will be nationwide later this year.

Read:
- Press Release (AT&T)
via GigaOm

HP, Acer, and CULV Notebooks/Laptops

Last week it was reported that Intel would be aggressive with it’s CULV platform (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage), and it looks like HP and Acer could play a large part of that plan.

DigiTimes is reporting that Hewlett-Packard plans on introducing multiple 13.3-inch CULV-based devices sometime this quarter. They list Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics as being the providers.

DigiTimes also mentions that Acer is looking at 13.3-inch CULV laptops as well, and that Quanta has received orders for 11.6-inch CULV-based laptops that might be introduced this month. Given that we have 12″ netbooks (Samsung NC20, Dell Inspiron Mini 12), it’ll be interesting to see the pricing and features, since a CULV device should out-perform Intel Atom-based netbooks.

Taiwan Economic News is also reporting that Acer will be launching CULV devices, and mentions April as a possibility for introducing them. They go on to say that it won’t be just 11.6-inch devices, but will include 13″, 14″, and 15″ devices. They list Quanta Computer as the provider for the 11.6″ device, Inventec Corporation for the 13″, and Winston Corporation for the 14″ and 15″ models.

They also mention the 13″ models will have a magnesium/aluminum alloy chassis/case. Some of the analysts they mention claim that CULV devices will be responsible for up to 20% of total sales in the notebook market.

Read:
- DigiTimes
- Taiwan Economic News (cens.com) (via Fudzilla)

11.6-inch Acer Aspire One This Year?

We’ll treat it as a rumor for now, but macles* has had good information in the past. As macles* points out, up until now, most “new” Acer Aspire Ones were just a slightly larger version of the original 8.9″ AAO, including the 10.1″ Acer Aspire One D150, but there was the mysterious slim Acer Aspire One ZG8 / A0530 that recently popped up at the FCC.

If you’ll recall, about a month ago, there was a report that Acer and Asustek would be launching 11.6-inch netbooks sometime this year.

macles* is now reporting that the resolution of the 11.6″ Aspire One is 1366×768, which meatches the earlier report that Acer would be launching an 11.6-inch model. From the photos at macles, it looks like the keyboard is “chiclet-style” or “scrabble-style”, similar to the Asus Eee PC 1000HE (or 13.3″ MacBook).

Mentioned is the Atom Z530 CPU, as well as the Intel SCH USW15S (aka Poulsbo), with an Intel GMA 500 graphics chipset (aka PowerVR SGX 535), with improved hardware decoding of certain codecs (H.264, etc.). macles* mentions a Thermal Design Power (TDP) rating of 4.3W, which more than cuts in half the TDP of the Intel chipset, allowing for up to 4 hours with a standard (3-cell?) battery and up to 8 hours with a high capacity battery (6-cell?). The Z530 matches earlier reports of the slim/slimmer Acer Aspire One (since that CPU plus the Poulsbo chipset would allow for reduced cooling requirements as well as size).

Read: macles*

Slimmer Acer Aspire One ZG8 / A0530 at the FCC

We’ve been hearing about the rumors and leaked information since last month, and now we have some confirmation - This new netbook/ultraportable has now shown up at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for testing of its communications hardware (WiFi, etc.). The document dates are listed as March 9, 2009, with some of the submission documents listing March 4, 2009 in the headers, while some of the documentation lists application dates of February 11, with test dates of February 27, 2009.

One of the documents lists this information:
We, Acer Inc, hereby declare that ZG8, Aspire one, AO530 (model name) can not be used for operation of HSUPA and CDMA2000 1xRTT/EV DO function. The HSUPA and CDMA2000 1xRTT/EV DO functions of this EUT are disabled by firmware control, which the users cannot enable it.
Read more

Adding eSATA to an Acer Aspire One (tnkgrl)

If adding a touchscreen to your 8.9-inch Acer Aspire One wasn’t enough, tnkgrl Mobile has put together the 4th part in their ongoing series on modding the AAO.

This time around, it’s a really major mod/upgrade, but it wasn’t as difficult as some mods. She’s added an external Serial ATA (eSATA) connection to her Aspire One. Obviously this invalidates your warranty.

Note that her Aspire One is the Solid State Drive/SSD/SSD version which uses a ZIF connector (which allows for 1.8″ PATA hard drives). This leaves an unused SATA interface inside the Aspire One.

Using an eSATA socket from a PCI-slot bracket, and some shielded cable (it must be shielded), she was able to fairly easily connect the onboard SATA connection to an eSATA socket. The real work was in finding a place for the eSATA socket to be mounted, without it obstructing anything else. She mounted it above the Secure Digital (SD) slot on the left side of the Aspire One.

In the video, you can see her clever mod that allows you to use the WiFi switch to turn on/off the 3G mobile broadband as well (see part 3 of her modding series).

Read:
- tnkgrl Mobile
- Video at qik.com
- Photo gallery at flickr

Netbooks Boosting Cloud Computing?

Jason Hiner at ZDNet, has written an article, “Are netbooks quietly driving us toward cloud computing?”

He’s laid out a case that not only are netbooks/subnotebooks bucking the current trends of the PC industry (shrinking sales with some companies), but that they are poised to grow a lot more, and along the way, they are going to be bringing greater access to new technologies, especially cloud computing and cloud storage:

As a result, the limited local processing and limited local storage available on netbooks are likely to become catalysts for transferring more processing and storage to the data center, where companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are currently building up large reservoirs of computing resources.

Those three companies will certainly be beneficiaries of this trend - especially in terms of their cloud storage initiatives - but so will many other companies that host Software-as-a-Service applications, hosted storage, and cloud computing services.

We are already seeing this, with Asus offering 10GB - 20GB through their Eee Storage service.

HP is offering their “HP Upline” service with some devices that offers online data storage and backup.

Then you have third parties offering online storage services such as Dropbox which allows you to stay platform-neutral. There are clients available for the major OS platforms, as well as a web-accessible option for accessing your stored items through your browser.

Those three examples allow you to keep files in sync and backed up between multiple systems, especially important when you are using a netbook/ultraportable as a secondary device, and you don’t want to be in a situation where you have your files scattered around and they aren’t backed up, or where you are going with one of the smaller-capacity Solid State Drive (SSD) options.

There are also services like Evernote which is more oriented towards storing and syncing data (text, web clippings, documents, images). I’m a huge fan of Evernote, as are many people I know. You can have both client-based storage/syncing for those times when you are offline, and you can also access your data through a web interface. It even performs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on images/photos that you upload, that have text somewhere in the image. You can then find that data through simple text searches.

Read: ZDNet

Asus Eee PC Shell in April, Plus New 1000HE Colors

DigiTimes/Commercial Times is reporting that Asustek will be launching it’s new slim/ultra-thing netbook later this year, in April. It’s going to be somewhere above the 10-inch Asus Eee PC S101 as far as features and battery life. DT also mentions it being “easier to carry”

It’s going to be called The Shell or Eee PC Shell, and will retail for around $490 - $575 USD. Update: This is now the Asus Eee PC 1008HA

The report also mentions that Acer will be launching a slim netbook in April as well. This follows reports and eyewitness accounts of this device.

Meanwhile, NotebookItalia.it is reporting that the Asus Eee PC 1000HE will be available in more colors.

The new colors will be: white, brushed-silver, pink and onyx. They have photos of the various colors, and the brushed-silver is reminiscent of the aluminum MacBooks and MacBook Pros, and in my opinion, the best looking out of the bunch. They join the currently shipping black and blue models.

Read:
- DigiTimes
- NotebookItalia.it (Italian) (Translated into English)
via SlashGear

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