Sugree

10 reasons not to buy Aspire One

I guess you should already know that I got Aspire One A110 to try for a week and I posted the review based on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04.1 at Blognone. I have lived with Aspire One a few day especially today I took it to try outdoor in practical usage even tweeting while walking.

Honestly, I really love Aspire One but I can't buy it. So I have to find reasons to tell myself not to buy Aspire One.

1. uvcvideo which is the webcam driver supports only V4L2. Anyway, most applications support V4L so you can't use webcam sometimes on some applications. Adobe Flash 9 doesn't support V4L so you have to use Adobe Flash 10 instead.
2. SSD is so slow in write, says 4 MB/s.
3. Glare-type display LCD is something terrible under sunlight. High-contrast theme doesn't help. Negative filter doesn't help.
4. Internal microphone is too good. It also receives background noise. At the same time, its sensitivity is very low. I have to speak louder than normal level.
5. Atom chipset supports memory up to 2 GB but Aspire One has only one upgradeable slot so the maximum memory is 1.5 GB.
6. Atom is too slow in some applications, e.g., Firefox when displaying animated GIF or flash animation as well as flash video.
7. Battery lifetime is 2 hours and 20 minutes sharp no matter how you use.
8. Screen resolution 1024x600 is not enough. The problem is height. 600 is not enough for many dialogs.
9. Another problem regarding screen resolution, many LCD displays or projectors do not support 1024x600. You need to change resolution every time connected to external display.
10. Audio driver is not perfect. There is no autosense to disable internal speaker when connecting external headphone.

In summary, Aspire One is not 100% Linux friendly. If you want to use Linux, you might have more than basic knowledge about advanced setting and workaround including beta softwares or drivers. Above 10 reasons are what I found during a few day.