Lately I have been spending a lot more time at different places (with wireless) instead of staying at home reading up emerging technologies, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture, etc.  So I have decided to try out a Netbook and see if this will help me catching up to the world’s news.  After all, I am a child of the electronic age, where I tweet, blog, and read RSS feeds.

Image by Taller Hikari via Flickr

At the beginning, I was looking at Dell’s Mini 10/10v and Lenovo IdeaPad S series.  After spending a couple hours going through reviews, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, I end up going with Acer’s Aspire AS1410-8807.

This is consider one of the “Lapbook”s since it comes with a 11.6” screen instead of a 10”.  Also it runs on Intel Core2 Solo Processor (1.4 GHz).  It is slightly more powerful than the traditional Atom CPUs.  In some of the review/blog posts I read, this computer comes with 2GB RAM.  The one I bought actually comes with 3GB of RAM, which is great since I don’t think I will need to upgrade this machine even with Windows 7.  Here is the full spec of the machine:

• Intel Core2 Solo Processor SU3500 (1.4GHz, 800MHz FSB)
• Intel GMA 4500MHD (video)
• 11.6 HD LED (1366×768)
• 3GB Memory
• 250 GB HDD (5400 rpm)
• 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless
• 6 cell Li-ion memory
• VGA and HDMI support
• Multi-in-1 card reader
• Webcam
• Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)

From what I can tell, software runs a bit faster on this machine than other Z520 / N270 Atom Netbooks I’ve came across before.  Acer did a good job bundling this machine.  Although I am not too much of a fan with the built-in software from Acer, these software are relatively small and with 250GB HDD I’ll just leave them remain installed.  The only thing I’ve uninstalled is the Microsoft Office 2007 60-days trial version.  The way I am planning to use this machine, I have no need for MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint.  At $499 CAD, I recommend this machine because it is ultra-portable at a very low price.  For blogging and tweeting, and for folks who goes to coffee shop a lot reading and meeting up with friends, this machine is totally perfect.  Note that Acer will provide the Windows 7 upgrade (free) when it is released.  Currently this machine runs on Windows Vista Home Premium.

Pros:

• Ultra-Portable at around 3lb
• LCD screen is nice with 1366 x 768, web pages do show up properly
• Good sized harddrive will be able to download free software, like Google Gear for Gmail offline, Windows Live Writer, Twitter clients, Pidgin for all-in-one chatting, etc.
• HDMI out, useful to show video clip on TV
• 3 USB ports, which is more than enough
• This is a “Lapbook”, it runs a bit faster than an Atom based Netbook

Cons:

• For some, this is still a Netbook
• Not exactly a machine which will be able to handle a decent amount of software development prototyping (this can be just me)
• The keyboard will get some time to get used to, especially the smaller left-Shift key.

Note: I have no problem running Google Chrome, Windows Live Writer, GMail, and Seesmic Desktop on this machine at the same time.  If you have brought or tested this netbook (lapbook), please leave a comment.  Cheers!

Updated: Looks like BestBuy increased the price tag from $499 to $549 CAD around September 12th, 2009.