Win 7 Acer Aspire One Rig: A Few Weeks In
Posted by Ben Smith on Tue, Sep 15, 2009 @ 08:16 AM
A few weeks ago I wrote about my easy installation and first impressions of Windows 7 on an Acer Aspire One, and after a couple of weeks with this as my primary mobile machine, I thought you might like to know how it's going.
It's zippy. The big thing that I've noticed is that the AAO with a 1.6 Atom processor, 8 GB SSD, and 1.5 GB RAM is playing very nicely with the OS. From cold boot to up-and-running is about 25 seconds and waking the AAO from a nice nap takes about 2 seconds. Since most of my work is browser based, I'm not running into any memory or processor issues (now.)
It lasts a long time. Maybe longer than most since I've got a huge honking 9-cell battery in the AAO at all times. A full charge is registering at just over 7 hours with a realistic uptime of about 6 and 3/4 hours. The nice thing is I can let it sleep all the time therefore getting amazing wakeup time and only have to throw it on that charger at night.
It plays nice with most software. While I'm not installing tons of stuff on here (there's only about 1.3 GB of SSD space left after the install and updates,) I am able to use all of the software that I use on my bigger work machine. I've installed Google Chrome and Firefox 3.5 for browsing (as I'm not convinced that Chrome and the Atom processor play nice,) Trillian Astra for IM and the GIMP to deal with any images that I want to adjust (I actually made the new blog banner on the AAO using GIMP!)
I can be lazy! Not to start anything, but I am liking the return to Windows after more than a year with Linux on the AAO. I love Linux, but I too like to take it easy sometimes. Microsoft did get the ease of use factor up in the latest version of Windows and it makes for a nice easy time. I've had no stability issues and I've not run into a piece of hardware in the gadget bag that Win 7 doesn't like (yet...where's that piece of wood I keep around...knock...knock.)
So, after a couple of weeks, I can say that, barring any unforeseen bad updates, I'll be sticking with Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One for a while!