[ubuntu-uk] EeePC 900A vs Acer Aspire One

[Rob Beard]

Alan Pope wrote:
> 2008/11/14 Rob Beard <rob at esdelle.co.uk>:
>> The cheapest option is the 8.9" Asus EeePC 900A N270 with 1GB Ram and an
>> 8GB SSD.  It doesn't say what CPU it has (I presume it would be the
>> 1.6GHz single core Atom?).  This one in white or black is £194.
>>
> 
> The 900A is confusingly the same spec as the 901 (1.6GHz Atom) but in
> the case of the 900.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC#Specifications
> 
> 0.3MP camera, not the 1.3MP that the 900 has.

Ahh interesting, I didn't think about that.  I'll check out the link.

> 
>> The next option up is the Aspire One A110L with 512MB Ram and an 8GB
>> SSD.  This also mentions N270, so presumably this is the same CPU as the
>> EeePC 900A?
>>
> 
> It is.
> 
>> Now I was leaning towards the Aspire One due to it having two SD card
>> slots (I figured I could pop in 2 x 8GB SD cards for extra storage space
>> - not that I need much anyway on a laptop/netbook).
> 
> Leaning towards the Acer for a feature you won't actually use? :)
> 

Well at the moment my Thinkpad has got a 20GB hard drive but I don't use 
much (maybe a few OOo documents).  I don't think I'd use anything bigger 
but then again it might be handy to have a couple of SD cards with bits 
on for work.

>> The one thing that
>> is putting me off is forking out for another 512MB memory (I wasn't sure
>> how many slots they have).
>>
> 
> My 900 has 1GB of RAM and I'm now running a cut-down version of Ubuntu
> on it. It works fine. I guess it would be a bit more sluggish with
> 512MB, but probably would work okay. I think the 701 I had was fitted
> with 512MB and running Xandros I never really had any complaints. RAM
> is fairly cheap at the moment so you could always upgrade later. It
> only has one slot.
> 

Ahh I see.  It's DDR2 isn't it?

I'd probably stick the extra in anyway since it's so cheap at the moment.

>> So I was wondering generally what they are like.  Does the battery last
>> long, what are they like performance wise?
>>
> 
> Depends what you do with it. My co-worker uses his Aspire to write a
> book on the train each day so he only uses Openoffice writer and finds
> that fine. Mine runs Ubuntu ok, not as quick as the stock xandros
> install but not bad.
> 

Sounds good.  The main reason I'm after one is so I can provide remote 
support when I'm out and about.  That's something I really do miss and 
it's a pain having to tell my customers to hang on until I get home when 
they want something fixing quickly (which 9 times out of 10 is the case!).

>> I'm not expecting the same sort of performance as a Core 2 Duo but I
>> could do with something speedy enough to run Java applets (LogMeIn
>> remote control software) and Firefox/Thunderbird.
>>
> 
> So long as you're not opening a bazillion tabs with flash and lots of
> Java then you should be fine.
> 

Great.  I've got my Desktop for all the bazillion of tabs open :-)

Rob