Conclusion

When you hit up the budget end of the pricing scale, you have to go in with the right set of expectations. The lowest-end Linux-powered Acer Aspire One is not going to beat out its more expensive counterparts in performance and specs; it was never meant to do that.

What it can do, however, is give you a near laptop-like experience for casual web surfing, emailing, and maybe a handful of games and productivity tools. The WSVGA resolution isn’t exactly ideal, but most websites should fit quite handily. You will want to restrict the number of Firefox tabs, however, as it’ll start to lag quite a bit if you run more than two or three.

Given that it costs about half as much as some of the Eee PCs and Dell Minis of the world, this bargain-minded Aspire One is a good value and a nice companion for the traveling techie.

The Good

• Good price point
• Will handle most websites in Firefox quite easily
• Comfortable keyboard

The Bad

• Small trackpad with awkward button placement
• Only 8GB of internal memory
• Cannot handle more than a couple of tasks at a time

The Verdict: 7.25/10