Acer Aspire One redux
- Acer, UMPC -
By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net
A couple months ago, INQUIRER.net reviewed three of the first Intel Atom-based ultra-portable notebooks in the Philippines, the Asus Eee PC 1000H, MSI Wind, and the Acer Aspire One A110L. The Aspire One was the lowest model among the three, having nearly the same features as the original Asus Eee PC, including an 8-Gigabyte solid-state drive, a 512-megabyte memory and running a Linux operating system. Nevertheless, it matched quite well with the Asus and MSI Atom models due to its low power consumption and basic operating system.
This time, Acer Philippines lent us a higher model of the Acer Aspire One with all the bells and whistles. What Acer hopes to do with the Aspire One A150X is to find a suitable market for higher level ultra-mobile personal computer (UMPC) users. These are people who want to still do some basic desktop editing done on a Microsoft Windows platform while retaining a handy device. Essentially, the user must already have a notebook or a desktop computer, with the UMPC used only as a secondary device.
ASUS is clearly dominating the ultra-mobile notebook market with its Eee PCs. But local executives said that it will remain a niche player in this ever-competitive market for notebooks.