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Acer Aspire One Dual-Booting OS (XP/Android) Netbook Review

milkmandan

Lurker
Aug 4, 2009
8
0
I've been an avid fan of Netbooks ever since I picked up my very own 1000HE by ASUS. I love these little machines, as they are perfect to bring around for travel, work and/or school. With the recent release of Acer's new Aspire One with dual-booting operating systems, I couldn't resist but to pick one up for myself.

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The item in review is right here:

Amazon: Amazon.com: Acer AOD250-1613 10.1-Inch Black Android/XP Netbook - Up to 9 Hours of Battery Life: Electronics
Newegg: Newegg.com - Acer Aspire One AOD250-1613 Diamond Black Intel Atom N280(1.66GHz) 10.1" WSVGA 1GB Memory 160GB HDD Netbook - Netbooks

Acer's Aspire One AOD250-1613- Dual booting Windows XP and Android. Android, as an operating system for a Netbook is a pretty fresh and new idea, so I'll give it a run.

Asthetics/External Features:
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Unpacking the box, the Acer Aspire One came with your standard warranty, battery, AC adapter/charger, manual, and of course the Netbook itself.

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For initial impressions, this Netbook is light. Much lighter than my ASUS 1000HE. Sadly, it is still sporting a normal Netbook keyboard (no chiclet keys).

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At the bottom of the Netbook, there are removable panels for the chance to upgrade RAM and quite possibly the HDD. I remember earlier Netbook models being unable to upgrade RAM, which was a pretty big bummer. Fear not, if you wish to upgrade to 2GB of RAM on the Aspire One or even an SSD as your new HDD, it shouldn't be too difficult. This Netbook also features a mini-SATA slot, so if you want even more HDD space, you can slap in another SSD in as well.

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With a quick view of the sides, (left side) you have your standard Audio I/O ports, VGA port, LAN port, 1 USB port, (right side) Memory card reader, 2 USB ports, Power port and a safety lock port.

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Opening up the Netbook, it looks like any other Aspire One, the trackpad features multi-touch functionality supporting pinch-zoom and scrolling.

Internals:
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As far as the internals of the Acer Aspire One, I do believe this is the only Aspire One to have a Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz CPU (667 MHz FSB). Most other other Netbooks you see around are 1.60GHz rated at 533MHz FSB.

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It has a 6-cell Li-ion battery, 1GB RAM (Hynix), 160GB HDD (Western Digital), 1.3Megapixel Camera, 10.1 LED LCD, Bluetooth and your standard Wireless b/g. The new LED LCD display is a nice addition.

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The computer comes pre-loaded with Windows XP and Android.

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Digging into the real meat of this Netbook, on first boot up, you are greeted by the standard Windows XP set up process. Once Windows XP comes booted up, you are asked by the Acer Configuration Manager to set up Android.

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Setup is a snap, as it asks you which Operating System you would like to boot first.

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Then you are asked to enter your Google Account information. This is pretty crucial as you need to have a Google Account to be able to access most of the Android features.

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Once that is done, it will ask you for any other webmail accounts you might have (Yahoo, Hotmail and such).

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After a simple restart you will find your system booted into Android!

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Android starts up fast! I'd say an average of 13-16 second boot up time, from power button to functional Android screen. Shut down is pretty much immediate.

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Android comes pre-loaded with Firefox (Minefield 3.0.10) for web browsing (Adobe Flash is working, tested on YouTube), GoogleTalk, Webmail, Calendar, Alarm Clock, Calculator, Camera, Contacts, Gallery, Messaging, and Music.

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This version of Android is tweaked for the Acer Aspire One and not just a hard port over from Phone to Netbook. If you look into the Android Power Management settings you'll see options for System Auto-Suspend and Closing Lid actions. Also, in the upper left hand corner of Android, there is a little 'arrow' like button. If pressed, it will prompt the user to confirm a switch to the Windows Operating System. So if you ever want to go from Android --> Windows XP, it is just a click away. However, you cannot go backwards, if you wish to enter back into Android, you must restart your machine.

The most unfortunate aspect of this Netbook however is the fact that Android did not come with Android Market. Meaning the downloading of 3rd party applications is impossible at this moment. However, the Acer Android Manager does have an 'update' button and in the near future, there is great hope that it will receive an update with Android Market included.

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Any files you save while you are working on your Android session can be seen in Windows XP. The hard drive is partitioned in such a way that 4GB of HDD space has been allocated out for the Android System. If you happen to take a picture of yourself with the webcam while you working in Android, you can find that picture in the Android HDD partition.

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Final notes:

- You do not have to boot to Android OS at all, if you choose. Just make sure the Acer Android Manager settings are set accordingly and you can bypass Android entirely.

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- The Acer Android Manager includes a 'Boot Timeout Setting'. Basically upon entering Android, if the computer detects no user input, after a user-defined amount of time (default: 10 seconds), the computer will auto-switch to Windows XP.

Overall, this dual-booting Netbook runs beautifully. Android is insanely fast, though lacking Android Market at launch, it probably will get added in the future.
 
Has anyone tried installing Android smartphone apps using the .apk file instead of through the market? On Android phones, there is a setting to allow the installation of non-Market apps in Settings>Application Settings>Unknown Sources, does the Acer Android OS also have this setting?

Please let us know if you have tried this and had any success!

Sorry for taking a while to get back to you on this!

"Yes, this setting is still here in Acer Android OS. User can install any Android apps from anywhere but we don
 
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Has anyone tried installing Android smartphone apps using the .apk file instead of through the market? On Android phones, there is a setting to allow the installation of non-Market apps in Settings>Application Settings>Unknown Sources, does the Acer Android OS also have this setting?

Please let us know if you have tried this and had any success!

Took a bit of fooling around to figure out, but here is how it works.

use "browser" (not minefield), to navigate to insydemarket, download andexplorer.
when download finishes, click to install (minefield will not do this).
While you are on insyde, grab dolphin browser also, you don't need it for this, but it is very nice.

From this point on, you can install tons of apks that you can get off your phone, using mybackuppro, or other backup app of your choice.

Let the aspire one boot into windows. Under my computer, there is a folder (with andoid icon) called "Downloads for Android". fire up your usb connection and drop the apks you backed up into that folder.

Reboot into android, launch andexplorer, navigate to the apk you want to install and click on it.

Not everything works, but lots of things do also. I am running dxtop with no problems, Pandora widget and weather widget(donate) both work. Robodefense and many other games work well. Better terminal fires up fine, but sudo su returns a permission denied. have to fool around with this more when I get a chance.

The only problem I am having is getting android to see my NAS. can't figure out how to run any of the music apps from an smb share. I suspect I might be able to do this thru terminal, but I'm clueless where to start.

Over all I'm pretty happy with the android quickboot now that you can add more than the very weak selection of apps that it came with.

I also have been running ubuntu from a usb stick without any problems so far, making this a very versitile little machine!
 
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I also have been running ubuntu from a usb stick without any problems so far, making this a very versitile little machine!

man up and install it to the drive... the ubuntu netbook remix is great for eee pc's with the intel atom processor, and it is so useful that i havent had to boot to windows since i installed it. well i did once to upgrade to win 7 from one of my friends with a msdn liscence. i have a gateway netbook and i run android x86 off of a usb stick. it's nice using grub to dual boot... debating on a tri-boot... not sure if android x86 is the same as the one that was preinstall on your netbooks... aparantly x86 is based off of android 1.6... i really wanted to see if i can tether android netbook to my motorola droid... i tether in windows using pdanet, and in ubuntu i tether using azilink (i made a thread on tethering in linux)
 
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man up and install it to the drive... the ubuntu netbook remix is great for eee pc's with the intel atom processor, and it is so useful that i havent had to boot to windows since i installed it. well i did once to upgrade to win 7 from one of my friends with a msdn liscence. i have a gateway netbook and i run android x86 off of a usb stick. it's nice using grub to dual boot... debating on a tri-boot... not sure if android x86 is the same as the one that was preinstall on your netbooks... aparantly x86 is based off of android 1.6... i really wanted to see if i can tether android netbook to my motorola droid... i tether in windows using pdanet, and in ubuntu i tether using azilink (i made a thread on tethering in linux)

I concur I recently started running Linux Mint 8 on my laptop and desktop. I got rid of windows and haven't looked back. The only issue I have had was getting my printer to work. It took a little tinkering but wasn't hard to do. I have been using it for a couple months and haven't missed windows at all
I'm getting ready to buy a netbook and the first thing I will do is get rid of windows. I will either install Ubuntu netbook remix, Easy Peasy, or Linux mint 8 I haven't decided yet.
 
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I concur I recently started running Linux Mint 8 on my laptop and desktop. I got rid of windows and haven't looked back. The only issue I have had was getting my printer to work. It took a little tinkering but wasn't hard to do. I have been using it for a couple months and haven't missed windows at all
I'm getting ready to buy a netbook and the first thing I will do is get rid of windows. I will either install Ubuntu netbook remix, Easy Peasy, or Linux mint 8 I haven't decided yet.

ubuntu netbook remix i only had a minor issue on wifi connection issues and all i had to do was install a package using apt get... and my printer took some tinkering, but not much... i still got some tinkering on the printing to do... it seems to print everything two to three times... that is a discussion for the ubuntu forums... the people there are really helpful when it comes to support.

as for android on a netbook, idk... i couldnt get wifi working at all using android x86... should work great on this dual booting netbook. if i had this, i'd tri to make it tri-boot with ubuntu netbook remix.
 
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