The Acer Aspire AO751h,is one of the company’s first 11.6-inch net book Which is  an Upgrade over its 10-inch cousin users get an extra inch of screen real estate, a bigger roomier keyboard, amazingly and more than 7 hours of battery life infect its smaller Cousin, the AOD150, lasts about an hour less. Infect it is larger; the AO751h has a weaker processor then is counterpart competitors. As a result it is a net book that has great looks and feels great but offers less performance than other machines in its class.

Design:
We have seen the 10-inch Aspire One AOD250, and the 11.6-inch version looks familiar. It has a glossy black lid having Acer’s metallic logo impressed in the lower corner off the lid; but the lid picks up fingerprints fairly easily. Just Like the slightly more upscale Timeline series it’s having a gray palm rest and keyboard rest with a zed-black keyboard and thin bezel to match its looks it’s pretty much visible in the Picture above.

As we have seen in Timeline series, that it’s overall effects are conservative but they are not cheap-looking. The real quality about the Aspire is not the color scheme but its thinness. While its competitors i.e. the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA, can be as thick as 1.4 inches and weigh close to 3 pounds the 1005-HA weighs 2.8 the Aspire One has a minimal footprint of 11.2 x 7.8 x 1.0 inches, infect its weighs 3 pounds and 3.6 with its adapter included. It feels just bit heavier than the Toshiba mini-NB205, but that’s offset may be considered because of the thinner build.
The only glich is its six-cell battery juts out the back (bulging out), whereas some other net-books, such as the Eee PC 1005HA, have comparably sized batteries that are more applicable and sleek with the system and that’s not all they manage to deliver longer battery life too.

Keyboard and aesthetics:
Just like the Aspire Timeline AS3810T; the Aspire One A0751h has slightly raised keys with plastic having a textured feel. The layout is very close to full size keyboard and I must appreciate i.e. the right Shift key is full size and it is in proper place. In fact the touch typists will have no problem with this net-book, but I noticed that the keyboard was flexed.
In our first 15 Thumbs Typing Test, we scored 84 words per minute; our highest score on our desktop computer is 88 words per minute. Then, we immediately took the test again and scored 86 words per minute, which suggests   that you will likely acclimate quickly with its form and factor.

Touchpad and Touch Button’s:
When I reviewed the 10-inch Aspire One, then we were complaining about the tiny touchpad. But with the A0751h’s slightly wider footprint comes a wider touchpad (2.5 x 1.6 inches), which has a pleasant improvement over the AOD250’s (2.0 x 1.5-inch) touch pad. But it is still fairly short when compared to the NB205’s (3.1 x 1.6 inches) enormous touchpad.
But we have a bigger concern of the single touch button, which we found that it’s too stiff and narrow. Besides from the stiffness, we would definitely have preferred two buttons, as there are on other net-books.

Display and Sound:
The one thing unique about AO751h is that that most of its 10-inch competitors don’t is a high-resolution screen. For e.g.
1.     1005HA,
2.     NB205,
3.     10-inch Aspire
One all have displays with 1024 x 600-pixel resolution, the AO751h’s 11.6-inch display has a resolution of enormous 1366 x 768 pixels. Those extra vertical pixels, in particular, mean we don’t have to scroll down as often when we are viewing pages, which is a common inconvenience with net-books at present.
I was impressed by the screen’s bright display. After watched a Saturday Night Live sketch on Hulu.com I enjoyed pleasant colors and amazingly good viewing angles even from oblique side angles. The glossy finish limited our viewing angles from the front; infect when we lowered the lid forward slightly we were still able to make out the clip. By the time I got to a 45-degree angle, however, the screen appeared washed out.
The volume, as expect with a net-book, is weak. While watching a clip in a quiet room with the net-book right in front of us, the sound was never too loud. Music, too, sounded predictably tinny, but no worse than it does on other competitor net-books: the bass in was really Good

Ports and Webcam:
The Net-book AO751h is having a standard selection of ports i.e.
1.    three USB ports
2.     VGA output
3.    an Ethernet jack
4.     headphone
5.     mica ports,
6.     4-in-1 memory card reader.
The memory card reader, VGA, and one USB port on the right side, and the rest are located on the left.
The net-book comes with a Built in 1.3 MP webcam. While chatting with my friend I noticed minimal latency with better colors and brightness than on his Apple I-Sight camera.

Storage:
Just Like other net-books, the AO751 has a hard drive of 160GB which has 5,400 rpm. On the LAPTOP Transfer Test, I copied a 4.97GB mixed-media folder in 5 minutes and 45 seconds, which results in to a rate of 14.8 MBps. That’s just right in line with the net-book category average (14.6 MBps), but can find many significantly faster hard drives in comparably priced 10-inch net-books. The 10-inch Aspire One, Eee PC 1005HA, and NB205, are for e.g. were all faster, completing the test at rates of 16.5 MBps, 19.9 MBps, and 18.1 MBps, respectively.

Battery Life and Wi-Fi:
The Net-book AO751h has some very tough competition in its battery life I recently hailed both the 1005HA and the NB205 for lasting nearly nine hours on our battery test. But the AO751h has lasted 7 hours and 8 minutes only on the LAPTOP battery test, which is not as long as the other net-books listed, is still an impressive score; But it still beats the six-cell net-book category with average of almost 90 minutes.
Despite having 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, which we wouldn’t expect to have as strong a range as a wireless-N radio, the AO751h maintained an excellent through put of 21.0 Mbps and 20.0 Mbps at 15 and 50 feet respectively both of the results are above average for the net-book category.

Pros:
1.    Slim design
2.    Long battery life
3.    Comfortable keyboard
4.    Bright, high-resolution display
5.    Strong wireless range
6.    Better touch pad
7.    Well placed full size right shift Key
8.    Slightly raised keys with textured finish
9.    Almost a Full sized keyboard

Cons:
1.    Subpar performance scores
2.    Relatively small touchpad
3.    Stiff single touch button
4.    Week processor
5.    Dust catching finish which is difficult to maintain
6.    Bumpy battery at the base.
7.    No optical drive
8.    Less spate to increase the ram capacity
9.    Small HDD of only 160 Gb

Hardware Overview:
1.    CPU: 1.33-GHz Intel Atom Z520
2.    OS: Windows XP Home
3.    RAM/Expandable to: 1GB/2GB
4.    Hard Drive Size/Speed: 160GB/5,400 rpm
5.    Optical Drive: None
6.    Display/Resolution: 11.6 inches/1364 x 768
7.    Graphics/Video Memory: Intel GMA 500/384MB
8.    HDD 160 GB.

Super-thin Design
With the lid closed, the Timeline 3810T’s matte gray, fingerprint-proof plastic lid is similar to the company’s business-oriented TravelMate series. In contrast to the $899 Aspire 3935, which, for the same price, sports a more attractive golden brown brushed-metal chassis, and an integrated optical drive. On the other hand, the 3810T is significantly lighter at 3.6 pounds (vs. 4.2 for the 3935) and marginally thinner (0.9 inches at its thinnest point vs. 1.0 inches).
This machine is no MSI X340, which weighs 2.9 pounds, but it’s still refreshingly light to carry. Overall, the matte gray-and-black color scheme is a bit conservative, but the keys’ finish and island–style layout keep it current.

You won’t find any multimedia controls, touch-sensitive or otherwise, on this notebook—just a strip of LED lights above the keyboard indicating Wi-Fi connectivity, BackUp Manager, battery power, and hard drive. A small button next to the touchpad deactivates it (a feature more commonly found on business notebooks, which have both a touchpad and a trackball in the center of the keyboard).

Keyboard and Touchpad
The arrangement of the 3810T’s keys is unusual: they’re closer together than a typical island layout (think Apple’s MacBook line or any Sony VAIO notebook), but there’s still enough space between them that they look, at first glance, like a more traditional keyboard. Nevertheless, our hands settled comfortably on the soft keys, and we made few typing errors as we surfed the Web, and responded to e-mail. We also warmed to the keys’ low pitch, and their minimal sound.
Hands down, our least favorite feature is the 3810T’s stiff single mouse button. We would have preferred two separate buttons. That said, the touchpad was large enough, and provided just the right amount of friction.

Display and Sound
The LED-backlit 13.3 display was exceptionally bright when we bumped the brightness to its maximum settings. Although the screen was washed out when we pushed the lid forward, we were able to comfortably watch from the sides, despite the glossy finish. The 1366 x 768 screen resolution (standard for a 16:9 13-inch notebook) was sufficient to watch a Saturday Night Live clip on Hulu at full screen.

Not surprisingly, given the notebook’s size and price, the speakers were weak. When we watched clips online and streamed music from Slacker, the music and dialogue sounded distant, and never very loud. With music, in particular, bass and percussions in everything from MGMT to The White Stripes got lost in the tinny shuffle.

Ports and Webcam
Unlike most 13-inch notebooks, the Timeline 3810T has no optical drive. While it’s true that you can download movies and software from the Web (instead of using DVDs or CD-ROMs), some users may prefer a DVD drive. We’re of the opinion that you don’t need one, unless you like to burn movies or back up to DVDs. Plus, the lack of an optical drive helps this notebook achieve its slim profile and light weight.

Otherwise, the 3810T has all the ports you could need: three USB ports, HDMI and VGA output, an Ethernet jack, headphone and mic ports, and a Kensington lock slot. It also has a 5-in-1 memory card reader. All of these openings are divided evenly between the two sides; none are on the back or the front.
The 720p webcam is one of the best we’ve tested on a notebook recently. While some laptops’ 1.3-MP cameras struggle to produce smooth video at even VGA resolution, the 3810T’s high-def video looked fluid, with little, if any, lag. Likewise, our still photos showed lots of detail. Our only gripes: the lighting was dim, and both our photos and videos had a subtle yellow cast to them.

Performance
Our Timeline 3810T configuration packed a 1.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9400 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit). This combination produced a score of 2,678 in PCMark Vantage, which measures application performance in Vista. That result is less than 100 points short of the ultraportable category average but nearly 200 points less than the Aspire 3935, which is equipped with a more powerful 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo T7350 CPU.

The 500GB, 5,400-rpm drive on this notebook is fast: it transferred a 4.97GB mixed-media folder at a rate of 24.8 MBps. The average notebook in this weight class completes the same test at a rate of 19.7 MBps. The notebook took one minute to boot up, which is standard for a Vista machine.

While the 3810T’s slow clock speed doesn’t make much difference for everyday computing, intensive multimedia chores will prove challenging. For example, it took 22 minutes and 18 seconds to transcode a 5-minute-and-5-second MP4 clip to AVI using Handbrake. The average ultraportable, meanwhile, takes 16:41 seconds to complete the same task. Even the $899 MSI X340, which has a 1.4-GHz Intel Penryn Core 2 Solo SU3500 ULV processor and 2GB of RAM, took 18:12; and the Aspire 3935 took a brisk 7:56.

Graphics
When it comes to performance, graphics power is the 3810T’s only glaring weakness. Its score of 698 on 3DMark06 falls short of the still-weak category average of 862, but is right in line with the X340’s score of 643, which means you can forget about playing graphically demanding games. On Far Cry 2, this notebook managed just 3 frames per second with the resolution set to 1024 x 768, and 1 frame per second with the resolution cranked to its highest setting, 1366 x 768.

Despite its shortcomings, this machine comes with demo versions of 19 casual games (such as Puzzle Express and Parking Dash by Oberon Media) that are fun and easy to play. And we flew from the United States to Japan’s Yokohama Beach in Google Earth with barely an onscreen blip.
Heat

In addition to long battery life, and its thin yet affordable design, the Timeline series promises to run cool, thanks to Acer’s new Laminar Wall Jet technology. The result of a collaboration between Acer and Intel, this technology redirects air along the bottom of the notebook. We tested the heat while performing the same transcoding test described in the performance section.

While the temperatures ranged from cool to warm toward the beginning of this test, they rose from warm to hot by its end. The keyboard, touchpad, and bottom of the notebook were all 88 degrees to start (the bottom of the notebook got as cool as 82 degrees). Any temperature below 90 degrees is fine. But as time went on, the temperature in these three places rose to between 92 and 93 degrees (the bottom of the notebook even got as hot as 100 degrees). Despite these temperatures, though, both the keyboard and bottom felt more warm than hot.

Battery Life and Wi-Fi
The Timeline 3810T’s extra-long battery life is one of the best reasons to buy it. The six-cell battery lasted an incredible 8 hours and 5 minutes on the LAPTOP battery test, whereas the average ultraportable lasts five hours and nine minutes, to be exact). And it streamrolls the X340, which lasted three hours and thirty-eight minutes. The Timeline also offers nearly double the endurance of the Aspire 3935.
Its Intel WiFi Link 5100 wireless-N radio delivered throughput of 20.0 Mbps and 17.5 Mbps at 15 and 50 feet, respectively. Again, that bests the category averages of 18.6 Mbps and 15.6 Mbps, respectively.

Configurations
In addition to our $899 configuration, the 3810T, you can also buy the 3810TZ, which costs just $599. But, the $300 dollar price drop comes with some pretty big compromises in terms of specs and performance. The 3810TZ has a 1.33-GHz Intel Pentium SU2700 CPU, a 320GB hard drive (by Hitachi, not Toshiba), and an Atheros wireless-G radio. It, too, however, has 4GB of RAM, and even claims a few more minutes of battery life than the $899 3810T.

Software and Warranty
The 3810T’s bundled software and trialware include many of the usual suspects: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (60-day trial) with a PowerPoint 2007 viewer, and the Compatibility Pack; Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer; McAfee Security Center; Windows Live Essentials; and Yahoo Toolbar.

We do welcome one piece of bundled software: Acer’s BackUp Manager, which lets users designate a device (say, a portable hard drive) as their backup location, and allows them to schedule backups. Its neat UI lets users check boxes to back up videos, photos, music, pictures, browser favorites, e-mail, and Office files.
This system comes with a one-year limited parts-and-labor warranty, including 24/7, toll-free phone support.

The Verdict
As long as you don’t need an optical drive, we highly recommend the Timeline 3810T. In an increasingly crowded 13-inch notebook category, the Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T stands out, thanks to the combination of its low $899 price tag and astounding eight-plus hours of battery life. We like it even more than the $899 MSI X340, which, while lighter, doesn’t perform as well and has a less sturdy keyboard.

Of course, we’d never hesitate to recommend the $999 entry-level MacBook (whose specs have just been refreshed), which will surely offer more power; however, that machine is heavier, and it won’t match the Timeline’s endurance. In fact, we think the Timeline’s biggest competition is the $899 Aspire 3935, which sports an optical drive, and a more luxurious design, but has only a little more than 4 hours of battery life. Either way, you can’t lose.

Design
In many ways, the Acer Aspire One AOD250 resembles the AOD150: It has the same keyboard, the same glossy black bezel surrounding a glossy 10.1-inch screen, and it’s even a similar shade of blue on the lid and the keyboard deck. It doesn’t have the metallic flecks of the AOD150, and the blue is more purple in tone, just enough for a noticeable difference. This netbook will also be available in black, white, and red.

At 10.2 x 7.2 x 1 inches and 2.2 pounds, it’s 0.8 inches narrower, 0.3 inches thinner, and more than half a pound lighter than the AOD150. In fact, with its charger, the AOD250 weighs just 2.8 pounds, the same as the AOD150 alone. Remarkably, it’s almost identical in thickness and weight to the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA, but, because it doesn’t have tapered sides, it looks larger at first glance.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The AOD250’s keyboard, unchanged from the AOD150, is firm and easy to type on; we had no problems typing this review in Microsoft Word. But there’s still a quarter inch of chassis on either side of the keyboard; a missed opportunity for Acer to install a larger, edge-to-edge keyboard, along the lines of the HP Mini 110 or Eee PC 1008HA.

The touchpad is comfortable to use, and offers very little friction, but at 2.0 x 1.5 inches, could be a little wider. The mouse button below is a single bar, lacking a divot to separate the two sides. Still, its action was crisp and not too stiff.

Display and Audio
As with the AOD150, the 10.1-inch LED-backlit screen on the AOD250 has a resolution of 1024 x 600. We’re glad that Acer didn’t skimp on the 24 vertical pixels in the name of boasting a 16:9 display. Even though it’s a spacious 10 inches, at this size, every pixel counts. The glossy screen was crisp and displayed colors superbly; watching episodes of Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons on Hulu at full screen, we were impressed with how brightly it rendered colors. While horizontal viewing angles were excellent, tilting the screen forward almost immediately results in a distorted image.

The speakers on the AOD250 were about what we expect from a netbook; not all that powerful, and a little tinny—but they get the job done. Listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” through Pandora, we felt the bass was on the thin side. The speakers would sound a lot better if they were placed on the keyboard deck, rather than on the underside of the front edge of the chassis; when we tilted the netbook backwards, songs not only sounded louder, but more detailed, too.

Ports and Webcam
Despite its slimmed-down physique, the AOD250 still manages to accommodate three USB ports, VGA, Ethernet, a 4-in-1 memory card slot, and headphone and mic ports. But the card slot is now on the right side (instead of the left), and the VGA, USB, and audio jacks have been moved further forward on the left side.

A 0.3-megapixel webcam above the display provided decent images when videoconferencing with a friend over Skype, but the image was a bit darker than that provided by the MSI Wind U120’s 1.3-megapixel webcam. The microphone, located to the left of the webcam, allowed our caller to hear us loud and clear without our having to speak up.

Performance
Since its internal components are identical to the AOD150, we weren’t surprised that the AOD250 garnered nearly the exact same scores in every department as its predecessor. Like every other netbook with a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, the AOD250 provided fairly decent performance. Its PCMark05 score of 1,492 is about 100 points higher than the netbook average, but not quite as robust as the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA (1,584), which has the slightly zippier 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N280 processor. Similarly, when we transcoded a 114MB video file from MPG4 to AVI using Handbrake, the AOD250 took 28:51 to complete the task, which is about 30 seconds faster than the netbook average and on a par with the HP Mini 110, but about 90 seconds slower than the Eee PC 1008HA.

The 160GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive booted Windows XP Home in a decent 49 seconds, almost the same time as the AOD150. On the LAPTOP Transfer Test (duplicating a 4.97GB folder of mixed media), however, the drive was marginally slower, taking 5 minutes 9 seconds to complete, at a rate of 16.5 MBps. That’s about 2 MBps faster than the netbook average, but about 1 MBps slower than the AOD150.

The AOD250 was capable when it came to our graphics benchmarks, however. The Intel GMA 945 GPU notched a score of 741 in 3DMark03, more than 100 points above average, and its score of 123 in 3DMark06 was about 30 points above average. We had no problems streaming videos and playing movies off the hard drive. While it took a few seconds to render the Grand Canyon in Google Earth, we were able to fly around the southwest U.S. fairly smoothly. Still, zooming in and out of lower Manhattan with 3D buildings enabled proved choppy.

Wi-Fi and Battery Life
The AOD250’s 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card performed well, achieving a throughput of 20.1 Mbps and 16.9 Mbps at 15 and 50 feet from our access point, respectively (whereas 18.9 Mbps and 15.7 Mbps are the netbook averages at those distances).

The 3-cell battery achieved a runtime of 3 hours and 4 minutes, which is about 15 minutes longer than the average 3-cell netbook battery. Acer will also offer a 6-cell battery which, if the battery on the AOD150’s past performance is any indication, should provide about 6 hours of battery life. Unlike the 6-cell battery on the AOD150 (4400 mAh), the 6-cell battery being offered with the AOD250 will be a 5200-mAh, which should provide even more runtime. We will update this review once we’ve tested it.

Software
The Acer Aspire One AOD250 comes preloaded with a fair amount of software, including a 30-day trial of Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Works (which seems a bit redundant), Acer GameZone, Google Desktop, Carbonite Online Backup, and a 60-day trial of McAfee Security Center. It also comes with the Acer eRecovery Management application.

Configuration Options
Our configuration of the AOD250 (with a 3-cell battery) will set you back $298; the AOD250 with a 6-cell battery will cost $349 when it’s released in June. Considering the extra runtime involved, we think it’s worth spending the extra $50. Acer makes it easy for users to upgrade the hard drive and RAM on the AOD250, both of which are accessible via removable panels on the system’s underside.

Verdict
Overall, we’re very impressed with the Acer Aspire One AOD250. It performs very well, and at $298 ($349 with a 6-cell battery), it’s competitively priced compared to both the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA ($429) and the MSI Wind U123 ($379), which, while $80 and $30 more expensive, respectively, have faster processors and long battery life. Still, we’re at a loss as to why Acer felt it needed a nearly identical system in terms of price and performance, albeit one that’s marginally thinner and lighter. We would much rather give up that extra 0.3 inches of thickness for a wider keyboard and touchpad. But, as far as netbooks go, the Acer Aspire One AOD250 is every bit as good as its predecessor, in an even smaller package.