Netbooks are on-the-go machines built to accomplish basic computing tasks without weighing your bag down. Since surfing the net is one of the primary use of such PCs, all of them come embedded with a Wi-fi chip. In some countries, there have been a handful of models that have been sold with 3G adapters built-in. But most of these didn't really make their way into India, obviously as the country is just waking up to the 3G revolution this year. But this is GSM 3G we're talking of, while CDMA's competitive 3G technology (dubbed EV-DO) has been around in India for some time, providing users with theoretical speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps.
We'd tested the Olive Zipbook, a Netbook that had an EV-DO based wireless modem built-in. Although it was a pioneering attempt in the country, the device lacked the basic deliverables that are expected from a Netbook.
Today, we have the Acer AOD260 - a variant of the "Aspire One" series Netbook from the company, with a 3G EV-DO modem built-in. So, does the AOD260 finally pull off the characteristics of a netbook without the need to have a stick-like object poking out of its USB port? Read on to find out.
Design and Build
The Acer Aspire AOD260 is very similar in design to its Gateway counterpart, the LT23. The glossy black top with the "Aspire One" logo is striking, and oddly enough, the same glossy part is even fitted at the base of the laptop. The AOD260 is pretty thin and light compared to the current iteration of Netbooks; anything smaller than this is going to burn a hole in your pocket. The build quality is also pretty good as the AOD260 does not creak or flex to the point of concern.
We'd tested the Olive Zipbook, a Netbook that had an EV-DO based wireless modem built-in. Although it was a pioneering attempt in the country, the device lacked the basic deliverables that are expected from a Netbook.
Today, we have the Acer AOD260 - a variant of the "Aspire One" series Netbook from the company, with a 3G EV-DO modem built-in. So, does the AOD260 finally pull off the characteristics of a netbook without the need to have a stick-like object poking out of its USB port? Read on to find out.
Design and Build
The Acer Aspire AOD260 is very similar in design to its Gateway counterpart, the LT23. The glossy black top with the "Aspire One" logo is striking, and oddly enough, the same glossy part is even fitted at the base of the laptop. The AOD260 is pretty thin and light compared to the current iteration of Netbooks; anything smaller than this is going to burn a hole in your pocket. The build quality is also pretty good as the AOD260 does not creak or flex to the point of concern.
The display is a typical 10-inch 1024 x 600 pixel LCD panel that portrays good clarity and brightness. Text appears clear and the viewing angles are also not too bad. On the inside, we have a keyboard design that Acer has been using in quite a few previous generations of its laptops. The keys have an evenly flat level and offer good tactility. But then the size and placement of certain keys, like the area surrounding the arrow keys, makes you accidentally hit the wrong place occasionally.
Below that is a decently sized touch-pad that has a silky-smooth surface that we loved. It is pretty accurate too, except for a few times that it behaved oddly by zooming into webpages. The touch-pad also supports multi-touch gestures like two-fingered scrolling.
To the sides is the usual array of ports seen on every Netbook since a last few years. There are three USB ports, headphone/microphone jacks, a VGA port, card reader slot and a LAN port. Despite a 6-cell battery aboard, it does not protrude the way older generation Netbooks did, and the laptop will not raise the top too much if you keep it on a flat surface. The speaker grille is placed at the bottom, which delivers acceptable audio quality at a fairly audible volume. The Netbook heated up a bit when the device was charging, but it's not so bad that it would toast your lap.
Performance
The Acer Aspire AOD260 comes with an Intel Atom N450 processor churning clock-cycles at 1.66 GHz. The rest of the configuration include, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, Intel GMA 3150 graphics. This hardware is just about powered to get the Windows 7 Starter Edition pre-loaded to run at a fair pace, but only if you're not going to push it too much.
Working on simple applications like using MS Word or even light multi-tasking will ideally work without any slow-downs. But the moment you do something as heavy as loading a heavy website (ours can be fairly called one at this stage), you can see the Netbook being pushed to its limits. In contrast, the Gateway LT23 came with 2GB of RAM that made things run somewhat smoother than the AOD260. In the PCMark05 synthetic benchmark, it scored a measly 1458 marks overall, which is pretty similar to the score of most Netbooks with specs like this.
The Wireless toggle key on the Function key brings up all three forms of wire-free connectivity to enable or disable - 3G, Wi-fi and Bluetooth. The 3G modem is a CDMA (EV-DO) based one, and our model came packaged with Tata Photon+ wireless service.
In our usage of the AOD260's 3G capabilities when stationary and in motion were almost exactly the same as one would get by connecting a USB dongle. Oh, and what pleasure it was, not to have a long plastic stick protruding out from the side. Having 3G built-in gave a pleasant internet experience on the AOD260.
The AOD260 has got enough power to play standard-definition DivX and XviD video files. We knew it couldn't, but still tried playing 720p and 1080p HD videos, and as expected it choked (a lot worse on the latter than the former).
Battery Life
The AOD260 comes with a 6-cell battery. This was the one place where the Olive ZipBook had fared poorly. But Acer amazingly cleared this hurdle by giving us a good up-time of 6 hours when connected to Tata Photon+ Internet, that too in motion. The brightness was put 2-3 notches below max.
Price and Verdict
The Acer Aspire AOD260 costs Rs. 18,000 + taxes. That is quite a fair price, as Netbooks with configurations like this one cost around Rs. 15,000, plus a Tata Photon+ dongle would cost you about Rs. 2,000. The AOD260 is a pretty decent buy if you're looking for a typical Netbook that'll save you the trouble of carrying a USB 3G dongle every time. Another way of looking at it is this - a built-in 3G modem means you cannot enable any other PC with its wireless broadband internet (unless you make this netbook behave like a Wi-fi router using apps like Connectify).
But then keep your expectations very modest with this one, as the combination of 1GB RAM, single-core Atom processor and Windows 7 Starter cannot take too much load.
Its identical cousin without the 3G powers, the Gateway LT23, costs Rs. 22,700 + taxes. Although the 2GB RAM and 320GB hard drive sounds like a bargain, we think it's somewhat a sore one when you compare it to the HP Mini 210, which has all of that, plus a faster 1.86 GHz Intel Atom processor, not to mention a much better designed keyboard. Only if you don't mind its slightly heavy body weight.
