Acer Aspire ONE D250

A few weeks ago my trusted old laptop sadly decided to die on me. As i use a laptop for my work I needed one quickly so headed straight to Comet to buy one. Whilst browsing I was drawn to the netbook section, I bought this Acer Aspire One, I paid £270 for it, I have since seen it on some websites for around £199!!

The first thing I noticed when buying the netbook, was that the box was actually packaged in was tiny, probably not much bigger than a loaf of bread.

When you open up the box, I again couldnt believe how small it actually was, sitting it next to my old laptop this looked tiny, The screen is 10.1inches and when closed, the laptop only sits at 2.5cm high. It only weighs 1.8kg which really does feel light when carrying it around. It's a nice looking netbook too, with a glossy black top and inside the keyboard surround is a matt grey.

Setting up was easy, mine was already fully charged so after around 10mins of installing updates it was ready to go. The first thing I noticed, which I didn't even think to check in the shop, was that this doesn't have a CD drive, which made installing my copy of office a bit tricky! I have since seen that no netbook has a built in CD drive due to the compact size of them.

Forgetting the CD drive problem, connectivity elsewhere is brilliant, three USB ports, network port, speaker/microphone sockets plus an SD slot. It has wireless built in which connects instantly and hardly ever loses connection even when I take it into the garden, on the odd day that it doesn't rain.

When I first sat down to actually use it, I couldn't get the hang of it at all, I found it almost impossible to type, and my eyes seemed to really struggle to see the screen properly. Now about two months down the line, I can type on it without a problem, this review is currently being typed on it, so if I make any spelling or grammar mistakes I'll blame the keyboard.

I have found the battery life on this excellent, I can easily use it for seven hours without needing to re charge, If you're playing music or youtube videos you can still expect to get a good five hours out of it so it's perfect for travelling on trains and planes.

Day to day running is brilliant, it hasn't crashed once yet and opens up the usual office programmes & internet explorer almost straight away, it has 1.6ghz processor and 1gb ram, this doesn't sound a very high spec but it's an Atom processor which is supposedly more energy efficient meaning it will keep up with most tasks. It comes with a 160gb hard drive which is more than enough for plenty of music and office files.

It also comes with a built in webcam, I have never tried this so can't comment on how well it works, but it's supposed to be optimised for low light viewing meaning you shouldn't have to be sat in a really bright room for the cam to work.

To summarise, if you are looking for a new netbook, this one is a very good cheap option, the cost doesn't break the bank and I am sure perfomance wise it will give manufacturers like Sony a run for their money. No faults from me - 5 Stars

Also on Dooyoo under username samparry19