[BC] Acer Aspire

[PeterH]

On Jul 13, 2009, at 3:07 PM, Barry Mishkind wrote:

> I don't know if this is still timely or not, but I ran into another
> shopper today at Best Buy, near the netbooks.
>
> He said he has been through TWO Acer Aspires that failed. One had a
> motherboard "burn" ... the other just stopped working.
>
> He recommended I stay away from Acer ... but then that is just a
> chance encounter in the store.

>> Thanks to all who offered opinions on the Acer notebook, I'm going  
>> out this
>> weekend to see what I can find. Was initially a bit unsure of the  
>> usability
>

Almost ALL so-called Netbooks are based upon the same "proof of  
concept" ... the Intel Atom® 945/ICH7 Netbook.

Most give you the option of 8 or 10 inch displays, and 3 or 6 cell  
batteries.

All have at least two USB 2.0 ports, one WXVGA port and one SD card  
reader port.

A few ... very few ... have an Express-34 port for expansion which  
includes Firewire and eSATA.

ALL require an accessory for optical drive expansion, and not all  
such drives are actually capable of such operation without also  
having a "wal-wart" power block.

The Buffalo is one which can be 100 percent powered by the Netbook's  
USB port, and which can burn any kind of media. A few others are  
following suit, too.

But, some still require a wal-wart for many operations, and some  
cannot burn dual-layer media.

I am a 100 percent MacOS X shop (and 100 percent "vanilla" MacOS X),  
and the OCZ Neutrino "build-it-yourself" Netbook comes with no OS at  
all, and it runs MacOS 10.5.7 perfectly (deep sleep is still an issue).

Also, the Neutrino comes with a 4 cell battery, which is a tad better  
than 3 cells, but obviously not as good as 6 cells (I am advised that  
6 cell batteries are coming).

The support for Express-34 was what did it for me as Firewire is a  
MUST, and so also is eSATA, and there are affordable, and MacOS X  
supported cards available for both.

You can find a "Guide" and other support at the site listed below.

http://groups.google.com/group/hq-a <+> A home for the Hackintosh  
community.

To subscribe to the HQ-A group, send email to hq-a 
+subscribe at googlegroups.com