I have the model Aspire 5738Z, and it is excellent. I have had it for over 4 months now, use it every day for online University and it has never failed me. Smooth running, no freezeups. The number pad next to the keyboard is an excellent addition as I use it for my math classes. The price is right, the quality is excellent.

Sound is very good, keyboard and keys are comfortable, webcam is awesome. Battery life is as described, even though I mostly use it plugged in. I am running Windows Vista and have no issues. Love this computer.

this laptop is fast, has all programs i need plus more…extremely fast shipping from amazon. light weight, just an excellent laptop….I highly recommend. it does take some getting use to because of the numbers pad to the right of the key board but once you shift your hands over correctly on the board it seems alright…. go get it!

Exciting
For the first time in 25 years of portable computing, I have no worries — zero — about running out of power during a working day. This is amazing. The battery lasts and lasts… you never have to plug it in, either in your office or at customers… just at night, like a cell phone.

Excellent
As a multimedia designer, I work with words, pictures, motion graphics, and lightweight web code. Programs I use at work run perfectly on this small computer: Framemaker, Xara Xtreme Pro, an older version of Photoshop, Open Office, Audacity, and Soundslides for rapid presentations with audio. If you are a writer or an illustrator, you can do a lot with this device… anywhere you go. Everything works as advertised… the wifi is easy to use, screen quality is great, and, as a non-touch-typist, the keyboard suits me just fine.

Elegant
This PC is beautiful right out of the box. A lovely, simple, slightly rounded plastic shell. And Windows 7 Starter is a kick — it is faster and easier to use than Vista or XP. All my old programs (except Ultraedit, a text editor) installed right away. Including a contact/filing program I’ve been using since Win 95! Talk about backward compatibility! Windows 7 Starter’s only drawback: it won’t let you change the desktop background, but the default blue color works well for me.
This is the perfect way to deliver a presentation. It has a plug for a projector… but, for sales, you can sit with a prospect (anywhere) and just go through your show on the bright screen and never worry about the battery failing.

P.S.
Decided to buy this right after the Apple iPad demo, where I found out that the iPad couldn’t run Flash graphics (hey, I make motion graphics!)… and I can tell you that Apple’s HTML5 idea is nonsense… HTML5 is still on the standards drawing board, and will use H264 videos rather than interactive content. Also, turns out the iPad can run only one app at a time, can’t do copy-paste operations, and won’t run any of my work programs. Am going on about this because if you pay $$$ for a PC, you’ll be asking ‘how long will it take for this tool to earn back my money?’ … and the iPad seems to be snarled up with monthly connect charges, iTunes content charges, etc. — a lot of proprietary, non-open-source costs that can really reduce your profit margins.

Highly recommended. Hope this helps.

The Acer Aspire One 532h is a lovely little netbook, for the price it is fantastic but like all things it isn’t perfect. Let’s begin shall we?

The netbook is a great simplistic design, very lightweight and compact, perfect for traveling or school. It has an SD card slot for your Digital Camera, etc. 3 USB 2.0 ports, a VGA-out port (great if you wanna use the netbook with a projector), a Headphone and Microphone port, and a kensington lock slot (great if you wanna physically lock up your computer).

The keyboard is a chiclet key style, although this looks nice, the keyboard is forgettable, and by that I mean there is no way to physically remember what key your fingers are touching. This is definitely a shortcoming for the device.

The trackpad is pretty cool, it has your typical tracking area and vertical scroll off to the side, but what makes this interesting is Acer has bundeled software which lets you use multi-touch gestures. a two-finger swipe to the left will act like the “back” button, two fingers in a circle would be “refresh”, it’s nifty, but the lack of speed on some commands makes it more of a novelty.
The screen is bright and beautiful, of course at maximum brightness, its an LED screen so it doesn’t use alot of battery power.

The computer comes with Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g), a built-in microphone, and a 0.3Mp camera. Although the camera’s specs aren’t great, it still looked good when testing with Ustream and Google Video chat.

The other thing you’ll want to remember is this IS windows 7 Starter, so you do get some nice features that come with Windows 7 Home, Pro, etc. You are missing some basic functions. If you want to change the desktop background… you can’t, personalize the sounds… nope. It’s definitely a starter, and if you want a more “full” experience, you will have to fork out some more cash to upgrade.

The computer maxes out the processor when more than two windows are active, this makes it difficult to multi-task. One easy way to remedy this is to give your processor a break, install more RAM in the computer (1Gb to 2Gb extra of 200-pin 667MHz SODIMM RAM should suffice). The last thing is this computer is light, so light that you will find that the computer will want to tip over in your lap (not enough weight in the front), just something to mention.

So let’s cover the key things I’ve learned…
*Beautiful LED screen
*Webcam is good
*computer is pretty powerful and gets basic tasks done quickly
*wakes up from standby in less than 3 seconds
*Battery power is great and could last an entire work day without a recharge

#Chiclet styled keyboard is forgetable and a mediocre experience
#multi-touch trackpad is sort of nice, mostly a gimmick
#computer isn’t properly balenced
#you’ll want to add some RAM if you expedt to get the most out of the device.

I bought this in red. It is a deep maroon, and although it is very nice, I think the onyx blue, which is a bluish black, looks very nice, too.
I am very glad I bought the machine. I have recommended it to everyone I know who is thinking about buying a netbook. It is very thin and light in weight, about as thin as a small book, and it looks very masculine and professional. (For both men and women I think masculine looking computers carry the day. A feminine computer looks very unprofessional.) I had looked at a number of brands in the stores and thought they looked like cosmetics cases or children’s toys. I did not want a computer that could be mistaken for a make-up case and I certainly did not want a toy.
I saw the blue Acer on sale at Office Depot with 7 Starter and I was very impressed with it, but I wanted XP and nobody local carries any netbooks with that OS so I ordered it from amazon, paying extra for the red one.
It is exactly what I wanted. I liked it so much I spent the first few hours after I got it connected to the net emailing everyone I knew to tell them about it. Most are academicians who want a small netbook to carry to conferences.
A friend has an older Samsung netbook and hers is about the size of an older desktop cassette recorder. Remember those? And is about just as heavy. Although the screen is the same size as the Acer’s the machine is much thicker. The Acer feels like a feather in comparison.
I was also able to copy some of my software to a flashdrive and install it on the computer, even though I am not a techie. It turned out not to be difficult at all and saved me the cost of an external DVD/CD drive.
The keyboard is quite large and quite easy to use. And I found the screen to be quite an adequate size. It does not feel cramped.
I also discovered through customer comments that it is possible to upgrade the RAM to 2gb on this model, even though the manufacturer doesn’t say so. However, the 7 Starter and XP versions of this model each take different memory modules. People who are interested should look this up in customer comments as some give the exact specs of the modules that work with each version.
I highly recommend this machine to anyone who is looking for a netbook.

Have been using the system for about a week.

The battery life is unreal. With wi-fi on I get about 8+ hours, with wi-fi off the system says it can go 12+ hours and I believe it. recharge is fast as well.

The screen is very bright although i would have spent more to get 1280 wide rather than 1024. Screen reclines way back so its fine for just about any viewing position.

The body is plastic but feels very solid - no flex like I noticed in some of the ASUS netbooks.

Speakers are fine for everyday use. Haven’t used the mic or speaker out jacks.

System is very light, and the charger is far lighter than I expected.

Trackpad is very responsive although I haven’t mastered the zoom in and out gestures. The left and right click thing is a little stiff and takes some getting used to. I don’t really like the keyboard style. It has teh flat keys with very little room in between and I’m having some problems gettign used to it rather than a standard PC keyboard (hence all the spelling mistakes in this review). that said the keys are very well arranged and none of teh common keys are hard to find or require complex ALT-FN-CTRL-SHIFT type combinations.

Keep in mind that this is a netbook, not a desktop replacement. The machine can get a little slow, usually if you are working in Internet explorer - this machine is going to have be seriously tryign out other, lighter weight, browsers.

this machine would get five stars except for the keyboard, which is a matter of personal typing style. If you are looking to all day battery life for non heavy duty computing then this machine is perfect.

I have begun traveling more often for work, and though I like my Dell Laptop (Latitude D620) it is heavy, too large to use on an airplane and battery life leaves a lot to be desired. I initially looked at the Dell Inspiron 11z but reviews say the track pad is terrible and the 6 hour battery is huge and extends below the bottom of the back.

Then I found the Acer Aspire 1410. It has a screen that is the same size, a larger hard drive, and wireless n instead of just b & g. So basically I got more, all at a lower price. And the 6 hour battery doesn’t ruin the nice slim profile of the machine.

My plan was to just use this when traveling, primarily for web based apps (google docs and gmail, which work on and off line) and light stuff. But I’ve found that it runs everything including much heavier applications very well. Videos look great and it makes for a great entertainment machine on the road. Office works well, I’ve used the Gimp to edit photos and I’ve played some games.

There wasn’t much crud to uninstall and I’ve been very pleased with Windows 7. The machine boots quickly and I’m up and running in no time. Wireless is great, the sound is good and I love the display. I usually dim it down when on the road to maximize battery life, but it still looks pretty good. When hooked up to power, it can be very bright and looks very good.

I’m not crazy about the glossy screen, though I’m getting used to it. I don’t like the glossy black of the case either and am looking for a skin. As of right now it’s a fingerprint magnet and looks like I rubbed a stick of butter all over it.

But it runs all my apps great and has exceeded my expectations for such a compact and affordable machine. I find that I’m using it all the time, not just when I travel. It’s awesome how light and compact it is but still doing everything I need.

As a small internet business owner, I needed a laptop that is portable and reliable. I originally started looking at the 10″ netbooks, but found them to be too small and I hated that they only ran the Windows 7 Starter version which has some major restrictions. This 11.6″ laptop has a decent size screen and a nice size keyboard. I was deciding between this and the HP, but when you customize the HP to have all the same specs as this Acer, the cost was over $800 so this became a no-brainer.

I’ve had my Acer for about 1 month now and it is great. Windows 7 takes a little getting used to, but I’ve had no issues with it at all. I hooked it up to a wireless network printer without incident and it wasn’t loaded with a ton of garbage-ware. My only issue was that it only comes with the student/home trial version of MS Office, and I am an Outlook user. The entire office suite is expensive, so instead I tried Mozilla Thunderbird which is free and it works just as well as Outlook. Once my trial period for the MS Office software is up, I will purchase it for only $149 and keep Thunderbird as my email client which will save me a pretty penny.

Amazon had this laptop out to me in 3 days with free shipping (HP charged $35 for shipping).

If you are looking for a “net-book” with all the capabilities of a regular sized laptop, I highly recommend this Acer.

I bought mine from a local retailer for about the same price. I’ve owned a dozen laptops and even the 14″ ones are too big and bulky for me. I love the portability of this machine and for the price, it’s a really good value.

I highly recommend putting in a 2GB RAM module (I used an 800MHz one) and, if you like, a larger hard drive. The extra RAM gives Windows 7 room to breathe and speeds things up noticeably. The Starter Edition of Windows 7 is too limiting for me, I upgraded to another edition of Windows 7. After you upgrade the RAM and the OS to a higher edition of Windows 7, install the Acer VGA driver for Windows 7 and then you’ll have the proper screen resolution and you can run in Aero mode.

I have run Ubuntu Linux (both the Netbook Remix and the standard one), Windows XP Pro, and Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit on my 532h and they all ran just fine. Stick to 32-bit operating systems on this model since it can’t take more than 2GB of RAM (like all netbooks).

For web surfing, I use Google Chrome and it runs much faster than IE8 or Firefox on this machine. Chrome is a good choice because now you can add extensions, like ad blockers, to it. Basically, if you’re like most people and 90% of what you do on a computer is social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), browsing the web, word processing, email and other simple tasks — well, this machine is all you need.

Finally, remember, it’s a Netbook. Not a desktop or even a regular laptop. If you want to do any serious gaming, forget it, but it will run some games. There are netbook websites that are very helpful and some of them even have game recommendations for netbooks.

I deleted my first review which knocked this new netbook from Acer with a 3 Star review, for failing to accept a 2gb memory upgrade - I was told by Acer’s overseas on-line warranty service this netbook couldn’t even accept more than one 1gb.

When I posted my experience as the earlier, deleted review here, the Acer product manager from San Jose jumped into the discussion to affirm that this netbook IS designed to take customer installed 2gb upgrades, and that the warranty support line adviser was simply wrong. Since my particular unit wouldn’t take memory modules that had already been proven to work in my other netbooks (including another N450-based netbook) it was concluded that my particular unit was defective. The Acer product manager reported that all of his production samples in San Jose accepted standard 2gb upgrades. One other reader later reported that his unit wouldn’t take an upgrade either, also using known good memory pulled from another netbook. So basically it appears that there is a glitch in some, but not all, units that Acer is shipping. Based on my past experience with Acer (I’ve owned 5 or 6) and faith in Amazon’s return policy, I would have no problem ordering this ao532h, with the caveat that if you intend to upgrade the memory, try doing it right away while your unit is still within the Amazon returns period. Please note that my sample ran fine with the included 1gb module from Acer, and that upgrading the BIOS per the warranty line instructions did not allow my sample to accept either of the two 2 gb replacement modules I had on hand.

So this review is to confirm that this netbook IS designed to accept a 2gb memory module upgrade, and to caution you to check your unit for compatibility. The 2gb memory module spec’d at Crucial dot com specifically for the ao532h is as follows:

Part #: CT1165194 * DDR2 PC2-5300 * CL=5 * Unbuffered * NON-ECC * DDR2-667 * 1.8V * 256Meg x 64 *

The crucial dot com price is about $6 higher than a similar spec’d module from Crucial which is shown by Amazon on this product page as a recommended accessory. Any generic DDR2, PC5300, SoDimm with 667 speed should work, but if you want to be cautious, make sure you get the exact same part number shown above (CT1165194) until Acer provides additional advice on this issue.

***************

So on to some more useful “user” comments about this netbook, based on my week and a half experience with it (using only the 1gb of memory it came with).

FIRST, this netbook is THIN and of course light. It may well be the thinnest one out there (although the Acer ao751h, now discontinued but still owned by me, was also quite thin). It certainly would earn that kudo if it came with a 3 cell battery like the ao751h, but then it wouldn’t be getting 8 hours of battery life. Personally, I’d rather have the battery life even if the rear of the chassis is raised by maybe .25 inch.

Please note that similarly priced models from other manufacturers only come with 3 cell batteries.

Also note that some 6 cell batteries have longer battery life - at a slight increase in weight.

Since Acer netbook models only use two form factors for batteries (ao751h style or ao250 style) you should be able to pick up a 3 cell, 6 cell normal, or 6 cell high power accessory battery from Amazon later, should you desire a second battery.

SECOND, the power brick and cord for this netbook are SMALL and LIGHT. While the power brick itself is comparable in size to other makers, Acer has done something neat with the power cord runs - instead of having a super thick, 3 prong “toaster oven” size electrical cord to the actual power brick, followed by a thin, light second run to the netbook, they attached the plug directly to the power brick and just give you a longer run of the thinner, lighter cord coming off the brick to the netbook. YAY.

This means the whole brick assembly packs down smaller and lighter. Also, since the plug can now be safely set up as a two prong (instead of 3 prong) with no polarization, it will easily fit into plug outlets in Asia without an adaptor.

THIRD, the touchpad was the easiest yet for me to use. It wasn’t hypersensitive (clicking accidentally when I meant to just move the cursor), and has raised dots to indicate the vertical scroll bar area on the touchpad, which worked really well. Some other touchpads let me scroll, but either require two fingers to scroll, or have an ambiguously defined right side area where I am supposed to scroll. The raised dots on the Acer let me find the scroll line and use it effectively.

Since I was forced to use only 1 gb on my defective unit, I got to see how well it performs, and was surprised by how well it works with even 10 browser tabs open at the same time. I still think 2gb is better, at least if you are going to try to run VLC with h.264 transcoded videos - on other netbooks I get stuttering with only 1gb. I didn’t have a chance to try VLC on this model.

The only negative on this model is slight keyboard flex, which comes, I suspect, as a result of the thinness. It doesn’t flex so much it feels like it is going to break, just feels a little rubbery. I have an HP Mini 210 that is more resistant, but not completely resistant, to flex, but it is also a lot fatter, so you will have to decide which you prefer. Oh I should also mention that the ao532h comes with the usual stunning, but glossy, Acer screen - if your preference is for a mat screen you will need to turn to some HP and Asus models. But iff you prefer glossy, you should love this screen.

JUDGMENT: If you carry the power brick around a lot, the redesign of the power cord alone is a big advantage of this model. If your budget is $300 and you can’t live with the shorter battery life of 3 cell competitors, this is your best option. For about $40 more from other makers, you can get a more robust 6 cell battery and possibly a larger 250 gb hard drive. But this ao532h is definitely the one to beat if you are budget shopping.

A WORD ON PRICING AND ARCANE MICROSOFT & INTEL OEM REQUIREMENTS: Microsoft is loathe to charge small license fees on netbooks - the license fees are currently apparently much lower than on other laptops, a reflection of the small margins in netbooks - and Intel is loathe to sell millions of cheap Atom processors instead of more costly, and profitable chips. So the two have “conspired,” to to speak, to limit the specs on netbooks if the manufacturers expect to get the lower licensing fees, and so far as I can tell that is why the new generation of netbooks are all appearing with only 1gb of factory installed memory and generally only 160 gb hard drives even though Acer’s own eMachines 250, blown out at Walmart for only $228, came with a 250gb hard drive. 250 gb harddrives (but not 2gb factory memory upgrades) are available, but at a disparate increase in price considering the low OEM margin between 160 gb and 250 gb drives at this point - probably because (I suspect) in order to include a 250 gb harddrive, the license fee for Win7 also goes up.

The “benign” side of this “conspiracy” is that MS has apparently slashed Win7 Starter prices to the point where it is as cheap as, or cheaper than WinXP - which is why a lot of WinXP netbooks were announced for the N450 chip released in December 2009, but none seem to have actually made it to market.

A WORD ON WIN7 VS. WINXP: I like Win7, even Starter Edition, a lot more than WinXP - not for performance, but for its better interface. Reviewers claim that WinXP is still more efficient in terms of both performance and battery life, but I think the future life of WinXP is limited and that as MS releases updates and Service Packs for Win7, the battery life and slight performance penalty issues should be addressed - although I suspect the slight performance hit is related more to the extra goodies in Win7 than to any intrinsic superiority of code in WinXP (you can also revert to Windows Classic Theme in Win7 and turn off some services to save processing resources if you want to). Note that on benchmarks, Win7/Atom N450 setups have a slight performance edge on WinXP/N270 setups, so actually we seem to be making ever-so-slight performance gains in the rapidly growing netbook market. All in all, as much as I lust after every incremental increase in performance from these truly mouse-powered Atom netbooks, I would rather stick with Win7 than devolve to WinXP. And for those of you, like me, who are thinking about replacing their conventional hard drive in their netbook with a solid state (SSD) drive - Win7 has special features (TRIM) to optimize SSD performance - WinXP does not.

A WORD ON WIN7 STARTER: Win7 Starter works fine, although those MS won’t let me change my screen color unless I revert to Windows Classic Theme (I like to run a black background to save a little power). There is not absurd limit on the number or programs you can run at one time under Win7, an early proposal gratefully abandoned. The only obvious “crippling” of Win7 Starter - other than that permanently green desktop color - is that it doesn’t have the translucent Aero windows and other Aero desktop bells and whistles, features I would be disabling on a netbook anyway, for performance reasons.

A WORD ON LINUX VS. WIN7 STARTER: I tried installing dual boot Linux systems on my other netbooks, principally Ubuntu Netbook Remix which is supposed to be optimized for the Atom chip, but also Moblin and JolliCloud. Two observations: Linux is cool, but no faster than Win7 despite hints to the contrary (it is NOT a “lighter, faster” operating system); and hell hath no fury greater than a Linux dual boot install when you try to uninstall it. Guess what - there IS no…

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