I recently started an assignment that requires me to take my laptop to work and since the office isn’t too far from my apartment, I walk to and from work each day. After a few weeks I deemed my 17″ Gateway laptop too heavy to drag around with me so I started looking for something smaller in size and preferably under three pounds. After some brief window shopping I ended up buying the Acer Aspire One 10″ Notebook and I couldn’t be happier with it.
My goal was to find a small laptop that I could run my website and graphic design programs like Adobe’s Creative Suite 4, (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.) along with Outlook, Word, and a few web browsers. I have an external monitor at my office that I would be able to plug the laptop into so the small size wouldn’t interfere with my work process. I didn’t know if my wish list was even possible so I started doing some research.
Since I already had access to an Acer, my friend and I loaded Photoshop and Illustrator on it, both of which ran fine even with Firefox open. Sold. There’s a very unglamorous Radio Shack near me that sells them so I went there and, after tax, only spent $374 on the 10″ Acer Aspire One. Not bad at all and it’s under $100 if you bundle it with an AT&T wireless plan.
I was able to install and run the following programs with no problem: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, the full Microsoft Office suite, Navicat, TopStyle 3, UEStudio, Acronis, Beyond Compare 2, Vipre Antivirus and Spyware, SuperNotecard, Skype, AIM, and TweetDeck. I also installed the most popular web browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
Even with the small screen size you can still use Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. without an external monitor if you have to. I did run into trouble using Movable Type at times because the pop up screens that walk you through uploading a photo don’t entirely fit on the the screen. You’ll have to do some creative tabbing / guessing and hope for the best when you hit the enter button.
Because the Acer is so small it doesn’t come with an internal CD drive you’ll have to purchase one separately or borrow one from a friend as I did. Fully charged the battery lasts about eight hours and the laptop weighs in at 2.9 pounds. Most of the time I forget it’s even in my bag. Other perks are the built in mic and video camera, Memory Card slot, and three USB ports. I honestly can’t remember the last time a piece of equipment made my life so easy.
I design websites, blogs, and develop social media campaigns for creative professionals who want increase their online visibility, promote their latest projects, and attract new creative opportunities.