As many of you know I purchased an Acer Aspire One netbook earlier this week. To read about my decision to purchase the Acer, please click here.

After 2.5 days of using the Acer Aspire One, I can safely say that it is an excellent machine despite a few drawbacks.

The good stuff. The size and weight of the machine continue to please me. I can use it anywhere and I hardly noticed the weight in my carry-on bag. The size makes it possible to comfortably type and view while resting the Acer on the airplane tray table (in fact that’s where I’m typing now). The screen clarity is outstanding. The sound is adequate. The webcam offers clarity as good as that on my MacBook. (Now I know that some people will comment with technical specs about the screen and webcam, but I’m going with the naked-eye test).

The drawbacks. The screen is just a little too small to view all elements of Google Earth. If you install the Google Earth browser plug-in it’s less of an issue. To get the most out of my Acer Aspire One netbook, I stripped all of the unnecessary software that came loaded on it. By doing this I was able to run Google Earth faster and increase the available memory overall. I haven’t yet stripped MicroSoft works from the machine, but I plan to very soon.

Overall, I am very pleased with the purchase of the Acer Aspire One. If you do 97% of your work online, as I do, for less than $300 you could probably make the Acer a full-time computer.