Acer started with the Acer Aspire One, its first netbook designed to compete on a market that began with Asus Eee PC computers. These original mini-laptops took the market by storm, and the Acer Aspire One was Acer's answer to the growing demand for small, lightweight laptops that were portable and had better battery life than standard laptops.



An Acer Netbook is now offered in one of 3 screen sizes, instead of the original 8.9" screen. Now you can opt for a slightly larger 10.1" or an 11.6" screen for a larger viewing area. The earliest netbooks were often criticized for their screen size, even though the entire computers were so compact. An 11.6" screen helps give a more full-size feeling to the screen, while maintaining the compact size and easy portability netbooks are known for. You can choose a 1024 x 600 resolution WSVGA resolution screen, or opt for a HD WXGA 1366 x 768 resolution with an LED-backlit display.

An Acer Netbook weighs less than 3 pounds. If you've ever carried around a full-size laptop that wasn't a very inexpensive featherweight model, then you can appreciate the idea of a laptop that weighs less than 3 pounds! You also have a choice in battery size, which will of course affect battery life. Models with a 3-cell battery cost less, but the 6-cell battery increases the run time dramatically.

Each Acer Netbook contains some type of Atom processor, a top processor from Intel that was made for small devices. Because of netbooks' portability, people want to be able to use them at length on the go, and there's not always a way to plug them in every couple of hours. The Atom processor helps the battery last much longer, because it uses much less power than other types of processors. Intel's popular Core 2 Duo processor uses almost 10 times more power than an Atom processor, making the Atom ideal for netbooks.

You can choose a less expensive Acer Netbook, or opt to pay a little more, by choosing different operating systems, hard drives and memory. Windows operating systems installed cost a little more than a Linux operating system, for instance. And you can choose hard drives ranging from about 80 Gig to 250 Gig, with larger storage commanding a higher price. Choose between 1GB and 2GB of memory--keeping in mind that more memory is always better, as it speeds operation.

You can choose from a variety of colors to suit your taste, and then enjoy using your Acer Netbook on the go, with its built-in Wi-Fi, web browsing, webcam and things like media player and picture viewers. These compact laptops let you compute on the go without lugging around a heavy laptop or paying thousands of dollars for a light model.