Cool Yule Rating: 4 stars

Price: $399

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Description: The Aspire One netbook is a very tiny notebook computer designed for basic computer tasks (Web surfing, e-mail, basic Office-like tasks). The 2.2-lb. Aspire One includes built-in wireless networking and a Webcam, runs on an Intel Atom processor (1.6 GHz), and has 512MB of RAM (upgradeable to 1GB). It runs on the Linus Linux Lite operating system, but for some reason the version we had was running Windows XP (we could have had an older version, the newer ones might have the Linux OS).

The system has a 120GB hard drive, an SD card and a multi-card reader (supporting SD, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro and xD Picture Cards), built-in stereo speakers and microphone, and a 10/100 Ethernet port.

The device is really meant for basic computing and Web functions – for heavy duty usage and applications I'd probably want a better, faster and slightly larger notebook. But this could be a very useful notebook to keep powered up and running in living areas in the house, for those times when you need to check a quick e-mail, sports score or other such Internet-enabled activity. I found the smaller keyboard more difficult to type on than a normal notebook-sized keyboard, the touchpad was also not much fun to use (I prefer just connecting a mobile or regular mouse to any notebook).

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