I'd had an Acer Aspire One for a few months when my brother expressed an interest in buying a small laptop; I hatched the idea of giving him a deal on my AAO if I could find something I might like a little more. My only real dissatisfaction with my AAO (120G HD, WinXP, 3-cell model) had been battery life; watching a movie on iTunes, I could barely get through an hour and a half, and I generally had to pay a lot more attention to the battery meter than I wanted.
After some research, I settled on the Samsung NC10 as something that might suit my needs better. Both are fine machines, with very similar specs; here are my thoughts on the two, after a few months with the Acer and a few days with the Samsung.
Size and weight are the biggest difference (though in fairness, a 6-cell AAO would be pretty close in weight) - but as with most tradeoffs, the right choice depends on what you want to do with it. If I was really going to be carrying it around regularly, the Acer would be more handy. My primary use, though, is as a "kitchen computer" for around the house, plus entertainment and email on the occasional trip. Since portability is a bit less of a concern, I can afford the NC10's bigger dimensions to get the bigger screen and keyboard.
Things I like about the NC10:
* Bigger keyboard feels very close to full size.
* The matte screen is better in many environments compared to the glossy screen of the Acer. Flying with the Acer, I had problems with the reflections of the reading lights of the passengers behind me, and there were similar issues in other environments. I get a bit less contrast with the NC10 -- the blacks aren't quite as black in some settings -- but it's a reasonable price to pay.
* I wasn't really getting used to the Acer's touchpad buttons being on the side. The NC10's button position underneath the touchpad is more natural for me. The difference isn't as great as I had hoped, though - I'd wanted to be able to click-and-drag with one hand by using the thumb and index finger, but the touchpad area is so cramped that this is difficult, and I still resort to two hands fairly often.
* Aside from positioning, the touchpad's buttons do feel more usable on the NC10; you really need to push on the Acer's buttons, while with the NC10, you can do a more gentle tap.
* The NC10's labels for the side connectors, printed on the top surface around the keyboard, are a very useful touch I'd like to see more of. Not beautiful, but a victory of function over form.
* Both give on-screen feedback when you do various Fn-key operations such as turning off wireless or changing the brightness or volume, but Samsung uses nice clear graphics in the middle of the screen, while Acer's feedback is with simple and fairly light-colored text near the bottom of the screen; the latter was harder to see on light backgrounds.
* Very quiet out of the box. The Acer was just intolerably loud before I found and installed Ralf's free fan control app, which made a huge difference in the enjoyability of the AAO.
* If you're hung up on fingerprints, the NC10 has hardly any surfaces that attract them.
* I haven't done it yet, but I like the option of easily adding more memory.
Things I miss about the Acer:
* A nifty feature of the AAO's physical design is that the display's hinges are only at the sides, leaving a big gap along most of the length between the main body and the display's lid. I found I could get a very nice one-handed grip of the open AAO by slipping three fingers into this gap (getting my medium-size male fingers in up to the second knuckle), and spreading my pinky and thumb wide underneath the unit, turning it into, well, a mighty big "palmtop". This gives a very strong one-hand hold, leaving the other hand free for typing. If you think you might be using your netbook on your feet a lot, you should definitely try the Acer on for size. (In contrast, holding the NC10 Statue-of-Liberty style and trying to type on it isn't nearly as solid or comfortable.)
* The Acer's lid opened wider, which is nicer sometimes for casual household use, e.g. standing over a table or counter.
* The Acer's status LED's are above the keyboard near the display, easily visible while you're typing; the NC10's are on the front edge (toward your body as you type). This hides them under your hands when you're typing, and if you set the NC10 down in front of you to watch a movie, those bright blue LEDs are shining right at your face, and are a bit distracting.
* I kinda miss that extra money I had to spend on the Samsung; it's not the cheapest netbook.
Things I like about both:
* One thing that drew me to the NC10 was the similarity of its keyboard layout to that of the Acer; I had found myself coming to like the little navigation section in the lower right, that puts page up and down keys near the arrow keys. I had discarded some other NetBook options based on keyboard layout; I like to use PgUp/PgDn when reading, and having to hit a function key for them was unacceptable. I still have to hit "Fn" to get Home and End, but I use them less often. In contrast, the keyboard on a colleague's Dell Mini 9 felt very unnatural - not only cramped, but with many keys in nonstandard places.
* Both fit really well on a cramped coach airline seat tray (the Acer a bit better, of course). In contrast, my full size "work" laptop (a 15" Thinkpad) is just about unusable.
* Space! I hate it when a computer's disk starts getting full and I have to worry about what to delete, so I never really considered the SSD-based netbooks.
Things I don't like about both:
* The vertical resolution (these are 1024x600) isn't enough for many web pages, particularly flash-based web pages for kids. Pbskids.org and webkinz.com were a couple of the sites where the richly animated apps just didn't fit vertically. If you're thinking about a netbook as a kid's computer, you might want to think seriously about a more full-size laptop, and maybe try out their favorite sites in a smaller browser window.
In conclusion: they're both great Netbooks, but the battery life and usability of the Samsung NC10 made it the best choice for me, despite the Aspire One's greater portability and lower cost.Get more detail about
Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook - 6 Cell Battery.
