Not just the unbeatable price, but one quick look through its entire package and you know the Acer Aspire One is going to give the other netbooks a serious run for their money. Sporting a polished blue colored exterior and inside bezel, the Acer Aspire One is attractive and doesn't compromise on style. It is driven by the inexpensive Intel Atom 1.6-GHz processor, has a 120GB hard drive spinning at 5400 RPM, and 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM (expandable to 1.5GB), and has Microsoft Windows XP Home edition pre-installed (there's a different model that has a flavor of the Linux operating system).

The 8.g-inch screen panel, that supports a 1024-by-600 pixels resolution, is completely washed over with gloss. A 0.3-megapixel webcam and a microphone are inlaid at the top of the screen. The speakers are situated on the base of the chassis, like the MSI Wind. Hence, the audio can be a little mumed at times. A standard set of input-output ports consisting ofthree USB ports, VGA, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, microphone and headphone jacks, multi-card reader and a storage card slot make up the essentials. All this in a minuscule form factor makes it all the more impressive. Weighing in at just 1.05 kg, the Aspire One is one ofthe lightest mini-laptops out there.

The chassis is well built and its overall smooth finish makes it a pleasure to work with. And once you are in tune with the smaller form factor, working on the Aspire One is a piece of cake. I had no problem typing out this review using the compact keyboard, while simultaneously surfing the Web through Wi-Fi with music in the background. Quite frankly, that is all these netbooks are designed to handle, and the experience was pretty good. Also the Aspire One is a silent machine, you can barely hear it running while you work; plus it runs fairly cool. Booting up took about 45 seconds, and with the Wi-Fi turned on and with normal Internet usage and screen brightness on max, the 3-cell battery lasted for three hours. The glossy screen, as expected, proved disastrous outdoors. Unless looking at your own face while typing makes you feel good. Acer should have included an option for a non glossy screen.

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But ultimately, the Acer Aspire One's keyboard proved the most surprising revelation. As is the case of any other mini-laptop, it takes getting used to; but once that is out of the way, it is unlike any other laptop keyboard from Acer. The keys are well-defined and quite responsive, and there is no discernible key-flex whatsoever. I certainly rate the Acer Aspire One's keyboard higher than the MSI Wind. But, the Acer's touchpad is cramped and lacks palm-detection, while the left-right mouse keys are aligned vertically along its side this undesirable design adds another unnecessary learning curve.

Not much detracts from the overall impression the Aspire One creates barring the glossy screen, absence of Gigabit Ethernet and draft-N wireless'. It is unreasonable to expect any netbook to have an optical drive at this point. Don't expect it to do a lot, but if you need a trimmed down laptop which is convenient to carry around, surf the Web and multitask with simple software, this Aspire is the One.