Acer Aspire AS1410-8414 11.6-Inch Sapphire Blue Laptop - 6 Hour Battery Life

Before I decided on this little laptop, I was considering many options to meet the following goals: - Storage space for my family photos and videos - 320-500GB was my target. - Something with HDMI output, to be able to play the above on my plasma TV. - An additional feature would be WiFi, so that I could play YouTube videos as well. - Plus, something for my wife to play Pandora in another room, when necessary.One of the options was to go with a LaCie LeCinema drive (goal 1&2), or with WD TV Live + a portable HD. For goal #4 I was thinking about a Squeezebox, or similar. Either way, it would cost us slightly below $400. Instead, we decided to buy this little machine for slightly above $400, and have a functional computer in addition to the above goals. It has only 250GB storage, but you can't have everything. Also, I was a bit hesitant to go with a laptop this small, but it has immediately captivated us with its portability.Right now it sits in my living room connected to the stereo, and plays Pandora the whole day. Sometimes in the evenings we take it to our TV room to play our old family videos or watch our pictures on the big screen (on battery power).Pros: - Excellent picture over HDMI, enough power to play full-screen mpegs (720x480). I didn't try HD movies yet. - Excellent portability with size big enough to be useful for internet and emails on its own, but small enough to be carried around without a problem. - Good battery life of over 4h (yeah, the advertised 6h is a bit exaggerated, but 4.5 is still plenty). - Enough processor power to handle Vista/Win 7 and basic apps without stuttering. - Excellent webcam - truly optimized for low light. - Almost full size keyboard, except 2 keys (see below).Not-so-pros: - You need USB DVD-drive to be able to upgrade to Win7, or play DVDs. I already had one. - Keys 'Home' and 'End' available only with 'Fn' key. - Built-in bluetooth would be nice, but it's not a big deal. - Only 250GB of storage, although it's still much better than any netbook.Cons: - TONS of factory-installed bloatware. If you create system restore DVD and use it, all the bloatware will be restored as well. - 15GB of storage used by some hidden partition - not available to user. Fortunately when upgrading to Win7 I was able to get rid of that. - Sometimes it's tricky to boot this laptop from DVD. I was unable to boot Knoppix, only partly successful in booting Ubuntu. I also had trouble booting Win7 during installation. My DVD drive is OK (tested). Perhaps it's something with BIOS settings, but I didn't figure it out yet.Overall: We've made a good purchase.

My oldest wanted a netbook. The AS1410 is not technically a netbook. Because of it's 11.6" screen, celeron processor, and 2g of RAM it is considered a notebook and comes loaded with Windows 7 Premium instead of Windows 7 Starter. Still in stature and price, for most of us, this is a netbook. We were concerned with video playback based on reviews and decided to wait for the N450 netbooks to arrive. When the N450s hit the stores, we had a chance to compare an AO532h side by side with the AS1410. We had been looking at the N450 based netbooks and had decided that size and performance were fine for our use. We demo'd Netflix and found video playback was very good -- contrary to some reviews. In our side by side test, we played a HD video that was on each computer. Both machines ran HD just fine with the AS1410 finishing the clip a few seconds before the AO532h. Big difference was in the amount of heat generated. After ten minutes of playing the video, the AO532h was very hot whereas the AS1410 was still quite cool. That alone settled things for me (with electronics, heat kills), but there are a lot of areas where the AS1410 bests the new netbooks...Product: AS1410 / AO532hPrice: $400 / $300WEI: 3.2 / 2.1Disk: 250g / 160gRam: 2g / 1gOS: W7 Premium x64 / W7 Starter x32Video: Better / GoodKeyboard: Good / GoodTouchpad: Better (two buttons, smooth) / Good (one button, textured)Screen: 11.6 LED / 10.1 LEDRuntime (claimed): 6hr / 8hrCamera/Mic: Yes / YesHDMI: Yes / NoWarranty: 2yr / 1yrIf you can live with the slightly higher price and slightly shorter battery life, the AS1410 is a terrific all day long computer. We have averaged 7 hours per charge in normal use (letting it sleep when we were not not in use). If you carry a planner all day at work or take notes at school, this may be the best mobile solution for you.

This is a wonderful netbook. I bought it with 2G of RAM and purchased separately another DDR2 module - total 4G now. Doing this was piece of cake... Upgrading it to Windows 7 64Bit was also very easy, and all the drivers were recognized on the fly, during the process...I love the design, and it's a very powerful netbook. This is no Intel Atom processor, it's a real Pentium. For what I use it, (software development) it's excellent. Also, the display, although tiny (no complaints, that's exactly what I was looking for), has an excellent maximum resolution.I have to say, I love this netbook, needless to say, the price was an amazing deal. Overall, I'm really happy with it.Thank you Amazon for your excellent service - I received it very quickly in 2-3 days.

This "little"notebook is what I expected it be. Small and convenient it's great for my lighter work. My oldest son seems to enjoy it even more, He takes it everywhere he can. The battery feels like it last forever. I just plug it up before going to bed. It has plenty of storage space,ram and processor for everyday computing and playing.

Product quit working . computer will not power on.dead red. was sent to acer for repair . i have to pay the shipment . i am not sure will will happen , product was ok while it was working . but will not recommend it for the price you as well buy 13 inch cpu with optical drive in.