Friday, September 21, 2012

New Netbook

I just got a new net-book for writing on, an Acer Aspire One. It's pretty good and I'm writing this post on it right now however not word processor that came with it. That was the starter version of Word 2010 which has these annoying advertisements in the right side of the window. Considering that the screen is only 10.1 inches it really seems to take up a lot of screen real estate.

So I could have a word processor without the advertisements I installed LibreOffice almost immediately. It's in fact the one that I'm writing this post in. I also of course installed Sigil and Calibre so that I can properly format e-books when I need to. For those of you not aware, all three of these programs are freeware.

About the only negative so far is the fact that the built memory card reader doesn't seem to work. Luckily we have a couple of spares memory card readers so that hasn't been a major issue. I really wanted to save documents on one of the eight gig cards though so it was just a little disappointing is all.

One cool feature is the fact this little netbook has HDMI output. I actually had it connected to the TV for a little bit to test it out. Unfortunately the TV screen isn't as clear as the netbook's is so its not as useful a feature as could be expected. It was kind of nice though to have two pages up on the screen at the same time.

For ebooks I was kind of surprised to see the Nook reader app already installed. I have books on Barnes & Noble also, I just don't get many there. Mostly Smashwords or Amazon these days and at one time it was only on Amazon.

I think I could pretty easily recommend one of these netbooks. Was able to work on one of my stories tonight in fact. The keyboard is very comfortable to the touch. Everything seems to be where you expect it to be so you're not having to look down to see what key you're getting ready to hit. There's not even any cursor lag time.

Battery life seems to be pretty good also which is of course an important consideration in a laptop or a netbook. It looks to have a 9 to 9 ½ hour life span before its dead. That's really impressive for me. I should be able to sit in the backyard for a couple of hours happily writing when the desire hits me.

1 comment:

  1. I'm looking to buy a netbook soon... I might check theirs out. Thanks!

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