Acer Aspire One AO756-2626 11.6-Inch Laptop (Ash Black)

Acer Aspire One AO756-2626 11.6-Inch LaptopUpdate 12/21/2012

I've added a few upgrades after reading some reviews on other models, and found a great combination on the cheap, all from amazon. I'll upload some pictures too. First I added a new wireless card, it wasn't the easiest to find but it added dual band N and bluetooth for under $25 and is a cinch to install. just remember to get the drivers from the intel website for it, they increased my range considerably. Its link is Intel Network 6235AN.HMWWB Centrino WiFi Card Advanced-N 6235 Dual Band Bluetooth Retail Second I added a matched set uf crucial 4 GB ram modules, dont think it really maters wheather or not they are matched or if they will run dual channel but figured what the heck Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3 1333 MT/s (PC3-10600) CL9 SODIMM 204-Pin Notebook Memory Modules CT2KIT51264BC1339 Lastly I added a crucial M4 128gb SSD, the machine runs fine with a traditional HDD, but starts from sleep almost instantly with the SSD. This isn't my main machine, and honestly is much more useful than my 64gb iPad I paid twice as much for. Adding the SSD takes a little work though. Make the restore usb stick using the acer recovery program first of all. If you want to overprovision the drive is where it gets tricky. SSD's do wear out over time. It will likely outlast two of these little portables, but overprovisioning set some space aside to be used to replace some of the blocks as they wear out. I'm no good with linux but a friend pointed me to a program called Hdat2. It allows you to create a HPA (hidden protected area), BUT you need to boot to it from a disk on a windows machine with standard bios and not UEFI. If you are good with linux you could also do this easily with a bootable distro. Just make sure you get the 7mm version of the drive so it will fit. Crucial m4 128GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD1

Update: 12/8/2012

Still running great, one little issue I personally have with it is the space bar is a little short, I usually space with my right thumb but I have to pay a little more attention not to miss it. As far as a speed I was a little cncerned about the celeron, it seems to be keeping up just fine. I dont think I would attempt to game on it. I would make the recovery discs for them, I just used to USB keys (one has to be at least 16 GB), and tossed them in the box, hopefully I'll never need them.

Original review:

I'm going to write my initial impressions and update this review as I put it through the paces a little. As far a build quality its a plastic netbook. Its no macbook air, but its also $700 less. The trackpad has a little bit of rattle to it, but isnt bad. the screen is nice, the viewing angle fair with good resolution and no bad pixels (a pet peeve of mine). I wouldn't go any smaller as far as sub-notebooks go in screen size and resolution, I had an 8.9 and 10.1, both were awful. This feels like you could get some work done on it. It great in respect to upgrade-ability. The bottom comes off by just removing one screw and siding off the bottom. This is fantastic! My last netbook required that you remove the keyboard and the clips never went back quite right. I already upgraded the Ram to 8 gig (i had an extra 4 gig module in a drawer) and its much better than atom based models I've had in the past. It looks like it would be an easy upgrade to an SSD and have a great machine on the cheap.

I did have the wireless problem another reviewer had, I updated the driver through device manager and have been good to go since. The trackpad for some reason is set to natural scrolling, which I hate on my mac. You can turn it off but need to dig into the program files a little to find the setting. There is a bunch of crapware to disable, but thats no big surprise.

Overall a really nice value for the money. I wanted something cheap and portable, but not my main machine so it doesn't need to be ultra fast or fancy. Most of my frusterations just stem from Windows 8. It isn't bad per se, actually very innovative, but also has a pretty steep learning curve, making things i used to do intuitively much more difficult. Maybe its the comfort of having the desktop as an option keeps me from fully embracing "metro", I dunno. If you have any questions please comment and I'll do my best to help.

I bought this for a friend whose key requirement was portability, not performance. Even with performance in the back seat, I elected to go with a Celeron based machine as I was concerned an Atom based one lacked the minimum horsepower to make a user happy. The computer showed up with the usual prompt Amazon delivery and seemed in good condition on arrival. That's the last of the "good" statements you'll see. During the initial power up, the machine autonomously shut down. I hadn't paid too much attention up until that time as my friend was certainly capable of running through the new user initialization screens. After a second shutdown, I became more involved. It made it through to the desktop on the third try and I assumed it was some sort of learning curve issue until it instantly closed out of Windows 8 while doing essentially nothing. At this time, it wouldn't even boot properly and shutdown before hitting the windows screen. The second attempt brought up a screen asking about whether to try correcting Windows. Figuring there was certainly something wrong, it seemed reasonable to say, "Yes" and it went though it's correction routines. We were then able to get it to boot properly. Again I made the assumption the problems were Windows based and transient in nature. After downloading Skype, I was talking to my son when the machine shut off, instantly. Like the other times, this wasn't an orderly shutdown but rather as if someone had just pulled the plug (yes, this is a laptop but you get the drift. For what it's worth, the configuration for the first couple of boot attempts were on the battery which was fully charged but after that, I plugged the machine in to ensure there wasn't some sort of battery issue). We did another start and this time it stayed up for about 15 minutes. Two more shutdowns and I hit the Amazon return button.

I wanted to like this machine because if it had worked, it would have been an ideal machine for its intended use. The screen was certainly adequate and while the keyboard was small for my hands, I'm sure a person could get used to touch typing on it. Two USB ports allowed me to hook a portable DVD drive to it and it read and installed software fine. Unfortunately, there was a quality (or design) problem. I did an internet search for Windows 8 autonomous shutdowns and didn't find any results so it appears to be on the hardware side. When I ordered I was concerned about Acer quality and in this instance, it appears they cut one too many corners and lost a sale. It's difficult to objectively rate a computer that arrives with a hardware problem. Without the problem I encountered, it might be a great machine so giving a one star rating based on an obviously defective machine is a bit harsh. I'm sure this isn't the typical computer but I felt I couldn't rate it higher than two stars because even though it had potential, Acer quality control wasn't up to preventing defective machines from making it to end users and any buyer needs to be aware of this.

Buy Acer Aspire One AO756-2626 11.6-Inch Laptop (Ash Black) Now

This is a good basic laptop for your basic needs. Its not a gaming laptop nor a machine that will do high end rendering for you. If you surf the web and do your office productivity tasks on it, its quite a nice machine for its price. The only drawback I have is the screen isnt the best quality but its good enough for basic use.

Also people with wifi problems have to just change the power management settings from power save to maximum performace under the advanced settings tab for wifi.

Read Best Reviews of Acer Aspire One AO756-2626 11.6-Inch Laptop (Ash Black) Here

My old netbook Samsung N120-12GW 10.1-Inch White Netbook 6 Cell Battery was finally dying after almost 4 years of flawless service, so it was time to pick out a replacement.

I read tons of reviews and looked at dozens of netbooks until I found this little gem. Order went smoothly and it was on my front door only a couple days later.

Unboxing was easy, battery snapped on and it was loading. This is where my initial disappointment began. WINDOWS 8, what a horrid operating system, and since this is not a touch screen it felt even worse. The tiles are useless, the desktop view is like half of windows 7 without start menu etc. Wireless will intermittently disconnect every few minutes. If you are not going to downgrade this computer to windows 7 (not included) do not buy this!

To make this machine ready to rock, I ordered Corsair 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 1333 MHz (PC3 10666) Laptop Memory (CMSO4GX3M1A1333C9) and Crucial m4 256GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT256M4SSD2

Next up changed bios boot menu from UEFI boot to legacy bios and loaded windows 7 from a Kingston Digital DataTraveler SE9 16GB USB 2.0 DTSE9H/16GBZ on the SSD from crucial. Google Rufus to create bootable flash disk from .iso

With windows 7 no more wireless connection interruptions and load times are great and no more unsightly tiles of windows 8.

The small annoyances that remain are :

Trackpad feels a bit weird.

Keyboard is finicky, especially spacebar.

P.S. If you want a real champ of a netbook, get Acer Aspire One 756 AO756-2617 11.6" Notebook Computer, Intel Celeron 877 1.40GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB HDD, Win 7 Home Premium (Upg. to Win 8 Pro). The processor in that laptop is well worth the price difference.

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Pros:

-Intel Celeron 1.1 GHz dual core

-4 GB RAM

-300 GB of storage space

-1366 x 768 resolution

-lightweight and compact

-no reason to complain about lack of power since the battery life is already down to 4 hours on idle activity (i.e. less power might be a good thing)

Cons:

-CPU does not have hyperthreading (although dual core is fine by itself..no need for a higher discharge rate in regards to the battery)

-5400 rpm HDD (probably best to upgrade to faster SSD in the long run if you're willing to pay a bit more for the speed)

-spacebar does not register hits if you press the lower edge

-overall the netbook is "different" (I elaborate below as I have never had so much trouble installing Win7/Ubuntu Linux dual boot before)

Here's a small problem and solution guide that lists out the annoyances I ran into while trying to set up Windows 7 Ultimate and Ubuntu Linux dual boot. Btw, made an edit since I found out that I can't post links. Sorry for the confusion for anyone reading prior to the edit. I replaced the links with what you should query on Google. Should be fairly straightforward:

Instructions on creating a Windows 7 bootable USB flash drive (requires disk image):

Query string on Google search engine: "install windows 7 from usb drive" (click on first link, should be command line steps)

Problems ran into with Acer Netbook:

1) Cannot enter BIOS (when in UEFI):

Solution: Hold F2 key down (and keep it held) then press the power button

2) Motherboard does not recognize USB flash drive is inserted:

Solution: In BIOS boot settings, switch to legacy mode

3) Ubuntu installer does not see Windows partitions:

Solution: Use FixParts command line tool to delete traces of GPT data

Link:

Query string on Google search engine: "fixparts" (first link should say fixparts tutorial)

4) Ubuntu 12.04 windows aren't movable and right click does not work:

Solution: Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10

5) After Ubuntu 12.10 installation, wireless networking stops functioning:

Solution:

$ sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

In blacklist.conf add the following two lines at the end:

blacklist wl

blacklist bcma

$ sudo vim /etc/modules

In modules add the following line to the end:

brcmsmac

Reboot the laptop

see following link for more information:

Query Google: "Broadcom STA Wireless drivers not working on Acer aspire 5750G, Ubuntu 12.04" (pg 2 is probably the most useful)

6) On Ubuntu 12.10, brightness control does not work:

Solution:

(1) Common acer problem: Backlight control does not work out of box. I googled "acer brightness" and found this fix on the ubuntu forum (unfortunately I lost the original URL): Edit /etc/default/grub by changing

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux"

then sudo update-grub and reboot.

See link:

Query Google: "Acer aspire one 756 (review + tweaks)" (First link, should be similar to what I have posted above)

Somehow I still like the netbook due to its power and weight, but had to go through a lot of trouble trying to solve problems. I hope this information helps someone. If you need help with installing Windows 7 Ultimate or Ubuntu Linux, leave a comment here and I'll try to get back to you. On a side note, I do recommend users to give Windows 8 a shot. I sound like a hypocrite saying that since I went through the trouble of avoiding Windows 8, but Windows 8 offers nice features that deserve playing around with and getting used to for the sake of keeping up with modern technological advances. Hints for using Windows 8:

(1) Use the windows key shortcut to travel back and forth between desktop and whatever that other mode is called (I'll call it application panel mode)

(2) When you enter application panel mode, if you start typing, it'll automatically start a search which is convenient

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