I’ve been looking for a good netbook over the past few weeks and after getting some good information about possible choices, I decided to get the Acer Aspire One AO751h. Here are some reasons why I chose this netbook over some of the others that are out there…

Pros:

• Big Screen – the first feature that struck me about this netbook was the screen size. I knew from the ratings and reviews that I’d read that it was bigger than some of the others out there… 11.6″ instead of ~10″, but actually seeing the screen size did something for me. I’ve been using an MSI Wind U100 (hardware modified) and it has a 10″ screen… adding an extra 1.6″ really makes a difference. Also, the LED backlit screen is extra nice if you want to watch movies.
• RAM – I am running some pretty high-performance applications on this netbook, so RAM is important to me. The Acer Aspire One AO751 ships with 2GB of RAM… which is double what most netbooks ship with.
• Battery Life – Although the ratings generally say that this 6-cell netbook has 8 hours of battery life, a buddy of mine got one last week and told me that his runs for 11 hours on a full charge. I still haven’t verified this, but it’s quite probable based on my use so far.

Basically, those are the primary specs for this netbook that were the most important to me… now, to be fair, here are some things about this netbook that didn’t necessarily flip my switch, but I’m willing to work around…

Cons:

• No Bluetooth – The particular model that I purchased doesn’t have the Bluetooth module. This was somewhat confusing, because there is a button to switch it on with, but when I try to activate it, it shows a Bluetooth icon with a red “x” on it. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of information on the Acer website about this except for a note that says that if a Bluetooth module is included, there’ll be a sticker on the bottom of the netbook that has the Bluetooth logo. Mine has no such sticker. Bummer.
• No Wireless N Technology – I can use my new netbook with wireless b/g, but not N. N is very much faster and I just bought a new Apple Airport Base Station a few months ago that has wireless N built in, so I was hoping to use this… so I’m compromising some network speed, but I can always add that later if it becomes a huge consideration.

Overall, I give this netbook a netbook rating of 4.5 stars… I think this is an excellent solution, providing good battery life and lots of nice perks. If you really want bluetooth, grab a USB 2.0 Bluetooth Micro Adapter like this one for around $20:

Here’s a link to the Acer Aspire One AO751h with the 2GB of RAM… make sure you use this link… there are a bunch out there that have 1GB of RAM and if you’re not paying close attention, you could end up ordering one of those inadvertently…