Author: Tarandeep Kaur

If you care about your Acer Aspire One, do not play the songs at full blast when you are NOT using your earphones. The reason is little odd: right speaker causes enough vibration and / or magnetic interference to throw the hard drive into a tizzy, leading to a whole host of errors and even some potential data loss.

This is not a sign of good design. I do not play music at high volumes on my Acer Aspire One and perhaps that’s the reason, I’ve not faced any problems with the HDD. The SSD owners are not facing this problem (as there are no moving parts there)

[via hardwarecult]

A couple of weeks back, I was offered a deal about Aspire One that I just could not reject. I absolutely love it. Since then, I have been using all the time. My desktop is now biting the dust. However, one of the things for which I am not happy with the Aspire One is its battery life. It shipped with just 3-cell battery. That battery is able to give nearly 2.5 hours. If I use it heavily, it gets reduced to mere 2 hours.

The utility called a1ctl from a geek called Noda is a great way to underclock your Aspire One. By underclocking, you will be able to run your Aspire One’s processor at a slower clock rate. What will you get by that? You will be able to squeeze more juice out of your Aspire One.

If you are doing basic web surfing and office editing, you certainly won’t need all the horse power of the CPU.

Features:
– no installation needed
– small memory footprint (~5Mo)
– complete fan management, with stopped/slow/auto fan modes
– support newest bios, from v0.3109 to v0.3305
– CPU speed management (XP only)
– fast screen resolution changes, with 1024×768 scrolled and downscaled modes (XP only)
– can enable/disable webcam/ethernet/wifi to reduce power usage
– can be started with windows automatically
– option to prevent HDD clicks
– show temperature & battery in tray icon
– customizable icons & colors via .ini file
– integrated ACPIEC driver patching to prevent log writing

[get the fantastic a1ctl utility]

There are two ways to recover back to factory settings:

• using restore DVD
• using restore partition

The hidden restore partition contains the restore image of the Windows XP home. To recover using this method, follow the following  steps:

1. disable boot booster in BIOS.
2. press F9 key during the bootup
3. this will make your EEE to boot into recovery console
4. you will given the warning that the recovery process will delete all the data
5. click on ‘tick’ button to start the recovery process. It should take about 5 minutes to complete the recovery process

commentary: this is a great step by ASUS to let the users to recover back to factory settings when they do not have access to the external DVD drives. Also, it is a faster way to get back to a working system in case something went horribly wrong with the OS.

After releasing EEE 1000HE, which was an incremental upgrade for the EEE 1000H (better keyboard, more battery juice), ASUS has silently rolled out EEE 1002H, which is basically an upgrade version of the EEE 1002HA, which we reviewed a week back.

So, what has changed? Since I have EEE 1002HA with me, the differences were easy to notice:

Continue reading “ASUS EEE 1002H released!”

Earlier this month, Psion claimed that Intel cannot use the term netbook as it still sells its ‘netbook’. Intel, however, says that Psion stopped producing them years back and whatever little stock they have in the market is all old stock. They even call the Psion a flat out liar stating that they have not sold any netbook in the US after 2003. The essentially deny everything contentious, but the highlights are as follows:

• Intel “denies that Psion offered any Netbook laptop computers in the United States after 2003, as confirmed by Psion’s website”
• “Intel denies that Psion has advertised its Netbook laptop on its website or otherwise since 2003, after Psion’s website listed that model as discontinued”
• “Intel admits that it has used the term “netbook” in its generic sense. Intel denies that it uses the term netbook as a trademark or as an indicator of a sole source to offer any of its products or services.”
• “Intel denies that it commenced use of the term “netbook” with any knowledge of Psion’s claim of existing rights in the term.”
• “Intel denies that Psion has any rights in the term “netbook””

[via savethenetbooks]