After one month of using the Aspire One A110, I have to say that it’s pretty good. This little netbook, an ultra-portable category product, comes with Intel’s latest high-power-efficiency CPU called Atom, which is clocked at 1.6 gigahertz and comes with HyperThreading.

The A110 features one gigabyte of RAM, of which 512 megabytes is soldered on. Other than the 8GB solid-state drive (SSD), the machine uses three USB ports and two SecureDigital card slots for storage, giving users an option of carrying either flash drives or memory cards to hold the files they download from the Net.

It has an LED-backlit LCD, which is bright and clear. Text on Web pages is legible from typing distance. The body is painted with scratch-resilient coating that gives it a rather sexy look.

The A110 offers about 2.5 hours of battery life, but you can buy a larger battery pack to get over five hours.

Just how does the A110 hold up against the regular laptops? Well, when used with pre-installed Linpus Linux, it does live up to its advertised claims. On a cold boot, the machine fully logs into the Linpus Desktop in about 20 seconds. Wi-Fi connection is about 10 seconds (free hotspot).

You can access all your e-mail accounts (maximum of six) from Acer’s One Mail. Instant messaging is not a problem, too.

Linpus Linux also comes with OpenOffice Suit, Firefox 2 and various other multimedia software that allow you to do some quick work on the go.

Another feature is the ability to expand the storage of your SSD with a special SD card slot. Once an SD card is inserted, Linpus Linux will automatically add its capacity to the SSD’s capacity.

But Linpus Linux is a closed platform. This means that to add software or update drivers, you will have to use Acer Live Update. It will check what new updates are available for your software and drivers, and updates them for you.

Another setback is that you cannot play QuickTime trailers or high-definition content on Linpus Linux. But Linpus Linux can easily handle YouTube videos, so not all is lost.

As I was not satisfied with the lack of wider video codec support, I installed Windows XP on my A110. Once you have Windows installed, your multimedia capabilities are almost unlimited. The A110 can handle h.264 720p videos with ease.

Overall, the A110 will meet the needs of users who want a quick Internet access device. It is not really meant to be your primary workstation, but if you need to use the A110 extensively for more than one hour, it would be good to install Windows XP.