It should come as no surprise to anyone that netbooks have suddenly become the most active segment in mobile computing over the past few months. These diminutive laptops offer excellent VFM, with their small size and excellent battery life. This has led to practically every manufacturer introducing some netbook variant or the other. It's Acer's turn now, with a launch under the 'Aspire One' brand. Let's find out how it fares.

However, Acer seems to have kept this factor in mind, and in a styling reminiscent of its Gemstone Blue range, designed the Aspire One to look more like a stylish high-end ultraportable than the budget laptop it actually is. This is a welcome move, and the Aspire One looks sleek and slim. Its lid has a mirrored finish, with a range of available colors: dark blue, green, red, black, and white. The same mirrored finish extends to the bezel of the LCD panel, but the keyboard area gets a flat matte finish in a color similar to that of the lid.

The hinges are fairly thick and though they are colored oddly, are pretty solidly made. The body of the Aspire One is quite sturdy, with no audible squeaks anywhere. The material used in its construction is pretty lightweight and this shows in the overall weight, which is just 1.26 kg for the 120GB HDD model. If you choose to opt for the SSD model, the weight drops to a mere 0.98 kg. Its overall size of 245 x 165 x 25 mm makes it among the smallest in the netbook segment.

The keyboard is very functional. Not only is it decently sized, it offers good spacing between keys, and adequate tactile feedback. This is a welcome move, as in laptops this small, keyboards tend to get too cramped and make typing a miserable experience. But on the Aspire one, I was able to comfortably type for a few hours without suffering from keyboard fatigue.

In comparison, however, the touchpad of the Aspire one suffers quite badly. Not only is it really tiny, it's mouse buttons are not very responsive. While it’s certainly not unusable, it's troublesome enough to get a negative mark against the Aspire One.

The LCD panel is easily the best I have seen in any netbook till now. It’s an 8.9 inch backlit LED panel with a native resolution of 1024 x 600 and offers a very good experience. Its color, contrast and blackness levels are top-notch and give a vivid viewing experience usually found in much more expensive laptops. Surprisingly, it even had decent side viewing angles.

Connectivity-wise, the Aspire One is similar to other netbooks. It has three USB ports, a 0.3 MP camera, a multi-format card reader, VGA out and the standard audio plugs for speakers/headphones.