7 - Acer Aspire One

Acer's Aspire One is shaping up to be very competitive

If MSI is trying to beat the Eee PC with a slightly better specification, the Acer Aspire One is trying to beat it on bang-for-buck. The Aspire One comes in two versions: a £299 model with Windows and a six cell battery pack, and a £199 model that runs Linux and a three cell battery pack. That £199 price is enough to give it the title (at least for now) of the cheapest netbook on the market.

The Aspire One comes with an 8.9 inch screen as standard, without skimping on extras such as an integrated card reader and 10/100 LAN. Memory on the £199 version weighs in at 512MB, with the pricier one sporting 1GB.

The Linux OS on the Aspire One has all the usual applications but it also has a remote desktop application built into the OS. The messenger application also supports multiple protocols, including MSN Messenger and Skype.

Even more so than other manufacturers, Acer must be careful not to compete with itself as they already offer some of the cheapest laptops around.

• Tidy your cables
• Modify an MSI Wind
• Hide your ATX power cables
• Monitor your PC with an analogue meter
• Cool your VRMs
• Make your own SSD for less than £20
• Create a 3D animated Logo
• Set up a secure browsing environment
• Remove motherboard heatsinks and heatpipes
• Remove a GPU cooler

These are the most popular features articles over the past three months.

• Intel Core i7 - all you need to know
• VIDEO: 6GHz plus: Overclocking the E8600 with liquid nitrogen
• How to add any song to Guitar Hero 3
• The FAIL Feature
• How to get a cooler Radeon HD 4870 with manual fan speed control
• Interview with Hardcore Computer: The quest for a full immersion cooled desktop PC
• Ten Technologies that can Revolutionise PCs
• VIDEO: Dream PCs 2008: Scan's Great White
• Inside Intel's SSD
• Wishlist for a next-gen EeePC