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Acer Aspire One D270 netbook arrives with 32nm Intel Atom CPU

by Parm Mann on 13 February 2012, 12:56

Tags: Acer (TPE:2353), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabck5

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Intel's making so much noise about Ultrabooks that the company's 32nm Atom refresh for low-cost netbooks almost went unnoticed.

But here we are in the first quarter of 2012 and netbooks are continuing to trickle out, and they're doing so with new CPUs at the helm. We've seen HP get the ball rolling with the Mini 1104, and now Acer is getting in on the act with the Aspire One D270.

We appreciated what the Aspire One D260 had to offer back in 2010, but the upgraded model pictured above arrives with an Intel Atom N2600 processor acting as the new brains of the operation.

The dual-core, four-thread Atom chip, part of Intel's latest Cedar Trail architecture, operates at 1.6GHz while keeping within a 3.5W TDP. Users shouldn't expect any significant increase in terms of CPU performance, but the shift to a 32nm process and improved power-saving features should result in greater battery life.

Graphics are provided by the chip's integrated Intel GMA 3600 processor - which itself is said to offer a 2x performance boost over the previous generation, as well as a built-in hardware-accelerated decoder that enables full-HD video playback.

Ideal for entry-level computing? Perhaps, and Acer's system attempts to meet those simple needs with a 10.1in display that offers a basic 1,024x600 resolution, a couple of USB ports, HDMI output, integrated webcam, 1GB of memory and a 320GB hard disk.

The quoted eight hours of battery life sounds promising, and if the US pre-order price of $280 really does translate to £215 inc. VAT, then the Aspire One D270 could become interesting as a highly-portable companion that isn't as limited as a tablet.



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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The quoted eight hours of battery life sounds promising, and if the US pre-order price of $280 really does translate to £215 inc. VAT, then the Aspire One D270 could become interesting as a highly-portable companion that isn't as limited as a tablet.
Nice price. :thumbsup: but I suspect that the UK price will be closer to £300! :(

Got rid of my Acer netbook when I got an Asus tablet+keyboard dock combo - only things I miss are the larger storage (although having a 32GB uSD card in it and USB connector available handles that nicely) and the ability to choose an OS, (my Acer came with a crappy Linux install, and ended up dual-booting Meego and Ubuntu - either of which were many times better suited).
Decent sort of thing for basic needs, kids, oldies, quick on the go sysadmin etc… but I think the only killer feature now missing is an SSD, they would be far better with a small 30-60GB unit, people who need more storage have USB options. It doesn't need to be fast a gen or 2 ago SATA-II with reasonable IOPs would still kill a hard drive and make them seem that much quicker and more responsive - which is where netbooks lose out to tablets.

Flash prices must be close to this being possible now surely?
What a waste of a 320GB hard drive.
kingpotnoodle
Decent sort of thing for basic needs, kids, oldies, quick on the go sysadmin etc… but I think the only killer feature now missing is an SSD, they would be far better with a small 30-60GB unit, people who need more storage have USB options. It doesn't need to be fast a gen or 2 ago SATA-II with reasonable IOPs would still kill a hard drive and make them seem that much quicker and more responsive - which is where netbooks lose out to tablets. Flash prices must be close to this being possible now surely?
Totally agree - having an SSD would have made more sense (to me at least) for optimising battery life and reducing weight as well on a super-portable device.

Just checked on Scan and typical price for a laptop 320GB drive seems to be around £60, and the cheapest SATAIII SSD is a 64GB unit at a whole £2 more! So, based on that, eminently do-able.
Still with the stupid 600 vertical pixels