Category: Mobile

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Acer Aspire One #1 Netbook

Our current favorite small netbook, the Acer Aspire One, is now the #1 selling netbook according to 3Q sales numbers as reported by DisplaySearch.

We expect competition to become only more fierce with companies continuing to flood the market with new models. Over the past week we just saw major price reductions from Lenovo whose IdeaPad S10 is now going for $349. HP similarly cut prices.

At some point, there could also be a response to the netbook market from Apple, either in a smaller screen laptop, a lower cost MacBook Air, or a tablet (a large iPod Touch?). While Apple has historically stayed away from cheaper products, this is the fastest growing part of the computer market.

Despite Acer’s loads of new netbook models released over 2008 (such as the recent Eee PC 1002HA), Asus gained market share with its simpler lineup with the Aspire One. See the full results below.

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Acer Aspire One running Windows Vista

The Acer Aspire One is a fun little netbook, but it’s just not fast enough to run Windows Vista. That’s why Windows XP was included instead of Vista. Right? Well, I put that to the test and found that by modifying Vista as I described earlier, Vista runs great on the Aspire One.

It actually ran more fluidly than Windows XP did. I attribute that mainly to Vista’s support of:

  1. the Atom chipset’s hyperthreading. XP Home does not take full advantage of the chipset.
  2. ReadyBoost, a Vista feature that uses a flash drive to cache and speed up random reads that would otherwise go to the hard drive.

See this video of my Aspire One showing the speed of opening several applications:

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WiFi Search from an iPhone or iPod Touch

Keeping with the recent WiFi stumbling posts, I ran across this software for finding WiFi access points from an iPhone or iPod Touch:

WiFinder

It’s a simple and convenient way to analyze wireless networks. It shows you if there is wireless encryption, what kind of wireless encryption is used, the name, signal strength and network channel of the wireless networks. It can be set to automatically rescan and beep when a new network SSID (wireless network name) is found. If you see an open network, you can even connect to it from the WiFinder app. It’s a useful tool for network admins or “wardrivers” who want to see what networks are around.

Currently the WiFinder app is free in the App Store.

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WiFi Finder Software for Windows

inSSIDer: Wi-Fi network scanner is free open source software for finding WiFi networks from a Windows XP or Vista computer. It is great for testing wireless network signal strengths, doing WiFi security checks for open access points, and determining what might be a good free channel to choose for your WiFi to have less interference.

Typically people have used software called NetStumbler. Unfortunately NetStumbler hasn’t been updated lately. Thankfully the folks at MetaGeek decided to make and give us inSSIDer for free.

The term inSSIDer is a play on words, with “SSID” being the term for the name of a WiFi network. If you need to find or analyze WiFi signals, inSIDDer is a great free tool.