Looking for a netbook but of course I am concerned about fan noise. I would get the fanless Dell Mini 9 but they only offer it with a SSD and I require more storage.

I've not used the Aspire, but it's got essentially the same hardware as the Dell. The only real difference will be the heat from the hard drive, and for a 1.8" 4200 RPM, as I assume it's using, that shouldn't be too much. I couldn't tell you what the cooling sounds like from the factory, but if the Dell can be run fanless there's probably room to reduce the voltage on the Acer's fan, if not remove it altogether.

Thread in this forum: laptop fan alternatives? is an Aspire One owner looking for a quieter fan.

Also reviews & comments at www.ncix.com include some complaints, e.g. here
-and also some people saying it doesn't bother them.

Yeah I have one, I'm the poster of the fan alternatives? thread. According to aspireoneusers.com (specifically the forum) it seems like every other AA1 has a noisy fan. If you go with linux then there is a work around involving temperature monitoring and turning the fan off until a certain temperature is reached (which can be automated) - rather than the default: on low speed all the time, and ramps up when required.

If you go with windows then I can't help you but I *think* speedfan works...

I have an AspireOne with Windows XP. The Atom processor runs as hot as my HP dual core laptop and the fan comes on frequently. My unit isn't noisy at all but I live in and urban area and the daytime ambient noise level is such that I never hear it. At night I can hear it clearly (it's very small so you tend to be very close to it) but it isn't annoying to the point that I need to turn it off.

Perhaps more importantly, the one feature I find annoying is that the hard drive vibrates significantly (120gb) and the battery life isn't what I would classify as spectacular (I get 2 hours). Also, as I mentioned earlier, this thing can get noticeably warm because when you hold it, your left hand will be right by the exhaust port and with the fan blowing it's hard to ignore. Not to fear though because it's not hot enough to burn you.

Overall, it's a great value if you need a travel pc (that's all I use it for) and the wow factor can be fun when you show the task manager (hyperthreading makes it look like it has a dual core cpu) but don't harbor any fantasies about using it for HTPC duty. It will run fine on AC but on battery you sometimes get clicks in the audio with video playback. This also happens when playing back audio with a sampling rate of 96khz (not important for most people) while on battery.

As for loading other OS's, the Windows version has the recovery partition on the MBR so it isn't very cooperative (the install will go fine but GRUB won't be on the MBR and you go right back to windows). I loaded OpenSuse 11 and Ubuntu onto USB memory sticks and boot from them (shrank the windows partition to 60GB) with ext3 and swap on the other 60gb for when I need Linux.

At $329, I highly recommend it but keep in mind that it is neither a desktop replacement nor is it a good substitute for a dual core laptop. It is 100% pure NetBook.

My dad owns AA1. His is noisy. In addition to hard drive noise the fan is rather noisy as well. Much noisier than my EEEPC 1000h. He tried to quiet it down, but rather unsuccessfully. The only way to do it is with different BIOS. SpeedFan will not work with AA1.

It's been a couple of months since the last reply and I'm not sure if anyone here has bought/tried the flash disk models (instead of the HD ones).
They now have 8G and 16G flash models.

Does anyone know if these models have fans and what the temperature of the Atom gets to in usage?

TIA

I just got my blue AA1. It was the 8gb SSD 512mb RAM Linpus model fro $250 from the Egg. The fan noise was a slightly noticeable in a very quiet room. Not overly objectionable. I didn't care for the Linpus and installed XP Home shortly after bricking the original Linpus load (easily bricked and was the decider for me to go back to Winows). Then I loaded up AA1 Fan Control program which allowed me to shut the fan off completely. The temp runs about 50-60C without the fan. With the fan running at its normal slow speed, temps were in the 45C range. Doing alot of processing, I notice at 60C the fan starts and cools it down immediately to mid 50s and then fan shuts off. If I am just surfing or typing a doc, the fan nevers comes on.

This netbook is light (2.2lbs) and easy to type on, screen is outstanding. WiFi connects quickly. $250 is a steal! Well, worth it for a highly portable netbook. The more expensive MSI Wind 100 would have been my first choice with its larger screen and XP standard. But I already have a very nice 12inch Thinkpad X61 mini-laptop. The differences between the Wind and Thinkpad was not that great, so I'll stay with what I already have. But the smaller lighter AA1 is in a completely different category and I am enjoying the form factor.

I have the 8GB w/ linux and out of the box it did most of what I wanted. The eternal tweaker in me had to fiddle with the factory install to massage it into doing exactly what I wanted.

For those wanting a fan control solution for linux search for "acerfand". I have it configured to turn on at 70C and off at 55C (atom is apparently good up to ~90C). Most of the time it is silent, youtube vids can make the fan come on briefly. Since I look at youtube about once a month this doesn't bother me much... compiling largish programs or highly compressed videos will kick the fan off too.

Thanks very much quikkie and treker for your reviews!
Are you familiar with the Asus eeePCs?
If so, how would you compare the AA1 to them?

I have the eeePC 4G 7" screen model. It's great except for the smallish screen.

I bought an Asus EEE 4G 7inch model in Jan 08 for $400. I liked it...it was my first netbook experience. I loaded Windows and played with it. But the quickness of the factory Linux convinced me to revert. Build quality was okay. But I could not get used to the small keyboard and screen. And I sold it three weeks later.

The AA1 is entirely different machine. Much better keyboard and larger sharper screen. I have no problems with typing or seeing text. The build quality is superior. Linpus is okay. I bricked mine one day after getting it by visiting a non Aspire repository looking for a solitaire game. That's when I loaded XP and have never looked back. It could very well be your only computer. The EEE ... never.

There are lots more competition now. Asus, MSI, Lenovo, HP, Dell and now Samsung. But none are as light as the AA1. At $249 none can compete. I realize that that price was only last week for a blue model at Newegg. But still I got it for $249 and that is a gonga deal for an excellent netbook. My Thinkpad X61 12inch screen laptop at 3.3lbs may stay home my next trip!

Treker how do you deal with the fan noise?
On my eeePC I use software to turn on the fan only at high temps.
I can control exactly when the fan comes on, and at what speed it comes on at.

I switched to XP. Linpus required too much reading and learning new OS to get it to do the things I needed. Just not worth it right now. Slapped an nLited XP on, did a few disk caching tweaks and never looked back.

So, for fan control I use AA1 Fan Control. Very simple and works very well...you just set the temp that you want the fan to come on. I use 64C and it stays off 99.9% of the time, even watching movies.

Thanks Treker this is good to know. I might consider getting an AA1.
I had forgotten a previous post where you talked about fan control.

I didn't think I was going to be able to buy an AA1 this quickly but I did!

To make a short story shorter, it's going back though, as soon as the Christmas/New Year's rush is over.

Man that fan is loud!! That wasn't the deal-breaker though for me, because as soon as I loaded up AA1 Fan Control, the fan noise became a non-issue.

What was an issue though were EMF's that I was feeling in my temples.
It wasn't strong by any means, but it was still there, and I found it uncomfortable.

I'm very sensitive to these things.
My eeePC 4G doesn't have them, nor does my Samsung Q1 tablet PC.

I'm not sure if it was the Atom processor, the LCD screen or some other component (or a few combined), but it was there. When I turned off the netbook, the relief was immediate.

My girlfriend has an Aspire One. I can't be in the same room with it. The fan is too annoying. Too bad, otherwise it's a nice device.

Is it true that the Dell netbook (mini 9, i believe) has no fan and is silent?

What netbook does the SPCR crowd recommend?

Just mucking around with a workmate's Linux AA1 right now, giving it 56k modem support and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the noise levels. This one is certainly audible but I'd class it as very quiet and wouldn't say the nature of the noise is offensive in the slightest. Maybe she got a good one? Or is it just the Windows ones that end up getting noisy?

I don't know. Mine sounded like a jet about to take off!
AA1 fan control silenced that. Yup it had Windoze on it.

I have an AA1, is noisless after installing the fan control software. The fan now turn on only on booting and when temp rises over 65 Cº, this mean very little time in you are only surfing or typing emails. Totally silent.

Wonderful computer. I'm very satisfied with it.