The Acer Aspire One has certainly taken the world by storm, proving itself to be the first viable competitor to the dominance established by Asus and their Eee PC. The so called “netbook” market has also exploded, less than year after Asus introduced the first Eee PCs. Netbooks, also known as subnotebooks, are low-cost laptops designed primarly for Internet usage and other tasks that don’t require lots of power.

It’s been some time since I first unboxed the Aspire One and then got a 6-cell version to test and compare with. The 6-cell version will be the one I am reviewing since it’s the one I’m currently using.

Specifications

The Aspire One is slouch when it comes to hardware. Like most current-generation netbooks it uses the Intel Atom N270 CPU.

• Processor: Intel Atom processor N270 (1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 cache)
• Chipset: Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset (DDR2 400/533 MHz)/Mobile Intel 82801GBM Chipset
• Operating System: Windows XP Home
• RAM: 1 GB DDR2 533 MHz SDRAM Single Channel (512 MB onboard, 512 MB in SODIMM slot)
• HDD: 2.5″ 9.5mm 120 GB 5400 RPM
• Expansion: SD™ Card reader, Multi-in-1 card reader: Supporting Secure Digital™ (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Reduced-Size Multimedia Card (RS-MMC), Memory Stick® (MS), Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD)
• Display: 8.9″ WSVGA high-brightness (typical 180-nit) Acer CrystalBrite™ TFT LCD, 1024 x 600 resolution, LED backlight, 262K colours
• Audio: Two built-in stereo speakers, built-in digital microphone
• Webcam: Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam, supporting 0.3 megapixel resolution
• Networking: Acer InviLink™ 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
• Ports: 3xUSB 2.0, VGA, Headphone/Microphone, RJ-45, SD Card and Multi-in-1 card reader
• Battery: 5200 mAh 6-cell Li-Ion
• Power Supply: 30 W adapter with separate power cord
• Keyboard: 84-key (US version?) keyboard with 1.6 mm (minimum) key travel
• Weight: 1.26 kg (2.78 lbs.) for SKUs with hard disk drive and 6-cell battery pack
• Dimensions: 249 (W) x 195 (D) x 36 (H) mm (9.8 x 6.7 x 1.42 inches) for SKUs with hard disk drive and 6-cell battery pack

Reference: Acer Aspire One User Forums

What’s nice is that the Acer Aspire One (AAO) comes with a level of hardware that has typically been reserved for netbooks costing $500+. I paid $430 for my version several weeks ago, and the price drops coupled with the introduction of a new 160 GB/6-cell model will push the price down even further. In my opinion, this simply makes the AAO the best value for the money.

I’ve put question marks (?) beside specifications that I could not confirm. For example, the 3-cell battery is listed at 2200 mAh everywhere, but the 6-cell has been rated differently based on my searches. Assuming double the capacity would not be a bad approximation. Additionally, I’m fairly certain that the 84-key keyboard applies only to versions with US-keyboards, since the Canadian versions come with a bilingual/international keyboard.

Update: 6-cell capacity is 5200 mAh

My 6-cell battery is indeed a 5200 mAh unit, but I’ve seen other 6-cell batteries available online, possibly from third-party suppliers, that offer the higher capacity of 6600 mAh.

The weight of the AAO is very acceptable. The 3-cell weighs about 995 g (2.19 lbs) and the 6-cell version about 1.26 kg. (2.78 lbs) While that represents a weight increase of close to 27% for the 6-cell version, it did not feel like it was that much more. Keep in mind the absolute increase in weight of the 6-cell over the 3-cell is only 265 g, which is less than a can of pop. Thus, either version was easy to carry and you won’t need a huge weight-bearing rucksack to carry it around. In fact, I use a MEC Small Carry All to port it around and have found it fits everything, including the AC adapter/power cord and my Logitech VX Revolution mouse, quite nicely.

Design and Build Quality

While look does not matter much in the long run, many people would still like a device that looks stylish rather than looking like it came through a time machine from the past. The AAO manages to look fairly decent. Closed, both the white and blue versions look very sleek with their glossy finish. Being less than 1.5″ thick also helps.

When open, there is a gap between the screen and the body that may bother some, but overall it’s not a big deal. Both the the white and blue versions have screens with big black glossy borders. (about 1″ thick borders) For the blue version, this colour fits in nicely, but for the white version it is too much of a contrast and doesn’t improve the look. Overall, the AAO does a good job of not looking like a toy, though there’s some definite room for improvement.

One slight problem is that it’s tricky to open the screen of the AAO using only one hand. There is no latch; instead the hinge is spring-loaded and snaps shut. To open the screen you must wedge your fingers into the small gap between the screen and body, then hold the body down with one hand while you push the screen back with the other. This is because the AAO is so light (or the hinge so tight) that it’ll simply lift off the surface its resting on if you try to open the screen without holding the base down. I usually ended up having to grip the screen from both the top and bottom (near the gap between the hinges) to open it.

The AAO does feel solid and the build quality is definitely top-notch. I didn’t have any worry about thinks breaking, snapping or coming loose on the AAO.

Keyboard

With one of the distinguishing features of a netbook/subnotebook being its small size the usability of the keyboard/trackpad becomes a major issue. Many people do not even like regular-size laptops because of the differences in layout. With the small size of netbooks, a full-sized normal laptop keyboard is just not possible. With this in mind, it’s important to look for a keyboard that makes the right tradeoffs, sacrificing in areas that you can afford to lose out on, while keeping the major pieces intact.

For a keyboard, this means preserving the size of the most-used keys and most importantly, keeping a normal/traditional layout. I simply cannot deal with a non-standard layout as having to re-learn and switch between layouts is just a pain.

In this respect, the AAO succeeds as the keyboard is decently sized and keeps a fairly sane/normal layout. I’ve seen the key size specified as either 89% or 95% of “full-size”, but I never bothered to pull out the calipers to confirm or deny either of these. I will say that typing on the AAO was very easy to do, as I didn’t have any sort of “adjustment period” or initial awkwardness. Typing felt very natural and did not feel cramped. I’ve tried the original Asus Eee PC (now known as the 700-series) and found the keyboard to be just too tiny - it felt bad right away, and I was constantly hitting more than one key while typing. I had no such issues with the Aspire One. Furthermore, the keyboard was firm and responsive; it did not feel squishy or have too much flex to it and was on-par with other laptop keyboards in this respect.

One other thing to note that only applies to the Canadian version of the AAO is the bilingual keyboard layout, as you’ll no doubt notice in the keyboard pictures. As I noted during my initial unboxing, the “bilingual” layout makes two alterations: The Left-Shift key is halved to make room for the Backslash/Pipe key and the Enter key is an inverted L-shape that takes up two rows. (There is also another Backslash/Pipe key next to it)

I’m not exactly sure why Acer decided to cripple the Canadian version with this weird keyboard layout. It might have something to do with language laws and having to support both English and French in the market, but even that doesn’t make sense to me since it doesn’t appear to be easier to type French characters on this weird layout. In my opinion, Acer should’ve given the customer the option between a regular (US) keyboard layout and a bilingual one. This layout took a little time getting used to, and initially I was mistyping, especially with the shorter Left-Shift and Enter key being further away from the “home” position. Typing Windows-style paths is still a pain thanks to the weird location of the Backslash key. However, some of these problems can be solved by remapping keys using software like SharpKeys.

This is a fairly major issue with the Canadian Aspire One, as many people have expression discontent on retailer websites like NCIX; I almost did not get my AAO because of this. However, in Acer’s defence, most laptops in Canada are now unfortunately being sold with this weird layout.

Overall, I was very impressed with the keyboard, especially since I knew that other netbooks had done so poorly before. As a testament to its usability, a majority of this review was written on my Aspire One’s keyboard.

TrackPad

The trackpad offers a stark contrast to the keyboard as it’s not that great. Because the AAO is wider than the Eee PC 901 it was able to fit a larger, more usable keyboard. However, the AAO is about the same depth as the the Eee PC 901, so this results in much less area for the trackpad. (Thanks to CNET UK for the comparison photos)

Acer thus had to compromise. With space at a premium, the right and left buttons were relocated to flank the touchpad area instead of being below as is the norm. This results in a weird layout that most won’t find to be natural. I did not find the trackpad to be that bad compared to other laptop trackpads, though this may be because I despise trackpads so much that it’s hard to dislike this one even more. I will admit that the button placement was quite an unfortunate trade-off, however this doesn’t affect me that much since I almost always use a mouse when I can.

Screen

Acer chose to use a fairly standard 8.9″ LED-backlit 1024×600 screen. This type of screen is featured on most other current netbooks and is a huge improvement over the 800×480 resolution of first-generation netbooks. At 1024×600, it’s a step down from my old Inspiron 5100, which had a 15″ non-widescreen at 1024×768. However, it’s also much more vibrant thanks to the LED backlighting, which also reduces power consumption.

The screen has a glossy finish, which extends to the rather large black border around it, which is around 1″ thick at the top and sides. Glossy screens tend to make colours more vibrant but can also cause problems with glare if there are bright lights directly behind you. However, the screen was very sharp and attractive and I did not have any readability problems.

Like most laptop screens, the AAO’s offered good readability at different horizontal angles, but did not fair as well at vertical angles. With the screen tilted too far forward, colours got washed out, while tilting the screen back dramatically increased the contrast.

A slightly larger screen would’ve been nice since the border around it is so large, but 8.9″ is probably a pretty common size OEMs and the next common size up was probably too large.

Storage

The Aspire One I bought came with a Hitachi 120 GB 2.5″ SATA 3 Gb/s HDD. (Model number HTS543212L9A300) The full specifications of this drive can be found at Hitachi’s site. Some other reports have stated the AAO may also come with a Seagate 120 GB HDD; it’s likely Acer is using multiple suppliers, as is the norm.

Initially, Acer had said the AAO would come with an 80 GB HDD, but this changed just before release to the current 120 GB model likely because of price drops; you may still see references to the old 80 GB drive floating around, but I believe these to be erroneous. Since then, a 160 GB version has been announced.

Some Linux versions come with an 8 GB SSD; this SSD proved to be problematic with Windows XP, as many users have noticed when trying to install Windows XP onto this version of the AAO. For this reason, Acer has decided not to release a SSD version with Windows XP. (Though there are Linux HDD versions)

The drive performed fairly well as far as laptop drives go, posting a 47.0 MB/s average transfer rate and a 17.3 ms access time. These obviously cannot compare to a desktop drive, but keep in mind for most uses of the AAO this sort of performance is more than enough. A cold boot usually took between 1:15-1:20 (mins:secs), but this was after most “bloatware” had been removed. (More on that soon)

Expansion Ports

The AAO includes two memory card readers. One is a multi-card reader typical of most laptops (supporting most any memory card type on the planet) and the other is strictly for SD cards. The latter drive was intended to be used for the 8 GB SSD Linux version, where space was at a premium; by inserting an SD card one could increase the storage space as then the SD card’s capacity would be transparently added to the overall system storage space. This obviously isn’t necessary for the HDD version.

Beyond that, you get a generous three USB ports; two are on the right and the third is on the left side. Also on the right side are the speaker/mic mini-stereo jacks and a lock slot. The left side also features the DC power in, VGA out and a 10/100 Ethernet (RJ45) jack. A small vent for internal airflow can also be seen here.

Included Software (Windows XP version)

The AAO comes without Windows XP installed; when you first boot up you’ll be prompted to select either the French or English version to install. (This is Canada, after all) Since the AAO has no optical drive, you may be wondering where the OS is installed from. The answer is that the 120 GB HDD has been partitioned so that there is a ~6 GB hidden “Recovery” partition that the AAO uses during installation or a reset to factory defaults. The bootloader copies over the installation/recovery files from here onto the main partition and runs the usual Windows setup automatically; there’s very little you have to do.

This process took about 10 minutes, after which the AAO is booted up into a normal “fresh” Windows installation. I say “fresh” because there is some “bloatware” installed that you’ll want to remove to optimize performance, especially with the somewhat limited resources of the AAO.

Acer included the following software that I removed: MS Office 2007 Trial, MS Works, McAfee SecurityCenter (Antivirus and Personal Firewall) 60-day trial and WinDVD. All of these are completely unnecessary but many laptop manufacturers include this nowadays so I cannot uniquely fault Acer.

There’s no need for MS Office 2007 and certainly not MS Works when older versions of Office work fine; and, of course, there’s the free OpenOffice which should work well for 95% of what most people do. The McAfee software felt slow, so I switched over to AVG Free 7.5. (Kaspersky is a good paid solution as well) I have no idea why WinDVD was installed, as not only is there no optical drive to use it with, but the version was extremely old and dated to something like 2003.

There may be some other software that you can remove if you want, but rest assured you’ll spending at least a few minutes removing the unnecessary software that comes preinstalled.

Wireless and Networking

The AAO comes with a fairly standard 802.11b/g adapter based on a Atheros chipset. It would’ve been nice to see a draft 802.11n adapter included, as this is proving to be quite a revolutionary improvement over previous standards. However, I can’t really complain since the price of the AAO is so low.

There have unfortunately been some issues reported with this wireless card. It appears that sometimes it mysteriously “disappears” from the Device Manager, usually after coming out of hibernate or standby mode. The solution to reboot to get the device to show up again, but that’s far from ideal. This may be a hardware or BIOS-related issue and there is a substantial discussion on this issue at the (unofficial) Acer Aspire One User Forums.

I have only experienced this issue once, but it was very annoying nonetheless. Hopefully Acer will release a BIOS update to correct it, as it appears to be somewhat widespread.

Webcam and Audio/Speakers

The speakers on the AAO are nothing to write home about. They don’t get very loud and even so, when maxed out there is noticeable distortion. This may be because they are on the underside. If you listen to music you’ll definitely want to use a pair of headphones or external speakers with the AAO, as the built-in ones leave much to be desired. They should be good enough for something like VoIP, though. The speaker-out and mic-in mini-stereo ports were acceptable. With a decent microphone you shouldn’t have any problems.

The webcam is only a 0.3 MP unit (640×480 resolution), but it performed very well in low-light/room-light conditions. It’ll be good for videochat using a program like Skype. There is also a built-in microphone positioned just to the left of the webcam. It does a decent job of picking up sound directly in front, but there was still some background noise. It’s obviously not as good as using a headset but should be decent enough for quick chats.

Performance

I had no trouble with the performance of the Aspire One during Internet use or general multimedia use. Launching browsers, including an extension-heavy Firefox 3.01, was fairly quick and browsing did not seem slow. Watching YouTube or using other Flash-based video players was very smooth and I did not notice any problems or stuttering. The 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU and 1 GB of RAM was more than enough for these actions.

Additionally, watching DivX/Xvid videos at common resolutions presented no problems, even when the video was being streamed/played back from over the wireless connection. Watching DVDs (after making an image and mounting using virtual drive software) also worked great. (For a complete codec package, I suggest the latest-and-greatest ffdshow package. This has been the only set of codecs I’ve ever needed)

With this in mind, the Aspire One makes a great general-purpose machine, useful for 90% of what 90% of the people will do on a regular basis. To push the limits, I tried a few games, such as one of my old time favourites, Guild Wars. (Original debuted in 2005 - and I have all the expansions/campaigns since) Guild Wars worked fine even at the native resolution of 1024×600, albeit with most of the graphical settings turned down. This was necessary to preserve a decent frame rate during the action-sequences with lots of mobs and effects. Peggle, the great arcade game from PopCap Games, worked flawlessly, as did most old-school emulators such as ZSNES.

Don’t expect to play the latest or even last-generation games on it. You’ll likely have to go back to 2004/2005 to find 3D games that have a chance of running decently on the integrated GMA 950 graphics. There is a great discussion at the Aspire One User Forums about games on the AAO.

To further test the AAO beyond its boundaries I installed the latest version of Eclipse (Ganymede), my favourite IDE, on to the AAO. Eclipse is a great IDE with an awesome plugin system (similar to how extensions make Firefox great) but is notorious for being a resource hog. Eclipse took quite a while to load up, but once this was finished working in it was acceptable. Compiling Java source into bytecode was a little slow as well as this was most likely due to having only 1 GB of RAM and a single-core CPU. Again, the AAO is most definitely not designed for this but the fact that it’s possible is a testament to the amount of power you get for a $400 compact machine.

Battery Life

Comparison of 3-cell and 6-cell units

With the 3-cell version I was getting around between 2:30-2:40 (hrs:mins) of run time. This is unfortunately quite low and hampers the usefulness of the AAO when taking advantage of its mobility. With the 6-cell version, I was consistently getting more than 5 hours of run time, making this version one of the longest-lasting laptops I’ve ever owned.

Is the 6-cell worth it?

This is the question on everyone’s mind: Is it worth the extra weight/bulk (and to a lesser extent, the slighly higher price) for the 6-cell battery version
of the Aspire One? From my experience, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” The extra weight (about 265 g) is not that much and I hardly noticed it even when doing a side-by-side comparison and trying to detect the difference. In day-to-day usage, it definitely won’t be a big problem. The extra bulk may look somewhat ugly, but in reality it’s not that noticeable, especially if you’re parked in front of the laptop doing work, which is where you’ll be 95% of the time.

6-cell battery

For a more details, see my full comparison of the 3-cell and 6-cell versions of the Aspire One.

Miscellaneous

Acer original shipped all Aspire Ones with the same sleeve/protective case. This case is a simple pleather-exterior/fabric interio cover that doesn’t add any padding but prevents scratches if you’re putting your AAO into a bag/pack with other items. Because the 6-cell version’s battery sticks out, it did not fit properly in this original sleeve/case. Acer has since said they would offer the proper sleeves to those who bought the 6-cell version and got the old case.

However, my 6-cell version did come with the new, proper sleeve. You can see some pictures of the two sleeves below. The original sleeve is the one that opens on the short side, while the new 6-cell sleeve is the one that opens on the longer side. You can see the two sleeves are slightly different in dimensions. The original sleeve is longer but less wide. Both fit the respective models quite well, but you’ll likely want to invest in properly-padded protection for your AAO.

Another issue is the fan noise from the Aspire One. It’s somewhat of a high-pitched whine, though not noticeable unless your room is completely quiet. Some may be more sensitive than others. I didn’t find it to be that much of a problem, but if possible try to listen to one before buying just to make sure. Thankfully, some people have been working on a utility to lower the fan noise/turn the fan off based on the CPU temperature.

Conclusion

I’ve been using my Aspire One for close to a month and I have to admit that I’m in love with it. It’s stylish, functional and was surprisingly cheap. Other netbooks/subnotebooks manage to excel in one or two of these categories, but in my opinion the Aspire One offers the best combination, doing well in all areas. In my opinion, it’s the strongest netbook currently out there.

It should be noted that Dell has recently released their much-awaited Inspiron Mini 9. Though I had high hopes for it, it appears that Dell has dropped the ball on this one. While it’s attractive and comes in a nice form-factor, Dell completely butchered the keyboard, removing the entire row of Function keys as well as moving quite a few other keys around, resulting in a layout that I am sure I could not get used to. There’s also no options for HDDs either, only SSDs up to 16 GB.

I welcome any comments or feedback, please post them in the comments below!

Update: AC Adapter Compatibility

I’ve gotten quite a few questions about the voltage compatibility of the AC adapter, something I should have addressed in the review. To sum it up, the the AC adapter is indeed compatible with 100-240V, so buying one in NA will not preclude its use over in the EU/UK or elsewhere. You’ll just have to change the cable/plug that goes to the wall outlet. Click the photo below to see a larger picture of the AC adapter’s specifications.

Input is clearly marked as 100-240V.

Photos

The rest of the Aspire One photos can be seen over at my Zooomr account

Update

I’ve since completed my full review of the Aspire One. Please read if you’re interested.

With the 3-cell battery you’re going to get less than three hours of run time on the Aspire One. Most reviews I’ve read report a battery life of around two and a half hours. I can confirm this, as I got just over 2h:35m of run time before the Windows power management automatically put the Aspire One into hibernate with 3% of battery life left.

This was with the wireless LAN enabled and the screen at just over half-way brightness. I was doing regular desktop activities like browsing the Internet for most of the time, though this is far from a scientific test as I didn’t keep track of exactly what I did or did not do. I have the subjective feeling that the Aspire One might have trouble making it through a full-length feature film during an airline flight with only the 3-cell battery.

Thankfully, that’s where the 6-cell comes into play. The 6-cell does not add that much bulk or weight to the overall package and even though it may look unsightly in the pictures, it is well worth the additional battery life. In any event, you will hardly notice its presence during use - I can wholeheartedly recommend the 6-cell version, especially with the recent price drops and introduction of an additional 6-cell version with a 160 GB HDD at a lower price than the previous top-of-the-line Aspire One.

Check out the rest of the photos here.

The 6-cell battery also adds some more tilt/slope to the Aspire One so that it’s more inclined towards you; supposedly this results at a better angle for typing but I didn’t perceive things to be better or worse after this. The 6-cell also prevents the screen from fully extending backwards, though as you’ll see from the photos, the screen can still swing back plenty.

Overall, getting 5+ hours of run time will make you confident that your Aspire One will make it through most movies and still leave you time for a game of solitaire.

As a final note, I’m still working on my full review of the Aspire One; expect it soon, depending on my schedule and free time.

Update

I’ve since completed my full review of the Aspire One. Please read if you’re interested.

I’m still forming my final opinion of the device but my initial impression was very positive - I don’t have any major complaints. The device is well-designed, stylish, easy-to-use and very snappy. The 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 that powers the laptop is more than enough for the things you’ll the Aspire One - and it supports hyper-threading and so shows up as “two” cores in Windows.

The Canadian Keyboard

The one downside to the Aspire One that is specific to the Canadian version is the inclusion of a “bilingual” keyboard layout. Apparently, it is required(?) that laptop vendors sell a version of the laptop with this layout in the Canadian market, so many laptop vendors are just switching completely over to this layout for their Canadian versions in order to simplify things and not have to deal with multiple models. This keyboard layout differs from a standard “US” keyboard layout in two ways:

• The left-shift is shortened to half-size and a pipe/backslash key is placed to the right of it, between the left-shift and the ‘Z’ key.
• The enter key is not on a single row, but is instead an inverted L-shape. Another pipe/backslash key is placed to the left of it, in between the enter key and the quote (”) key. Thus, the pipe/backslash key is moved down from the “QWERTY” row to the “ASDF” row.

This is an absurd layout and probably no one more than I hates it; it makes no sense that a “bilingual” layout would require such a ridiculous change. However, after typing on it for a bit, it becomes apparent that it’s not that horrible. The biggest problem is the poor positioning of the backslash key, which makes typing Windows-style pathnames difficult. The extra key near the left-shift can hopefully be remapped using the registry editor or some helpful utilities.

Photos

Expect a full review in the future. In the meantime, check out of some of the unboxing photos below or see the full set in my Zooomr photostream.

Buy Local?

I’ve always ordered my stuff from Netlink Computers, out in BC, mainly because of the great prices. I haven’t really had a problem with them and the service has been great. However, this time, the PSU I ordered (Corsair 620HX) was DOA. This basically setback everything, as I couldn’t run the system without power. I ended up having to RMA the defective unit back to Corsair directly, which did not have a depot in Canada. The whole process was relatively pain-free (thanks to Corsair’s no-nonsense replacement policy), but it did take about two weeks to receive a replacement after sending out the dead one.

Buying locally might be more expensive, depending on where you live, but in times like these it can save you a lot of hassle.

Videocards can block

Watch out for the videocard and motherboard combination you choose. With the Asus P5K-E WiFi motherboard I chose and the EVGA 8800GTS (G92), the videocard blocks two of the six internal SATA ports/connectors. The two that are blocked are “primary” connectors, which means that only these can host boot devices. See the picture below.

All G92-8800GTS videocards are the same size, so you’ll run into this problem with this motherboard regardless of which brand 8800GTS you choose. I’d advise you to look for a motherboard that has the SATA connectors mounted sideways from the motherboard. You’ll still want to check forums, etc. to make sure that your chosen videocard doesn’t block any of the ports. Luckily, I’m not affected drastically by the problem, since I only have two HDDs and an optical drive connected with SATA. Those with crazy RAID setups might be in trouble, though.

Dual-slot videocards

The 8800GTS (G92) is a dual-slot videocard because of the extra space taken up by the fan/cooler assembly. Installing it in a case should be no problem, but the Antec Sonata III chassis I was using had protruding tabs between each slot. These tabs are supposed to act as guides for single-slot cards, but with dual-slot cards they get in the way. I had to just push the videocard into place and forcefully screw it down; this resulted in the metal near the slot bending a little, as you can see below.

It’s no big deal, but just something to watch out for.

Overall, despite the minor setbacks, I enjoyed building the system. Some people like to rebuild cars/engines in their spare time, but I think I’ll just have to settle for building computers.

It’s been over 1.5 years since I built my current computer, and back then it was pretty decent. Heck, it’s still pretty decent right now and there’s no real reason why I decided to upgrade, other than the fact that I had the upgrade itch. So, that’s why last week I ordered a bunch of components (again from Netlink Computers) to build a new computer with. The parts arrived yesterday, after some haggling with Purolator, but everything seems to be in good shape and I’m excited to put things together!

I decided to go with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. Why? Well, it was a sweet price - $270 - and it’s quad-core. Just the name sounds so badass - it’s reminiscent of the “Quad Damage” power up of the Quake FPS series, and heck, quad is better than dual, no? But let’s be real here - I probably have no real need for a quad-core processor, and claims of future-proofing may be dubious at best. After all, I am on a roughly two-year upgrade cycle, so by the time quad-core becomes commonplace (like dual-core is right now) I will most likely have upgraded to a new CPU.

However I do use my computer for a lot. In addition to gaming, (which currently does not benefit from a quad-core CPU, generally), I use my machine as a development box, and often have many programs running in the background, such as Apache, MySQL and the like. I have no real evidence to suggest that quad-core might help in this situation, but maybe it will. One thing is for sure though - single-core CPUs just don’t cut it anymore, even for regular desktop work - the advantages of going dual-core are easily visible.

In any event, I’m hoping to start putting together the parts sometime this week, but most likely will have to wait for the weekend to get everything fully assembled and up and running.

SpeedFan is a great utility for enthusiasts who’ve built their own PC. Besides being able to show the temperatures inside your system (from various sensors in the CPU, motherboard and HDDs) and other vitals such as voltages and fan speeds, it can also automate the cooling cycles of your machine. As its namesake implies, SpeedFan is able to automatically control your computer’s fan speeds based on the temperatures reported by various hardware sensors. This can allow you to find the right balance between a cool system and a noisy one. However, it does require some configuration, as I’ll attempt to show you in the following article.

It’s all in the details

All the material I’m about to present here is available in the help file for SpeedFan, however, since most people use the Internet for everything, myself included, I thought I’d summarize the most important points. SpeedFan has a lot of functionality and it’s easy to get lost in all of that when all you want is something simple like automatic fan control. (Some motherboards already support this, but SpeedFan brings this functionality to almost any motherboard that’s reasonably new)

First and foremost, the fans that you want to control must be plugged into one of your motherboard’s 3-pin fan headers; they cannot be plugged into 4-pin molex connectors that come straight from your power supply. This is because SpeedFan controls fan speeds’ by varying the output (using PWM) of the 3-pin fan headers on your motherboard. If you want to control the speed of your 4-pin fans, you’ll have to use some sort of fanbus or external fan controller.

Getting started

On the main SpeedFan window, you may have noticed a checkbox for “Automatic fan speed”. However, checking it is not enough to properly set it up, though it would be nice if things were this easy! For now, you can check it, but nothing will happen - you shouldn’t notice any change in your fans’ speeds.

Click on “Configure” to bring up the options window. SpeedFan is a fairly powerful program, but that means configuration is required to make it do what you want. The assumption that SpeedFan uses is that various temperatures can be influenced by the various fan speeds in your system. You need to define these relationships. For example, in my system “Temp1″ is the CPU temperature. (I haven’t bothered to rename the labels) In the screenshot below, I have linked it with “Speed01″ and “Speed02″, which correspond to my CPU’s fan and a case exhaust fan.

This tells SpeedFan that it should vary these fan speeds based on the temperature they’re associated with. You also need to configure threshold temperatures; there are two, “Desired” and “Warning”. The desired temperature tells SpeedFan what it should aim for. Once the desired temperature is reached, SpeedFan will begin to drop fan speeds down to some minimum you specify; if the temperature is above desired fan speeds will increase by an amount related to how much the temperature is above the desired. Once the temperature reaches the warning value, fan speeds will be set to maximum. (100%)

We now need to configure each of these fans. Go to the “Speeds” tab (not the “Fans” tab) of the configuration and you’ll see a window like this:

Remember that Speed01 and Speed02 are linked with the Temp1. Here is where we define the minimum and maximum fan speed values. When the temperature is at or below desired, the lowest the Speed01 will go is 30%, while the maximum I’ve specified is 100%. This range is for temperatures up to the warning value. When the temperature is at or above warning, the fan speeds linked to it will be set to 100% regardless of what you’ve define the maximum to be. This is a sort of fail safe to prevent overheating - better safe and noisy than silent and sorry. Also important to note is that you must check “Automatically variated” for each fan you want to automatically control. (This is separate from the main automatic fan speed checkbox on the main SpeedFan window we saw earlier)

You may need to experiment to find out what are the best values for minimum and maximum fan speeds. Also, some fans fail to report their rotational speed (RPM) when spinning slower, so you may get a reading of “0 RPM” within SpeedFan. You’ll need to actually check whether this is the case.

One last thing you may want to configure is how fast SpeedFan will begin to adjust fan speeds when it has to respond to a temperature change. This is accomplished by setting the “Delta value” on the Options tab of configuration:

This sets the step-size (in percent) for fan speed changes. With a larger value, SpeedFan will adjust fan speeds more quickly since it will be increasing or decreasing by that amount each time. Experiment to find what works best. I’ve found that with too large a step/delta size, temperatures and fan speeds will oscillate - basically the fans will speed up too fast, causing the temperatures to drop, which in turn cause the fans to slow down too much, which then causes temperature to rise again, completing the cycle. If you’ve taken a course in control theory you’ll realize that this is perhaps the classic example problem in control theory. (By adjusting the delta value I believe you’re adjusting the proportional value of the controller - though I am not sure if SpeedFan implements a full PID controller)

Lastly, you may want to check “Set fans to 100% on exit” just in case you accidentally shut down SpeedFan - this is another protective feature.

Finishing up

Click “OK” on the configuration page to save your changes, which should bring you back to the main window. Then, make sure “Automatic Fan Speed” is checked here, and your system should now be set up for automatic fan control! I have been using SpeedFan for a few years and wasn’t aware of this functionality until recently. Just goes to show that you can always learn new things!

It’s been a while since I wrote about uberOptions, the excellent utility that allows you to configure the extra mouse buttons on your Logitech mouse in just about any way you could want. Basically, uberOptions can unleash the potential of Logitech’s mice, expecially their higher-end models like the MX610, MX1000, G5/G7 and VX and MX Revolution that have many extra buttons.

While SetPoint itself has a lot of functionality, supporting multiple mice, uberOptions manages to up the ante by allowing any button to be assigned to any function or keystroke. Furthermore, you can assign these settings on a per-application basis (application specific settings), so that buttons can perform different functions depending on which window currently focused. This is especially useful in games, where sometimes, the extra mouse buttons aren’t detected by the game itself. This can be fixed by using uberOptions to assign/bind keystrokes to the mouse buttons just for that game - that way your mouse will still work normally outside of the game. This can make the extra buttons on your Logitech mouse very useful in games that have lots of different actions, normally assigned to keyboard commands only.

Changes, fixes and updates

The latest version of uberOptions is stated to support SetPoint versions 2.22-3.30. I tested it out with the latest version of SetPoint, (v. 4.00, released June 5th, 2007), and it also worked. So, it’s okay to update to v. 4.00 if it’s needed for your mouse/keyboard to be recognized. However, you may encounter a problem if the version of SetPoint you installed didn’t include some files for the mouse you use. Your mouse will work, but instead of an actual image of your mouse being displayed in SetPoint’s configuration dialog, a greyed-out generic mouse image will be displayed instead. In this case, uberOptions won’t work with your mouse.

The fix is nicely outlined at the uberOptions site. Basically, you have to download the image/config. files for your mouse, then install it - the uberOptions’ site has a list of mice so you can find the right update to download. Then, uberOptions will recognize your mouse and all will be well. I really can’t recommend uberOptions enough, especially if you’re a power user and love to have total control over your mouse.

Last week I ordered an APC 750VA UPS for my main system. As I’ve noted before, the power can be flaky around here at times, and it’s also prime season for thunderstorms. As it was on sale at the time for $80 CAD with free shipping, I thought it was a pretty good investment for a backup power supply. I placed the order late Tuesday morning, and to my surprise, it came, via airmail just past noon the next day! Mind you, it was only shipped from a Dell warehouse in BC, but still - airmail for a free shipping option was quite unexpected.

The UPS is working fine, but it is one heavy mutha. It provide four outlets for battery backup, and four additional that only have surge protection. Additionally, it features surge protection for your cable (coaxial) line as well as for a phone line (DSL) or CAT-5 network cable. (The jack is RJ-45, I believe, so you can plug both network and phone lines into it for protection) These features make it well-suited for protecting your
computer or even an HTPC as part of your A/V system. The UPS can connect to your computer via USB so that you can monitor its status, such as battery level, etc. The included software can allow your computer to automatically save open documents and shutdown when the power goes out, if you’re not present.

All necessary cables were included (phone line, coaxial cable and the cable to connect to your computer’s USB port); the only thing I didn’t like about this UPS was the non-standard USB cable used to interface with your computer. One end has the standard Type A connector, but the end that connects to the UPS looks like a modified RJ-45 jack. One wonders why APC would opt for this instead of a standard Type A or Type B connector. Instead, a non-standard cable makes replacement harder if one loses it.

Dell Canada experiences?

Another thing I was surprised to learn was that Dell doesn’t have the best reputation in terms of customer satisfaction. Mind you, they are a big store and get a lot of customers, but some other big stores like NewEgg have stellar reputations.

My only experience has been with Dell Canada, so perhaps reviews of just their service should be considered. Things are a bit better, but you do find the occasional negative review. My experience here (free overnight shipping, though that was not guaranteed) and my recent purchase of their 2407WFP flat panel were both positive, as was my purchase of a Dell laptop almost four years ago.

What has been your experience with Dell.ca?

Recently though, the 200 W custom-sized PSU powering the rig died after an untimely power outage - contractors working in this new neighbourhood apparently severed a line while doing some construction work. It seemed weird to me that a mere power-outage could cause the power supply to die, so I wondered if it was because of the UPS it was plugged into, which failed to provide battery backup. The UPS was an older Belkin model that has also since failed, leading me to believe that it could have negatively affected the PSU. Though, it’s more likely that the PSU was already in poor condition, and that the power outage was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

Autopsy

Strangely, when I took the failed PSU out to test it, it worked fine - when just powering up a single fan. (I used this well-known “trick” to power up an ATX PSU without the motherboard) It seems as though some components within have failed, limitings its ability to support a larger load like that of a computer system. In any event, I had to order a replacement power supply, so I obtained a 250 W model from Netlink Computers. (The Shuttle PC40) Offering 50 W more of power, it’s substantially larger than the older PSU, as you can see below, and it’s also heavier. Generally, heavier equals better quality when it comes to power supplies.

The 250 W also features SATA power connectors, though I’ll not need them for this system. Overall, it was an uneventful replacement, as the PSU fit just right within the tight confines of the SN45G case.

The solution is nicely outlined in the [H]ard|OCP Forums, where it’s aptly known as the “Benny Hill Effect”. Turns out that the problem has to do with power state management issues and how they affect the read time stamp counter instruction (RDTSC), which is used for timing. I followed the guide, and it fixed my problems.

The games that I noticed the timing issues in were NFS:MW, Rome Total War and GTA San Andreas. This is by no means a complete list of games that are affected by this issue. Some of my own observations and suggestions for fixing the problem:

• I installed the “AMD Dual-Core Optimizer”, but found that while it fixed some of the jerky games, it caused problems such as video distortion in other games
• So, I uninstalled the fix, and strangely, the jerkiness in games remained gone and all previously caused problems were removed as well
• This may have been the result of the “/usepmtimer” switch being added to the “boot.ini” file (This may have been all that was needed)

Regardless, the guide in the [H]ard|OCP Forums is quite extensive, and you should be able to solve any of your dual-core related gameplay issues by reading it.