Got the Acer Aspire One AOD250-1580 10.1-Inch Blue Netbook – 8 Hour Battery Life with a 2GB card from Amazon.

First off, there are a lot of videos on the net about how to add memory to these things – but this is a newer model and it has it’s own slot on the bottom for memory.  You just need to take out one screw – (need one of those very tiny Phillips head screwdrivers like you’d use for eye glasses) and the rest is just like plugging in / out any other memory.  Took less than five minutes and no issues starting it up again and the memory is recognized.  Just remember to remove the battery first.

Then installed Lightroom 2.3.  Again, it isn’t terrible.  As far as response of the program goes, it’s just fine.  I pulled in about 50 crw files from the 40d.

I read about people having issues with scrolling.  I don’t have that.  In library mode, I close all the tabs but the center one and the scroll images on the bottom. But coming from a huge screen that I usually work on – the images are pretty tiny.  Still, as a way to see what you’ve got, and to share images with a group – it’s fine (though maybe you want to hand out magnifying glasses).  And as a way to offload files from you camera – fine and dandy.  It doesn’t read CF cards, but has a built-in SD reader and two USB ports (I think there’s two) .  I’ll have to bring my own card reader along to put the CF files on the Acer.

And weight-wise – which is really why I got it – it’s great.  Fits easily into my camera bag.  This model has (or so they say) an eight-hour battery.  Way more than I’ll need.

Of course today is day one with it, and I always hate these reviews that say how great something is after it’s just been pulled out of the box.  But initial impressions – not bad at all.  And keep in mind – there are a bunch of models of this thing – all called Aspire One – with various configurations – and there is one coming out (people have seen it already but not in stores) that will have a taller resolution.  This one is 600 x 1024.

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Looking forward to the Central Park workshop on Saturday.  I’ve decided to follow my own rules and go light, i.e. the 40d, the Sigma f1.4 30mm, and that’s it camera-wise.  And I’ll stick the Acer in a bag.

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Held the workshop.  The Aspire One display was just about impossible to use outdoors for six people to see.  Even for one person.  The screen has way too much glare to really be able to evaluate images outdoors.  Indoors – the images in Lightroom are small – but okay to look at for one person.  The Aspire (latest version) with 2 GB of memory runs Lightroom fine, but it’s true, even with most of the side panels and top panels closed, you get a pretty small image to look at.  I would say that as far as what’s out there, it is perfect in terms of weight (I didn’t notice that I had it in my camera bag for a few hours), and perfect for all the usual stuff like email, updating my blog etc; and for offloading images from cards while you’re on a trip.  You can even use it in your hotel room, (indoors I mean) to evaluate what you got.  But to really work on in lightroom develop module – I find that hard to do and can’t see any purpose in using it for that anyway since any serious work you’d want to do on a large calibrated screen.