First let me start by saying that I had a original acer aspire one netbook and loved it. While browsing the web was a little slower than a normal pc it was a very good all round device that I used for the web and to download pictures and videos to when I was on vacation. I was looking for something with a larger screen and a little faster expecting to play some games on. From all the beaming reviews of this device I was expecting to to play hulu and just about every video format with perfect ease. What a cruel fib. This device out of the box looked fantastic. The screen was beautiful as well as the design. But upon the first boot up it took forever to setup windows and once it was, it was so full of bloat ware it bogged down the pc for any operation and glitched on about every thing I would try and do. After playing around for a while I decided to do a fresh install. It took about the same amount of time the original boot was but it did install with slightly less bloatware. After it was all setup it was slightly faster but it was still very glitchy.

Things to note:
The pc has a very very slow hard drive.
The touchpad was nice but the dual finger scrolling in a web browser was very glitchy.
Don’t expect to play many newer games as the pc struggles to do anything.
Torchlight can be played at 20fps in normal mode or 30-40 in netbook mode. The other games I have tried were much slower, 10-20 fps.
My daughter got a MV-40 powered netbook for xmas and it feels so much faster than this pc it’s ridiculous. I was expecting it to be the opposite. If I had that power with this video I would have been happy.
Let me stress this point the pc struggles to do everything. I could even go on and say I think my acer aspire one was more responsive but they were about the same. Sure this pc played video better than the aspire but I was expecting that.
Hulu would glitch in low res if you made it full screen. Youtube could play in HD pretty well. WMVHD files played great. But basic flash would not play well in full screen at all.

Well, I’m having a hard time writing this cause I’m watching a movie so I’ll end it here. In the end I decided to send this unit back hopefully Amazon realizes that I spend a ton of cash with them so hopefully they don’t kill me with a restocking fee. But for a little extra I decided to go with a real gaming pc for a few hundo extra.

Rating: 2 / 5

I am very disappointed that none of the 3 USB ports recognize (or detect) my 3GS iPhone though the ports work well with my USB drive and DVD burner. Maybe the USB ports does not have enough ampere.

For the unknown reason, after loading MS Office 2007, it does not response well.

Watch out for the “power option” that you are using. If you are in a power saving mode or something similar, with USB drive connected, after being idle for a while, by default, it shuts off the USB power to conserve battery. After waking up, then it’ll supply power to the USB drive. I noticed this after hearing clicking sounds from the drive.

I’ve got a mini network switch from Japan that’s powered off the USB drive of this netbook. Having the power shut off from the USB drive does not work for me. So I had to change the setting of the power option so not to shut off the power while being idle.

My major grip is that the USB ports not able to detect my iPhone. Seems like someone else also have problem of the USB port power. I am returning it for a refund.

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1 day later, I went to Apple Store for 1 last shot before returning the 1201N. After all, the Windows 7 that’s running on 1201N is able to detect the new iPhone which was exchanged at the Apple Store.

Apparently there is some firmware difference between day-1 3GS iPhone and the latest one at the Store; also there is difference between the 16 GB 3GS vs the 32 GB 3GB iPhone. 1 of the obvious ways you can tell is when Windows says it detected a new hardware device and installing a new driver. If the firmware is the same, it wouldn’t need to install a new device driver.

The above conclusion is based on the following tests:
- Brand new 1201N Silver, running Windows 7, could not detect the 3GS 32 GB iPhone (3. 1. 2 OS) which I’d since it came out
- The same iPhone plugged to my 3 years old Dell notebook, running Windows XP Pro, worked fine. It implies that the iPhone is not defective.
- At Apple Store, my iPhone worked fine with Mac there. It also implies that my iPhone is not defective.
- At Apple Store, they connected a 3GS 16 GB (months old) to 1201N and it worked. It implies that 1201N USB ports and Windows 7 are ok.

So why my original 32 GB 3GS iPhone not working on the 1201N ???

After exchanging with the new 32 GB 3GS (3. 1. 2 OS) iPhone then the 1201N can detect it. The only explanation I can think of is the incompatibility of older model of 32 GB 3GS and Windows 7. Hope it helps whoever may run into the same problem.

With the 32 GB 3GS iPhone problem resolved, I would raise the rating from 2 stars to 4 stars given the fact that I still experience some lagging in performance even though it runs on super performance mode.

Rating: 4 / 5