My wife got me an Acer Aspire One netbook this year for Christmas, and so far I’m loving it. A Netbook is basically a mini-laptop that is meant for web use, messaging, and document tasks. The one I got has a 8GB SSD drive and an 8GB SDHC card. It’s running Windows XP, and has 1GB of RAM. The biggest concern I had was the keyboard, which is roughly 90% of a normal sized keyboard, but the keyboard on the Acer is well designed, and is fine after a short adjustment period.
Now comes the task of getting it setup for my use, which means installing a bunch of software.
Some of the key applications I need:
- Impulse: Well it’s quite obvious I need Impulse, but one feature I use often is the integrated IRC client.
- OpenOffice 3.0: I had a choice of either Office 2007, or OpenOffice 3.0, and I went with OpenOffice just because of the amount of installation space it saves.
- FileZilla: Simply the best FTP client out there.
- SnagIt 9: SnagIt is not only great for taking screenshots, it also has a very featured image editor that is perfect for basic image editing needs.
- ObjectDock Plus: I don’t want a bunch of icons on the desktop, and organizing them in tabs is the best.
- Live Writer: If you blog, you should be using this.
- TweetDeck: If you are a Twitter user, TweetDeck is one of the best client applications out there.
