If you thought adding a Bluetooth module to the Acer Aspire One was cool, how about practically squaring the amount of storage available? Tnkgirl is back with part two in her Aspire One hacking series, and this time she’s replaced the solid state disk with a 60GB hard drive.

But wait, you might be asking, aren’t SSDs sturdier and faster than HDDs? Yes and no. On the one hand, there are no moving parts in SSDs, which makes them more durable and drop-resistant than hard drives. On the other hand, the particule SSD module included in the Acer Aspire One is kind of pokey, which means that most commercially available 1.8″ hard disks (like the type used in iPods) will give you better performance. And it turns out that there’s just enough room inside the Acer Aspire One case to cram a 1.8″ disc in there.

Acer does sell a hard drive version of the Aspire One. But Tnkgrl points out that the hard drive used in that model is a 2.5″ standard laptop drive, which adds weight to the notebook and requires a slightly larger case. By modifying the SSD version instead of paying for the HDD version, you get a lighter weight laptop with similar specs.

You can check out the video after the jump.

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Tnkgrl has never met a tiny computer that she didn’t want to rip apart and upgrade. So it should come as no surprise that within a few days of picking up an Acer Aspire One she decided to add an internal Bluetooth module. And better yet, she recorded a video showing the entire process and posted a bunch of pictures to Flickr.

The video’s rather lengthy, so I’m going to bury it after the jump. If you’ve got a half hour to spare and/or want step by step instructions for disassembling an Aspire One, check it out. It looks like the trickiest part is popping out the keyboard so you can access all the goodies hiding underneath it.

Up next? Tnkgrl plans to swap out the computer’s solid state disk for a hard drive.

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I’ll be traveling for most of today so don’t expect much in the way of updates. But to tide you over, check out jkOnTheRun’s video unboxing of the Acer Aspire One laptop.

While you may think you know everything there is to know about the Aspire One by now, if you’ve got 26 minutes on your hands you should definitely check out the video. Mobile experts Kevin Tofel and James Kendrick discuss the computer which is now available at Circuit City stores at length.

In relates news, tnkgrl recently picked one up as well. And while Acer doesn’t make it easy to upgrade the RAM (no access panel), she’s discovered that if you take the case apart you can easily upgrade the RAM and perform all sorts of other hacks. Next up, she plans to swap out the 8GB SSD for a 60GB HDD.

A few days ago we discovered pictures of what appears to be a 6-cell, high capacity battery plugged into an Acer Aspire One laptop. Now one astute Liliputing reader has spotted a product page at CDW for a 6-cell battery.

The battery isn’t available yet, and there’s no official picture. But there is a price: $119.99. For a battery that goes with a $380 computer. That’s right, the battery costs almost 1/3rd as much as the full computer.

Computer companies have a track record of charging ridiculously high prices for batteries. But it’s one thing to charge $120 for a battery for a $1000 computer. It’s quite another to ask users to pony up more than 30% of what they paid for a computer for the privilege of running it a few hours longer. Hopefully Acer will offer a version of the Aspire One that comes bundled with the higher capacity battery for a more reasonable price. But if you’ve already purchased an Aspire One with a 3 cell battery, it looks like you’ll just have to shell out the cash to upgrade your battery whenever this thing becomes available.

The FCC has published documents related to the next generation of Acer Aspire One Laptops. While the first models to hit the streets sported a 3 cell battery and 8GB solid state disks, the new versions will have hard drives and what appear to be 6 cell batteries.

And as with any good FCC photo shoot, the documents contain a whole bunch of pictures of the Acer Aspire One with its top off.

[via jkkmobile]

A member of the Aspire One User forums has posted a few pictures showing what appears to be an Acer Aspire One with a 6-cell battery. The computer currently ships with a 3-cell battery. In the image above you can see two Aspire One computers, one with the standard battery and the other with the high capacity battery which should provide twice the battery life.

No word on when you’ll be able to pick up a computer with the higher capacity battery or if Acer plans to sell the battery separately. Heck, for all I know this could be a third party battery or a fake. But it sure looks pretty (in that sticking out of the back not-so-pretty way).

A few weeks ago AspireOneUser uploaded a series of drivers that you could use to get Windows XP up and running on an Acer Aspire One Laptop. Now it looks like you don’t have to rely on these unofficial drivers anymore, since Acer has uploaded its own drivers to its FTP site.

At the moment, Acer is only selling a Linux version of the laptop. While you can certainly install Windows XP yourself, using a USB DVD-ROM drive or a USB flash drive (if you modify these installation instructions), there’s a good chance that some things won’t work properly without the proper drivers. So I’d recommend downloading and installing the audio, card reader, chipset, LAN, WLAN, display, touchpad, and other drivers if you plan to install Windows on an Aspire One that came with Linux preloaded.

[via LowCost Laptop]

The Acer Aspire One may be one of the cheapest ultraportable laptops around, with prices starting at just $379. But it’s also one of the slower laptops on the market. The folks at the Acer Aspire One User forums have discovered the hard way that the SSD or solid state disk used by the Aspire One A110 has a slow read speed. That means that while the laptop offers decent performance with Linpus Linux Lite, Windows XP is pretty sluggish.

So what do you do if you’ve already dropped $400 on a laptop and don’t feel like trading up for another model? Disconnect the SSD, buy a speedy CompactFlash card and get a CF to ZIF adapter to throw into your laptop. At least that’s what forum member andy53 did.

He picked up a Transcend 300x CF card, which has aread speed of 44MB/s and a write speed of 22MB/s. That’s a bit faster than the read/write speeds you’d get from an Eee PC 900 and nearly twice the read speed and 4 times the write speed of the internal SSD that ships with the Acer Aspire One.

[via jkkmobile]

Want to know how Ubuntu Netbook Remix runs on the Acer Aspire One?

Spanish language blog Asus E3 apparently took the plunge and installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an Aspire One. As you can see, it runs pretty smoothly although it takes a fairly long time to boot.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix is currently available as an add-on for Ubuntu 8.04. In other words, you first need to install Ubuntu, then you can install the Netbook Remix packages which include optimizations for the Intel Atom CPU and for devices with small screens. Eventually Canonical hopes to partner with PC makers to preload the operating system on low cost ultraportable computers like the Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire One.

[via Eee PC News.de]

Good news for anyone looking for a cheap subnotebook. The Acer Aspire One, which is officially the cheapest Intel Atom-based computer you can buy right now, just showed up at Newegg for $380. And as of this morning, it was actually in stock.

In other news, the MSI Wind, which is the second-cheapest Intel Atom-based computer, got a small price cut at Amazon. A few weeks ago, when MSI announced it would be replacing the promised 6-cell battery with a 3-cell battery due to the global battery shortage, MSI promised to drop the price for the Windows XP version of the Wind notebook from $499 to $479. But for some reason up until this week, Amazon was showing a $499 price for the Wind. Now the shopping site is showing the same $479 price as the MSI Shop. I’d still rather have a 6 cell battery.

Of course, if the MSI Wind and Acer Aspire One are both too expensive for your tastes, you can always wait until next month when Dell will reportedly begin offering a $299 subnotebook. Dell’s base model will most likely sport just 4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM though, so if you want a bit more power, you’ll have to pay a few bucks more, which will likely bring the cost in line with the Acer Aspire One.

[via Small-Laptops]

Acer is reportedly discussing the possibility of bundling 3G wireless modems with the company’s Aspire One mini-laptop in Europe. Network World says Acer is talking with T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Orange in Europe and Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan mobile in Taiwan.

Sure, Acer went through a lot of trouble to create a custom user interface for the Acer Aspire One computer, but I’m willing to bet that you’ll want to figure out how to circumvent it within a few minutes of unboxing the computer.

While Asus, HP, and MSI have all done a pretty decent job of posting Windows drivers for their computers online, Acer has yet to make the Windows drivers for the Aspire One mini-notebook available. You can find a security patch for Windows XP, a disk formatter, and “eNet management” software at Acer’s support site, but no audio, LAN, WLAN, chipset, or card reader or graphics drivers.

While I wasn’t expecting the Acer Aspire One to hit the US for at least another few weeks, it looks like the computer is starting to show up at online retail sites. it’s not 100% clear whether companies like eWiz and CDW are shipping the Aspire One. I have a feeling what we’re actually seeing are preorder pages. But Engadget reports that they’ve heard tales of actual boxed products making their way out the door.

The Acer Aspire One may not be out yet, but one member of the Mobile01 forums got his hands on one. And then he ripped it apart and posted a whole slew of images of the computer’s innards.