Trying to decide between the Acer Aspire One with an 8.9 inch display and a model with a 10.1 inch screen? Portable Monkey has put together an excellent guide that can help you choose.

The most obvious differences are that the 10.1 inch Acer Aspire One AOD150 is larger than the 8.9 inch AOA150. Bot computers come with 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g WiFI, and Windows XP Home Edition. As reviewed, these netbooks have 3 cell batteries. But there are a number of subtle differences:

• The 10.1 inch model has a louder speaker
• The touchpad on the 10.1 inch model is a bit larger and there’s a single button below the touchpad instead of on the left and right sides
• The 10.1 inch model has  brushed metal casing instead of plastic and does a better job of hiding any fingerprint marks
• The larger model gets better battery life

For some baffling reason, the keyboard on the 10.1 inch model is identical to the 8.9 inch keyboard. Even though the computer chassis is a bit wider, the keyboard is not. For more details and a bunch of pictures, make sure to visit Portable Monkey. You can also read more about the Acer Aspire One netbooks in the Liliputing Product Database:

• Acer Aspire One A110L with 8.9, 1024 x 600 pixel inch display and Linpus Linux Lite
• Acer Aspire One AOD150 with 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and Windows XP

The Acer Aspire One A110L and A150L look a lot alike on the outside. But inside, the A150L packs a 120GB hard drive while the A110L has an 8GB solid state disk. As we learned yesterday, solid state disks may be more durable than hard drives and consume less power, but they’re not always faster. And a member of the Eee PC News.de forums has confirmed these facts by comparing the two Aspire One models.

The results? My German’s not too good and Google Translate isn’t much better, but if I have this right, here are a few highlights:

• Using Linpus Linux Lite, the A110L boots up in just 6 or 7 seconds, almost twice as fast as the A150L
• The SSD is much slower in Windows XP. It took 53 minutes to install Windows XP SP2 on the A110L compared with 34 minutes for the A150L. And the A150L boots Windows in about 18 seconds, while the A110L takes abotu 30 seocnds (which isn’t really that bad).
• The A110L case is 3mm smaller and the laptop weighs 978 grams while the A150L weighs 1121 grams.

The different in battery life was nominal. Using both models, the tester was able to get between 2:30 and 2:50 of run time. With the A150L selling for just a few bucks more than the A110L the choice between one version and the other seems like a no brainer if you plan to install Windows XP or another operating system. But if you plan to stick with Linpus Linux Lite and don’t need the additional 72GB of storage capacity, it sounds like the A110L might be the better choice.

Update: As Zeroed points out in the comments, some of these tests were performed with an upgraded A150L with a 32GB solid state disk. So the results probably won’t apply to an off-the-shelf unit.