Acer Aspire One Help

[bradut]

The other day I went by Walmart and they happened to have a few laptops on sale. Well I've been wanting to buy a laptop for a while and since I finally found one I liked I decided to get it. Since I'm a high school student I went with a notebook, an Acer Aspire One 725-0687 running Windows 8. The notebook runs on a dual-core AMD C70 processor @1ghz with Turbo Core Technology up to 1.333GHZ. It has 2gb of DDR3 ram, a 320 gb HDD, and ATI Radeon Graphics with 863/256?? mb vram. I got this notebook for a final price of $213. (list price was 197)

Now I have a few questions:

1. Is all this worth it?
2. Is there a way to allow the Turbo Core technology to run while on battery?? (currently runs while charging only)
3. In windows properties it says that only 1.7 gb of my ram is useable, why?
4. Would dual booting with windows xp allow me to play games on this system???
5. What Games can i play on this system?

Thanks in advance... I'll respond to any replies...

 

[jasont78]

The other day I went by Walmart and they happened to have a few laptops on sale. Well I've been wanting to buy a laptop for a while and since I finally found one I liked I decided to get it. Since I'm a high school student I went with a notebook, an Acer Aspire One 725-0687 running Windows 8. The notebook runs on a dual-core AMD C70 processor @1ghz with Turbo Core Technology up to 1.333GHZ. It has 2gb of DDR3 ram, a 320 gb HDD, and ATI Radeon Graphics with 863/256?? mb vram. I got this notebook for a final price of $213. (list price was 197)

Now I have a few questions:

1. Is all this worth it?
2. Is there a way to allow the Turbo Core technology to run while on battery?? (currently runs while charging only)
3. In windows properties it says that only 1.7 gb of my ram is useable, why?
4. Would dual booting with windows xp allow me to play games on this system???
5. What Games can i play on this system?

Thanks in advance... I'll respond to any replies...

worth it depends on what you want it to do
turbo core will chew your battery faster and if you wanted fast you should have got a quicker laptop in the begining
256mb is being used by you video card leaving 1.75gb ram
win xp is not really any quicker than win 7
games pffff... solitaire

 

[bradut]

Thanks... And about games I've tried a few older games like need for speed underground 2 and halo and they run well... so i tried and call of duty modern warfare and (amazingly) it ran under lowest settings... Apparently this netbook was made with an 80 core graphics processor??

 

[joecole1572]

As a previous acer aspire one owner (albiet an older and less powerful intel atom one), I would say that you got a pretty good deal if you want to do school work and general internet stuff on it. In college, it was a great light system to carry around to pull up homework and email professors. Those systems even play videos fine.

In terms of gaming....try to go light on the machine. If you are into older games, I suggest signing up for GOG.com and buying some games from ...eh....2003 and below. The machine should be able to run those fine. Also, you may find some indie games that are compatible, if you look real hard. GOG.com lists OS compatibility, and I think over 90% of their games support windows 8.

You'll never be able to play modern games on this system BUT, since it was so cheap, I suggest you start saving up for a gaming desktop. That way, you have a portable system for work and a powerhouse for play.

 

[joecole1572]

Thanks... And about games I've tried a few older games like need for speed underground 2 and halo and they run well... so i tried and call of duty modern warfare and (amazingly) it ran under lowest settings... Apparently this netbook was made with an 80 core graphics processor??

The AMD fusion cores (which the C70 is part of) contains a weak on-board graphics chip, it runs miles around the intel atom cores that populate most netbooks.

http/www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6290.51810.0.html

this site contains some user submitted benchmarks for the graphics chip in the processor. Looks like you're in luck if you are a WoW player

 

[bradut]

So I'm glad I got a good deal... And the reason I asked about Windows XP was because i'm running a 64 bit windows 8 and 2gigs of ram would work better on a 32 bit system

 

[joecole1572]

I opted for XP on my system because of the speed too. There's no harm in giving it a try, and you are right, you won't be missing out on anything by downgrading to 32-bit. Watch out though, drivers may not exist for XP. Look on the Acer support page for the notebook before installing XP.

Edit: The website lists no drivers for XP. You can give it a try and see if the stock XP drivers can handle the wireless internet card, but I doubt the graphics chip will be able to run. Basically, gaming on XP would be significantly hindered to the point of unplayability and the internet may not work.

 

[bradut]

Would it be possible to dual-boot?? I have worked much with Windows 8 so i dont really know how to do it especially since downgrading would mean restoring the windows 8 boot setup (right??). The main reason I would prefer to dual-boot is simply for the fact that windows 8 is still new and I actually like metro. I plan on using windows xp for using office, and playing league of legends...

 

[joecole1572]

Would it be possible to dual-boot?? I have worked much with Windows 8 so i dont really know how to do it especially since downgrading would mean restoring the windows 8 boot setup (right??). The main reason I would prefer to dual-boot is simply for the fact that windows 8 is still new and I actually like metro. I plan on using windows xp for using office, and playing league of legends...

In order to dual boot you would have to either a) shrink the windows 8 partition using windows disk manager or b) reinstall windows 8 on a smaller partition (which may be difficult since most computers come with a factory restore partition and will completely reset the partition tables. My suggestion, don't dual boot. I don't think it is worth it in this case. If you do decide to give it a try, BE SURE TO BACK UP THE RECOVERY PARTITION!!! I can't stress the importance of that. If you don't make the factory reset DVDs and lose the recovery partition, you will need to pay acer to reinstall windows 8.

If you backed up the recovery partition and have some free time.....experiment. Installing a new OS will reset the boot manager, so you might run into trouble with that (but that can be fixed with the recovery DVDs that you created).

 

[joecole1572]

Also, sorry for the pseudo double post, but I did mention in an edit that you may have a tough time getting windows xp to connect to the internet (through wifi) and get the graphics chip to run. It might make LoL unplayable. What do you want to do on windows XP other than LoL and office?

 

[bradut]

I made my recovery disks the second I got the laptop... So thats covered... But I could still try to dual-boot and if it doesnt work ill restore it right...

 

[bradut]

And I think i'll just give it a try and see what happens...

 

[joecole1572]

Ya. If you have the disks and the time, you could try to install XP. If all fails, a factory restore will bring it back.

Best of luck ! Enjoy your netbook

 

[bradut]

Thanks I'll keep you guys posted...