A curate’s egg of a netbook, despite dual-boot functionality
The Acer Aspire D255 joins the growing ranks of devices that offer dual-boot of two operating systems, in this instance Windows 7 Starter and Android 2.1, which allows you to switch between the two as you work.
However, there appears to be little clear point to this. There’s no application marketplace to download additional software to the laptop as there is with Android smartphones, and the Google OS is merely shoved onto a netbook without modification.
It could be useful to allocate Android for personal content and Windows 7 Starter for business content to help ensure no crossover, but beyond this there’s little clear benefit in having both.
The Acer Aspire D255 boots to Android first, but can switch to Windows in as little as one second, so it’s not necessary to make the transition manually.
Screen and keyboard The netbook is rather bland looking, but has a reasonable 10.1in screen with a resolution of 1,024 x 600. The dimensions of 259 x 24 x 185mm and weight of just 1.2kg makes it easy to carry around.
While this small form factor has its advantages, the Aspire D255’s keyboard is so small and constricting that it’s irritating to use.
We used the device in a number of locations and found the small keypad a real pain, resulting in endless spelling mistakes and mis-keyed text, and the annoying situation of opening the wrong file or application.
It’s not really a design fault per se, as a netbook is always going to have a small keyboard, but it’s an unwelcome factor.
The trackpad also has good and bad aspects. It’s responsive, but so small that you regularly have to swipe two or three times to move the cursor to the desired location.
While this sounds like a minor issue, it soon becomes tiring and we’d suggest carrying a small USB-enabled mouse.
Battery life The battery life of the Aspire is good, and returned a time of four hours 12 minutes in the Battery Eater Pro Classic test, and five hours 23 minutes in the Reader test. This is less than the eight hours promised by Acer, but a good result nonetheless.
