Acer's 11.6-Inch Netbook Arrives

The 10.1-inch Acer Aspire One AOD250 and 11.6-inch Aspire One AO751h are both available to customers for order Monday. The move to make the new netbooks official comes about one month after the computer manufacturer first showed them off.

The 11.6-inch Aspire One shows Acer's willingness to innovate in the netbook category. Ultraportable notebooks first appeared with a form factor of about 8 or 9 inches, but since then computer manufacturers have been pushing the size, until 10.1 inches became something of a standard. The Acer Aspire One AO751h pushes the envelope, however, adding an inch and a half to the size of the machine while still calling it a netbook.

Even though the 11.6-inch Aspire One is bigger than its predecessors, its specifications still land it in the netbook category. The machine is powered by an Intel Atom Processor Z520 and comes equipped with 1 GB of memory and a 160 GB of storage. The netbook comes preloaded with Windows XP Home Edition SP3.

The supersized screen of the Aspire One 11.6-inch netbook has a 16:9 aspect ratio and is a high-definition LED backlit TFT LCD screen. The six-cell Li-ion battery can provide up to 8 hours of battery life, the company said. Select models of the Aspire One can be equipped with up to 2 GB of DDR2 memory and the hard drive can be expanded to 250 GB.

Still, the Aspire One AO751h tips the scales at less than 3 pounds and has a suggested MSRP of $349.99.

Meanwhile, the Acer Aspire AOD250 10.1-inch netbook is powered by an Intel Atom N270 Processor and an integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. The Intel 945GSE Express chipset is also standard. The AOD250 comes equipped with 1 GB of DDR2 memory.

Like its bigger cousin, the 10.1-inch netbook also sports 160 GB of memory and is preloaded with Windows XP Home Edition SP3. The screen has a 16:9 aspect ratio and an LED backlit TFT LCD screen.

The 10.1-inch Acer Aspire netbook weighs about 2.5 pounds and starts at around $298.