The Acer Aspire One AOD255-2691 10.1-Inch Netbook is exactly right for our purposes: email, browsing, YouTube, MiniClip games, and word processing. It comes with Office 2010 starter (just word and excel) which is all we need. I'm not a techie and have no specifics to share, but this thing just WORKS. Right out of the box, you spend 10 minutes setting up, charge it up, and go. The first time you use Office you need to install it. I followed the recommendation of some other reviewers and (1) uninstalled some bloatware it came with (Acer games, NY Times Reader) and (2) installed Chrome and made it the default browser. IE was taking forever to load anything, but Chrome is much lighter and works perfectly. And the wireless is impressive-- it works even way down the long narrow hallway in my thick-brick-walls 1850's apartment building from where the router is placed-- our old Vaio couldn't handle it. The red is a nice warm cranberry/barn red shade-- a little pizzaz but it doesn't look like a toy. It's very light. It has no disk drive, but I see here on Amazon that inexpensive external ones are easy to find.

The attention-grabbing Aspire One D255 is only 1-inch thin and weighs just under 2-1/2 pounds. The 93-percent standard size keyboard with bigger keys enables easy typing wherever you are. And the 10.1-inch Acer CrystalBrite LED display (1024 x 600 pixels) provides an optimal Web browsing experience for great Internet productivity while on-the-go. A 1.3-megapixel HD webcam with integrated digital microphone deliver smooth video and superior voice quality so you can maintain in contact wherever you are by means of real-time chat. Other features include 250 GB of hard drive storage, Wireless-N Wi-Fi networking, three USB ports, and a multi-format memory card reader. Charge up using the Acer MiniGo AC adapter, which is 34 percent lighter than typical adapters.
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This Acer Aspire One AOD255-2691 comes pre-installed with the Microsoft Windows 7 Starter operating system. You'll also experience new ways to deliver your best work with Office Starter 2010. Two small gripes: (1) battery life is pretty short. Three hours at the most. It does charge up quickly though. (2) The keys are that sort of 'mushroom' format, they look just made for crumbs to sneak under and get stuck, and with kids in the house I feel the need to be protective. But obviously I need to do that anyway. And for less than $300 we won't be devastated even if the worst happens. Overall I could not be more pleased with this purchase!

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