Posted on July 6, 2021
Acer Aspire One ZG5
As many other vendors, Acer followed the Netbook hype that was set off by Asus the year before. The result was the Aspire One series, which saw many variations through 2007 to 2011.
Quick Links:
Historic Overview
Whenever there is a trend, like the Netbook era, it’s impossible to imagine any vendor, that wouldn’t follow it. Well, Apple was maybe the exception, but Acer was – as many others – the rule, and eventually received a whopping 37 % of market share in the Netbook segment.
As mentioned in my other post about the Compaq Mini, there was hardly any differentiation accross the vendors. Microsoft set some strong limits on hardware specs to the vendors, at the benefit of getting Windows XP, and later Windows 7 Starter Edition, licensed at competitive prices.
Some sources on the internet claim that the price was as low as 15 US$, while other sources claim it was more a range of 30-45 US$. Whichever is true, it must have been a very low price, given that most Netbooks ranged typically around 300 US$, and the vendors also wanted to earn something. So in the end, it was mostly a personal decision of preference, and not so much on technical specs.
The Aspire One ZG5 was actually my entry into the Netbook segment, as I personally bought this device myself and used it as a mobile companion for quiet a while.
A good and realiable device, overall with a solid build, especially the hinges. Drawback: A glary display and a glary case, which welcomes fingerprints. But hey, I liked the blue color, and what sold on me back in the days was the rigid keyboard and the battery runtime, which was said to be one of the best for the time.
A bit unusual, until you get conformtable with, is the position of the mouse buttons, as they are located sideways to the trackpad.
Specs
The PHINTAGE Collection currently holds a Acer Aspire One ZG5.
| Vendor | Acer |
| Model | Aspire One ZG5 |
| Released | 2008 |
| Original Streetprice | 315 EUR / 299 CHF |
| Weight | 1.07 KG |
| Dimensions | 25.85 x 18.4 x 2.54 cm |
| Builtin Display | yes, 8.9″ 1024×600 TFT LCD |
| Builtin Battery | yes, 22mAh/23Wh |
| CPU | Intel Atom N270 @1.6 GHz |
| RAM | 1 GiB |
| Storage | 120 GiB SATA HDD |
| Network Support | Wifi and Ethernet builtin |
| USB | YES, USB2.0 (3x) |
| Video Output | 1 VGA |
| Other | 1 Audio IN 3.5mm, 1 Audio OUT 3.5mm, 2 x SD card slot |
| Operating System | Windows XP |
| Overall Condition |
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| Restoration Parts needed |
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| Benchmark Results | SiSoft Sandra 2004, CPU benchmark: CPU ALU Dhrystone: 5111 MIPS CPU Whetstone FPU: 1691 MFLOPS CPU Whetstone ISSE2: 2216 MFLOPS SiSoft Sandra 2004, Multimedia benchmark: Integer x4 ISSE: 9927 it/s Float x4 ISSE2: 19432 it/s SiSoft Sandra 99, CPU benchmark: CPU Dhrystone: 2661 MIPS CPU Whetstone: 959 MFLOPS SiSoft Sandra 99, Multimedia benchmark: Integer ALU: 1898 it/s Floating Point FPU: 841 it/s Norton Utilities 3.1: Computing Index, relative to IBM/PC: N/A Norton Utilities 4.5: Computing Index, relative to IBM/XT: N/A Norton Utilies 8.0: CPU Speed: 931 |
Gallery
Coming soon.
Downloads
Coming soon.
If you’re interested. I bought one of these laptops and gave it a second life after installing CRUX on it.
It’s still usable and although YouTube struggles with large videos, the rest works perfectly.
https://github.com/sepen/crux-on-devices/tree/main/acer-aspire-one