I love my MacBook Pro. Love it. But there are times when I’d like to have a computer that is nice and small, but a bit bigger than my iPhone (I’m moderately competent typing on the touchpad, but it’s not my strong suit). I’m also increasingly leery of hauling my Mac around: if something were to happen to it, I couldn’t afford to replace it. Enter the Acer Aspire One netbook in the 10.1 inch form factor.

I’ll be honest and say that I wouldn’t have gotten one had it not been for an unexpected bonus at work. We pretty much had all of our other bills taken care of at the time, so I decided we could afford an indulgence. And that’s the first nice thing about the Acer Aspire One, as well as many of its competitors: for what it gives you – a pretty potent computer in a small package – the price is very reasonable: about $300.

So, what do you get for $300? A very compact machine that’s quite competent at most tasks (like blogging – I’m writing this on the Acer). It comes loaded with Windows XP, and so will run just about anything. The only major limitation is its screen size: it’s large enough to see most things fine, but you probably won’t want to do a lot of heavy Photoshop work with it. It can also run games, but again, be advised that it’s not a screaming game machine.

Mine has a 160 GB hard drive (which seems ridiculously big, but what the heck) and 1 GB of RAM to support its Atom processor. It’s got built-in Wi-Fi, of course, although no Bluetooth (which for me wasn’t an issue).

As for battery life, I haven’t tested mine to the limit yet, but based on what I’ve seen so far I expect I should get between four and six hours with the six-cell battery. Note: I was originally going to save a few bucks and get the version with the three-cell battery, but that’s kind of silly. Splurge the extra money (it’s not much, maybe $30?) and get the bigger battery.

They keyboard is nice, albeit small, as you’d expect. It’s taking a bit of getting used to, but seems to work just fine for me. I think the one thing that I’m having to adapt to is that the keys are a bit stiffer than what I’m used to on the MacBook Pro. That’s not necessarily bad, just different.

It comes with three USB ports and a standard wired network port, along with a VGA output in case you want to connect it to a standalone monitor, and a webcam that seems to work very nicely. It’s also got a slot for a memory card which could definitely come in handy. One thing you have to keep in mind is that there is no internal CD/DVD drive: if you need or want one for some reason, you’ll have to get one that hooks up to it via USB.

The Aspire One generates a bit more heat than I thought it would, but nothing like my MacBook Pro (luv it, but the bottom can get awful darn warm!). Other than that, I really can’t find anything to gripe about, certainly not at that price.

Well, there’s one exception: Windows XP. Granted, among all the Windows OS’s I’ve used since 3.1, XP was probably the best (sorry, I didn’t like Vista). But I got tired of dealing with “Windows issues,” which is why we bought our Macs last year. And if Mac had a netbook equivalent, you can bet that’s what I’d be typing on right now! Unfortunately, you can’t (easily) run Mac OS on non-Apple hardware.

But there’s a good alternative: Linux. I’m not a Linux expert, but I found that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix flavor of Linux was just what the doctor ordered. The installation instructions were easy to follow to create a bootable flash drive  – the only thing I had to sort out wast to change the device boot order to put the flash drive first, and that was easy (just hit F2 to enter the BIOS setup when the machine boots up, then go to the boot options and set the flash drive – which you should stick in first – as the first boot device). You can even run it straight from the drive and not change your hard drive installation at all to test it out.

Installation was a breeze: I set up a dual-boot with XP, giving Winsows about 40 GB of disk space and the rest to Ubuntu. Then the installation software did the rest. This gives you the best of both worlds. I still need Windows for a couple programs (Mobipocket Creator mainly), but then I can use Netbook Remix for everything else.

Why bother in the first place? Mainly because Netbook Remix is really tailored for netbook usage. It makes the most of your screen real estate, loads faster, and – from what I can tell – runs the Linux apps faster than Windows runs its own. It’s also a lot more secure, which is a big factor if you’re wandering around plugging into unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots, or just browsing the web in general.

The only catch is that Ubuntu Netbook Remix may or may not work on your type of netbook. It works perfectly with the Aspire One, but other machines may (or may not) have issues with some of their features. There’s lots of information on the Ubuntu site if you’re interested in finding out if it’ll work on yours. There’s also lots of help out there in the many forums and blogs about Linux.

So, that’s the scoop! If you’re looking for a machine you can haul around with you (I carry mine in this bag, which measures 10×13 inches) so you can stay connected, or even to use as your primary computer if you’re not doing any really heavy lifting, I highly recommend that you check one of these puppies out!

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