Darwin's Theories Blog

New Theories for a New Time

Less Is More; OpenBSD on the Acer Aspire One

2008-10-19
My writeup of the new Acer Aspire One is up on www.undeadly.org.

"We are certainly entering an era of "small is beautiful", at least when it comes to sub-notebooks. Numerous manufacturers are producing these now, as witness this comparison. The Asus EeePC (some models), the Acer Aspire One reviewed here, and the rumoured Lenovo U8 all use the Intel Atom CPU, which is "dual threaded". This looks like a dual-core, and runs GENERIC.MP. Although it's not as powerful as a dual-core, it's close enough that it's faster than many a few-years-old full size laptop. I've been using the Acer for a few weeks, including on a trans-atlantic flight, after several years with a much-heavier full-size industrial-strength notebook...."

Read the full story here.
Reply from nashat at 2009-11-07 03:27:57.185

Hi,

My aspire one's fan is driving me nuts on openbsd. Did you do anything to make it silent?

Reply from Ian Darwin at 2009-12-03 11:43:15.918

If you run "apmd -C" it will try to keep the machine "Cool" by lowering the CPU speed when you're not doing much. Other than that, I didn't do anything special.