Acer Aspire ONE 751H

The AO751h isn't just about its "big" screen. It has large, beefy buttons; a rugged (though not ruggedized) plastic shell; and good battery life. It all comes in a sassy chassis that's small and sturdy enough to make a great go-to machine when you're on the go.

At 11.6 inches, the display provides ample room to show off its colorful 1366-by-768-pixel resolution. With brightness jacked up--and me looking at the screen dead-on--the AO751h showed good color reproduction. I spied rich reds and deep blues, and the blacks didn't turn a painfully ashy gray. Gander at the screen slightly off-angle, though, and you're staring into a dim, murky mess with some annoying glare coming off the glossy screen.That's not the only problem. Out of the box, this is no HD marvel. You'll press your luck to hit 720p resolution with the underpowered Atom processor and integrated GPU on board. If you beef up the RAM and ditch the preinstalled bloatware, sure, you'll get a reasonable speed boost. But the 720p video installed on the hard drive had an occasional frame stutter. That said, you'll be able to watch standard-definition YouTube and Hulu video.

The AO751h packs a 1.2GHz Intel Atom Z520 processor and 1GB of memory, along with a 160GB hard drive. That CPU is underpowered--even by Atom standards--so don't expect blazing-fast performance. The processor/hard drive combo resulted in a score of 31 in WorldBench 6, a score that hovers near bottom of the barrel among our field of tested netbooks. It is a hair worse in overall performance than Dell's Mini 10. As for endurance, the six-cell battery delivers: In the PC World Test Center's battery tests, it lasted 8 hours, 13 minutes--not shabby considering it supported the AO751h's aforementioned 11.6-inch LED backlit screen all that time. While unable to unseat theToshiba NB205-310's top-rung 10-hour battery life, the AO751h is certainly good enough to last you through the average day (or extra-long flight).

Beyond that big, bright screen, the keyboard is one of the other major selling points. The oversize (for the netbook universe) buttons make it a breeze to type. There's no space wasted on multimedia shortcut keys. The function keys are small (no surprise there), but the QWERTY buttons are large. As good as the keyboard is, the navigation control is another story. Netbooks have this yin and yang balancing act between keyboard and touchpad--it seems they're always at odds with each other. You can shrink the keyboard to accommodate a comfy mousing zone, or plop down engorged buttons and all but give up on trying to navigate. With Acer's AO751h, it's the latter.

The slim little mousebar button is so amazingly, frustratingly narrow that I had a hard time just pressing it. To make matters worse, it's indented. I found it almost impossible to hit the mouse button and get things done. You ever actually yell at a touch pad? I did. I made do by tapping on the touchpad to replace the left click. The rest of the AO751h has a standard setup: 10/100 ethernet, VGA-out, three USB 2.0 ports, a memory card reader, a Webcam, and headphone and microphone jacks.

Toshiba Satellite L555-S7916

If you're looking for an inexpensive laptop with a large screen to park in the kitchen or use as a home-office PC, Toshiba's Satellite L555-S7916 is worth a look. The expansive keyboard, which includes a dedicated numeric keypad, raises the comfort level for word processing, Web site navigation, and spreadsheet editing chores--and that's about it. But you'd be hard pressed to find a desktop-replacement-size all-purpose laptop for less than the $699 asking price (as of August 28, 2009) of our test unit--aside from the odd fire sale at Walmart.

You won't want to watch movies or listen to music without external speakers connected. The Intel T6500 cruises along at 2.1GHz, but the notebook's limited (2MB) L2 cache hobbles performance. Still, the Satellite L555-S7916 chugged its way to a WorldBench 6 performance benchmark score of 81, only a few points behind themark of the Asus N90SV-A2, which sports a 2.66GHz CPU and costs two-and-a-half times as much as the Toshiba.

Though the 17-inch-diagonal screen offers 1600-by-900-pixel resolution, the display's overall image quality--particularly when playing back DVD movies--was poor. We popped in our test Serenity and Return of the King DVDs only to be greeted by blotchy colors, poor response times, and an extremely narrow range of tolerable viewing angles. The Toshiba fared a bit better in photo editing: Colors were bright and saturated, though the viewing-angle range remained very limited.

the L555-S7916 ships with a surprisingly useful software bundle. Highlights include Microsoft Works, Picassa 2, Corel DVD MovieFactory, Toshiba's own DVD playback software, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and Symantec Norton Internet Security. It's a wide-ranging package for light-duty office work and casual video or photo editing. The 320GB hard drive offers plenty of storage and seemed reasonably responsive for a 5400-rpm drive.

The Toshiba also includes a DVD-R drive and 3GB of RAM. Ports are situated on the left and right sides of the case, with none on the hard-to-reach back. The left side includes VGA, ethernet, audio, and a combination eSATA/USB 2.0 port, something we're seeing more often in recent units. The right side includes two more USB 2.0 ports, a modem port, and the requisite Kensington lock slot. The dual-duty SD Card/Memory Stick slot is in the front, next to an analog volume control knob.

Hard-copy documentation is limited to a resource guide and a setup poster. The user manual--a PDF file on the system--is pretty good, but you'll need to read it on-screen or print out a copy.

Despite the massive screen, the laptop weighs a surprisingly light 6.6 pounds, thanks in no small part to the relatively wimpy guts. Still, at 16.4 by 10.7 by 1.7 inches, the L555-S7916 feels a bit bulky and awkward to tote around town. Battery life was fairly impressive in our tests, at 3 hours, 32 minutes (the average for 17-inch power laptops is in the neighborhood of 2 hours, 30 minutes). Still, we'd trade in the battery life advantage for better performance, any day of the week.

The Satellite L555-S7916 impresses - It works fine for word processing, Web surfing, spreadsheet work, and light photo editing.