Acer Aspire One AOA110-1588 Restore - posted in Windows XP Home and Professional: I have a Acer Aspire One Model AOA110-1588 netbook. Download WinToFlash under Lastest Version and save it to the Desktop. Jan 07, 2012  Windows XP Home Edition ULCPC' with 'ULCPC' standing for 'ultra low cost person. These come on netbooks like the Acer One. I can still load a regular XP Home on these right? The reinstall disk are no longer available thru Acer. I have an Aspire One with a XP HOME ULPC COE. I put a sysprepped universal image onto it @ XP HOME OEM.

Over the years I have purchased quite a number of small computers looking for portable computer nirvana. Things like the HP 620LX palmtop and the NEC 800.

Both ran the sucktactular WinCE though. To get to a real OS, I have build Franken-IBM-X30's because I did not want to pay full tariff on the original units. But parts are old, and there are some problems with the case design such that mine has a number of cracks held together with glue and tape. Very geeky I guess. There has always been an inverse proportion between the price and the the size at the low end, except it was more of a bowl shaped curve: really small or really large laptops cost major coinage, and there was always a sweetspot in the middle someplace.

It varied a little by manufacturer but it was more or less true across the board. One quick example: I paid less for my Acer 5610 than I did the HP 620LX palmtop. Part of that is time of course: The HP was bought back in the late 1990's.

That actually makes it worse: factor in inflation and that HP would be over 1000 USD now. Better example: look at Sony VIAO today: The small laptops cost way more than the medium size units. The OLPC XO-1 has changed all that. Whether it was meant as a laptop for the children of the world or not, its first and easiest to find effect has been on the creation of the 'Netbook' class of computer. I have an XO-1, bought last year as part of the “Give One, Get One” promotion, and it has been a handy little unit: I wrote here about it standing in for an Apple iBook for my brother for example. The XO-1 has never been a full replacement for me for an small notebook computer though.

Two things hold it back: one is that the word processor is not the full OpenOffice WP, and I can not therefore do what I want with the HTML for things like this post, although blogger is wretched at the the way that it imports HTML so maybe that is not such a big thing. The real problem is the keyboard. It was designed for children, and it works well for them. A friend of mine, Anne Gentle, who works with the OLPC on documentation carries an external keyboard around for hers. That works, but defeats the purpose of having a computer that I can toss in the bag and use on the airplane. In fact, as I type this right now, I am on an airplane, winging my way to Denver, Colorado.

(Parenthetical Paragraph: be careful about airplanes and Netbooks. Easy to leave in the seatback pocket. Having done it while writing this article, and being really happy when Frontier Airlines found it!