All this wonderful process of collecting photons and converting them into digital information requires a specific time span for this to happen, known in the photographic realm as exposure time. Film cameras have always sliced light into manageable slivers of time using mechanical devices called shutters, which block the film until you’re ready to take a picture, and then open to admit light for the period required for (we hope) an optimal exposure. This period is generally very brief, and is measured, for most pictures taken with a hand-held camera, in tiny fractions of a second.

Digital cameras have shutters, too. They can have either a mechanical shutter, which opens and closes to expose the sensor, or an electronic shutter, which simulates the same process. Many digital camera have both types of shutter, relying on a mechanical shutter for relatively longer exposures (usually 1/500th second to more than a second long), plus an electronic shutter for higher shutter speeds that are difficult to attain with mechanical shutters alone. (That’s why you’ll find digital cameras with shutter speeds as high as 1/16,000th second: they’re electronic.)

Mechanical shutters can work with any kind of sensor. One important thing to remember about a digital SLR’s mechanical shutter is that its briefest speed usually (but not always) determines the highest speed at which an electronic flash can synchronize. That is, if your dSLR synchs with electronic flash at no more than 1/125th second, that’s probably the highest mechanical shutter speed available. Some special flash systems can synchronize with electronic shutters at higher speeds.

The type of electronic shutter your camera has depends a great deal on the kind of sensor that is built into your camera. In terms of the kind of shutter they can use, sensors fall into one of two categories: interline and full frame. Both terms deal with how the sensor captures an image.

The interline sensor, developed originally for video cameras, isolates an entire image in one instant, and then gradually shifts it off the chip into the camera electronics for processing and conversion from an analog signal to digital format. While this process is underway, a new image can be accumulating on the chip. That’s because the interline sensor is, in effect, two sensors in one; while one sensor is exposed to light, the other is masked. The two sensors exchange places so that the previously masked sensor can then accept light while the sensor that was previously exposed is shielded so it can offload its image to the camera’s electronics. This capability waimportant for video cameras, which expose their sensors at a rate of 30 frames per second.

Because of this ability to isolate an image in a fraction of a second, interline sensors can function as an electronic, non-mechanical shutter. A full-frame sensor (not to be confused with full-frame sensor size), in contrast, is a single sensor that cannot isolate an image while it is still exposed to light. The sensor must be physically covered, uncovered to make the exposure, and then covered again while the image is transferred to the camera’s electronics. If the sensor is still exposed to light when an image is moved from the chip, the image will be smeared by illumination that strikes the photosites while the old image is being shifted. That calls for a mechanical shutter.

The ability of a digital sensor to capture information over the whole range from darkest areas to lightest is called its dynamic range. You take many kinds of photos in which an extended dynamic range would be useful. Perhaps you have people dressed in dark clothing standing against a snowy background, or a sunset picture with important detail in the foreground, or simply an image with important detail in the darkest shadow.

However, sensors have some difficulty capturing the full range of tones that may be present in an image. Tones that are too dark won’t provide enough photons to register in the sensor’s photosite “buckets,” producing clipped shadows, unless you specify a lower threshold or amplify the signal, increasing noise. Very light tones are likely to provide more photons than the bucket can hold, producing clipped highlights and overflowing to the adjacent photosites to generate blooming. Ideally, you want your sensor to be able to capture very subtle tonal gradations throughout the shadows, midtones, and highlight areas.

One way to do this is to give the photosites a larger surface area, which increases the volume of the bucket and allows collecting more photons. In fact, the jumbo photosites in larger dSLR sensors allow greater sensitivity (higher ISO settings), reduced noise, and an expanded dynamic range. For comparison purposes, the photosites on an 8MP non-SLR digital camera with a 2/3-inch CCD sensor measure 2.7 microns each. The larger sensors on a typical 6MP dSLR measure 7.8 microns—almost three times wider. You can see why a 6 megapixel dSLR might produce better images with lower noise than a non-SLR that has 2 million more pixels. The larger photosites tell it all.

Dynamic range can be described as a ratio that shows the relationship between the lightest image area a digital sensor can record and the darkest image area it can capture. The relationship is logarithmic, like the scales used to measure earthquakes, tornados, and other natural disasters. That is, dynamic range is expressed in density values, D, with a value of, say, 3.0 being ten times as large as 2.0. As with any ratio, there are two components used in the calculation, the lightest and darkest areas of the image that can be captured. In the photography world (which includes film; the importance of dynamic range is not limited to digital cameras), these components are commonly called Dmin (the minimum density, or brightest areas) and Dmax (the maximum density, or darkest areas).

Dynamic range comes into play when the analog signal is converted to digital form. As you probably know, digital images consist of the three color channels (red, green, and blue), each of which have, by the time we begin working with them in an image editor, tonal values ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white). Those 256 values are each expressed as one 8-bit byte, and combining the three color channels (8 bits x 3) gives us the 24-bit, full-color image we’re most familiar with.

However, when your digital SLR converts the analog files to digital format to create its RAW image files, it can use more than 8 bits of information per color channel, usually 12 bits, 14 bits, or 16 bits. These extended range channels are usually converted down to 8 bits per channel when the RAW file is transferred to your image editor. The analog to digital converter circuitry itself has a dynamic range that provides an upper limit on the amount of information that can be converted. For example, with a theoretical 8-bit A/D converter, the darkest signal that can be represented is a value of 1, and the brightest has a value of 255. That ends up as the equivalent of a maximum possible dynamic range of 2.4, which is not especially impressive as things go.

On the other hand, a 10-bit A/D converter has 1,024 different tones per channel, and can produce a maximum dynamic range of 3.0; up the ante to 12 or 16 bits (and 4,094 or 65,535 tones) in the A/D conversion process, and the theoretical top dynamic ranges increases to values of D of 3.6 and 4.8, respectively. These figures assume that the analog to digital conversion circuitry operates perfectly and that there is no noise in the signal to contend with, so, as I said, those dynamic range figures are only theoretical. What you get is likely to be somewhat less. That’s why an 16-bit A/D converter, if your camera had one, would be more desirable than a 12-bit A/D converter.

Remember that the scale is logarithmic, so a dynamic range of 4.8 is many times larger than one of 3.6. The brightest tones aren’t particularly difficult to capture, as long as they aren’t too bright. The dark signals are much more difficult to grab because the weak signals can’t simply be boosted by amplifying them, as that increases both the signal as well as the background noise. All sensors produce some noise, and it varies by the amount of amplification used as well as other factors, such as the temperature of the sensor.(As sensors operate, they heat up, producing more noise.) So, the higher the dynamic range of a digital sensor, the more information you can capture from the darkest parts of a slide or negative. If you shoot low-light photos or images with wide variations in tonal values, make sure your dSLR has an A/D converter and dynamic range that can handle them. Unfortunately, specs alone won’t tell you; you’ll need to take some pictures under the conditions you’re concerned about and see if the camera is able to deliver.

Dell’s popular Mini 10 is the most customizable Netbook we have seen. Adding up extras such as a higher-resolution display makes it more valuable, but also blurs the price line between Netbooks and laptops.

As a maestro of the build-to-order PC, it’s no surprise that Dell has managed to produce a fairly customizable edition of the Netbook. Although most vendors offer them as one-size-fits-all solutions, Dell Inspiron Mini 10 has plenty of ways it can become the perfect Netbook for you.

Naturally, at nearly $600, this is getting dangerously close to mainstream laptop territory, and we could think of several better ways to invest that kind of money in a laptop. And, if you’re just a fan of the wide flat keys and reasonably slim design of the Mini 10, you can get virtually the same feel from the budget-friendly Mini 10v, which starts at just $300.

Not as streamlined as Asus’ latest Netbooks or the minimalist HP Mini 5101, the Dell Mini 10 alternatively takes its design cues from the bigger laptops in the Inspiron family, with similar rounded edges and shiny surfaces. It’s a smart move for bringing in first-time Netbook purchasers, as the familiar look and feel make taking the Netbook plunge less daunting.

There’s thankfully little wasted space in the keyboard tray, with wide, flat keys going nearly edge-to-edge. Unlike Dell’s earliest 9-inch Netbooks, there are no missing keys or major space compromises, and important keys, such as the Shift, Tab, and Ctrl keys, are relatively full-size. The narrow wrist rest keeps the system from extending out too far and becoming unwieldy, but that requires a long, letterbox-style touch pad, with the mouse buttons integrated directly into the lower left and right corners of the pad. It’s far from our preferred Netbook touch pad, but better than the similar long touch pad with buttons on the far sides found on HP’s Mini 110.

The 10.1-inch wide-screen display is the systems’ most remarkable feature, with a 1,366×768 native resolution. A standard 1,024×600 is also available on other configs of the Mini 10. We were worried that the higher resolution would make text too small to read, but we quickly got used to it. A handful of other Netbooks, including Sony’s Vaio W, also offer these higher-res screens, and we would love to see it become the new Netbook standard. The edge-to-edge glass over the display looks nice, but also adds to the glare–something to be aware of if you’re sensitive to that.

All is not perfect in digital SLR land. There are a few select things that are difficult to do with a dSLR, and some problems that only digital single lens reflex owners have to contend with.

• Lack of superwide lenses. Unless you own a full-frame dSLR, your digital’s focal length multiplication factor must be figured in to calculate the true coverage of the lens. It’s nice to have a 200mm lens magically transformed into a 300mm telephoto, but it’s not so great when you discover that your 20mm wide angle is now an ordinary 30mm lens that barely qualifies for the wide-angle designation. To get true wide-angle coverage, you’ll need a prime (non-zoom) or zoom lens that starts at 17–18mm. Superwide lenses are more expensive and harder to find.  When I added a digital camera body to my film camera kit, my widest existing compatible lens was a favored 16mm semi-fish-eye lens that was the equivalent of a 24mm optic on my new digital SLR. Many digital camera owners have success using similar fish-eye lenses, and then “defishing” the finished pictures to correct for the distortion and produce a conventional wide-angle view. I ended up going a different route and buying a 12mm–24mm zoom (for $1,000—about the same as my dSLR body) to get an 18mm to 36mm (equivalent) viewpoint. If you do like fish-eye views, you can also purchase prime lenses in the 10mm range, but they are even more expensive. Anyone who likes the wideangle viewpoint can expect to buy extra lenses. Of course, few non-dSLRs, other than one new model from Nikon with a 24–85mm zoom, have zooms that go wider than 28mm, either.

• No LCD preview or composing. The LCD on a dSLR can be used only for reviewing photos or working with menus. Not a problem with through-the-lens viewing, you think? Try taking a few pictures using an infra-red filter that blocks visible light. Your SLR view is totally black, yet some non-dSLR camera’s LCDs show a dim, serviceable image under such conditions. Moreover, some point-and-shoots have swiveling LCDs or swiveling bodies, so you can hold the camera over your head or down below your waist and still view the image. Want to take a self-portrait? Some non-dSLRs with swiveling lenses automatically invert the image on the LCD so you can point the camera at yourself and still preview the image you’re about to take.

• Dirt and dust. Make no mistake, if you change lenses at all your digital SLR will eventually accumulate dust specks on the sensor that you’ll have to remove. I had my dSLR all of two weeks and had changed the lenses maybe four times when I noticed a recurring speck on all my photos. This dust is generally not difficult to remove and may not even show up except in photos taken with a small f-stop, but the mere threat is enough to drive you crazy. I find myself cleaning the sensor every time I go out for an important shoot, fearful of coming home with 500 photos all marred by a dust speck. Oddly, this drawback of the digital SLR is rarely discussed by vendors, yet it’s the most common problem a dSLR owner is likely to encounter. Look for more vendors to include widgets like Olympus’s Supersonic Wave Filter to shake the dust off before it causes a problem.

• Size, weight, and general clunkiness. Your dSLR is going to be much larger and weigh more than whatever point-and-shoot digital camera you may be used to. If you’re switching over from a film SLR, you may not notice the difference. Still, a dSLR will generally be clunkier and noisier than a point-and-shoot digital, even with the fake noise turned off.

One of the big myths of digital photography is that film/camera behemoth Eastman Kodak Company is slowly being pushed out of the film business by digital technology. In truth, if you look at history, Kodak has been a driving force behind the scenes of digital imaging for decades, dating way before Steve Sasson’s first digital camera.

Kodak scientists invented the modern scanner back in the mid-20th century, coined the term megapixel sensor for the first CCD capable of capturing more than a million pixels of information, and created the first Photo CD for digital pictures at a time when very few computer owners had a CD-ROM drive with which to view them. By the early 1990s, professional photographers had 55 pound, $30,000, 1.3 megapixel cameras (from Kodak, based on a Nikon F3 body), and amateurs could pick up an Apple QuickTake 100, which offered 640 × 480 pixel resolution, and was actually designed by Kodak and built by Chinon Industries (which is now a Kodak subsidiary).

Kodak later offered the DC40 and DC50, built from refined versions of the original design. Although Kodak milked its film and film camera cash cows for well over 100 years, the company has seen the coming digital imaging changes. It has led the charge with products that, while often not the best in their class, have always been appealing to amateurs and photo enthusiasts.

You don’t need to know anything about internal combustion to operate an automobile, and you really don’t need to understand digital technology to use a point-and-shoot digital camera, either. Both devices are so automated these days that there’s not a lot for the driver/shooter to do other than point the machinery in the right direction and press the gas pedal or shutter release.

Even if you decide to use manual controls on a non-dSLR, the only thing you must understand is that this button makes the picture lighter or darker, that one helps freeze action, and this other button changes the way the camera focuses.

It’s a different ballgame with a digital SLR, and most of us wouldn’t have it any other way. Unlike point-and-shoot digital photography, where it’s almost impossible to adjust depth-offield, and usable ISO ratings range from ISO 100 to ISO 100, the technology built into a dSLR does allow you to make a difference creatively and technically, if you know what you’re doing.

For the average serious photographer, that’s what taking pictures is all about. With a digital SLR, it’s easy to use depth-of-field to manipulate your images, but you need to understand how digital cameras work with lenses and their apertures. The “graininess” of your pictures is under your control, too, but depends heavily on things like the size of the sensor, the sensitivity rating you’re using, and what kind of noise reduction technology is built into your camera.

Would you like to take a picture in which a runner is frozen in time, but a streaky blur trails behind him like The Flash in comic books? You’d better understand the difference between front-sync and rear-sync shutter settings.

Interested in using a super-long telephoto lens without a tripod? Step up and learn about image stabilizers. If you’re who I think you are, you don’t see understanding digital SLR technology as a daunting task, but as an interesting challenge. By the time someone is ready to step up to a dSLR, he or she is looking forward to taking greater control over every aspect of the picture-taking process. Similarly, a photo enthusiast who already has SLR experience with film cameras finds the challenge one that’s easy to undertake.

That’s especially true because the technologies used for film and digital SLRs have converged dramatically over the years. Solid-state technology began to worm itself into conventional cameras more than 20 years ago, in the form of electronic metering, electronic shutters, programmed exposure modes, and automatic focus. The first digital SLRs were created by grafting a digital sensor into the back of a film SLR and then tacking on some electronics to process and store the images.

Even today, when digital SLRs are using fewer off-the-shelf film camera components, there are many models so similar to the film camera counterparts from the same vendor that if you were handed one at random, you’d probably have to check it out for a few seconds to decide if it were the film or electronic version.

The most comforting thing about digital SLR technology is that, for the most part, these cameras were designed by engineers who understand photography. Many of the point-and-shoot digital cameras I have used appear to have been designed by a techie who was creating cell phones or PDAs last week, and then moved over to digital cameras this week. They operate like computers rather than cameras, have features that nobody in their right mind actually needs, and often are completely unusable for the kinds of photography they are intended for.

For example, I recently tested a pocket-sized digicam that had no optical viewfinder at all. It was necessary to frame every picture using the back-panel LCD, which, unfortunately, completely washed out when used outdoors at any time of the day when the sun was out. Another camera had a sensational burst mode that could snap off six frames in about 1.5 seconds. Casual sports photographers would love that, except this particular model provided no way to set the shutter speed high enough to stop action, nor was there even a Sports shooting mode.

Ack! In contrast, digital SLRs are designed by people who understand your needs. Most of them have been designing film cameras for many years, and know from the feedback they receive what photographers want. So, learning dSLR technology will be rewarding for you because you’ll come to understand exactly how to use features that have been designed to help you be a better and more creative photographer.

Arguably the most important weapon in a photographers’ arsenal, lenses are also one of the most variable. From the widest 10mm fish-eye to the longest 800mm telephoto, optics are available in every conceivable size, weight and focal length. Due to the smaller sensors used in many of today’s digital SLRs, however, focal lengths vary depending on the model in question. Whether you’re a landscaper looking to capture dramatic sunsets or an architectural fanatic looking to isolate fine details, there’s a multitude of options that fall into four categories. Here’s the lowdown.

Standard

On full-frame digital SLRs standard lenses fall between 40mm and 55mm, though 50mm is the accepted norm. You’ll need a 35mm lens to get the same field-ofview on digital SLRs with the smaller APS-sized sensor. Closest to the field-of-view of the human eye, standard lenses offer an undistorted perspective and are often used for flattering portraits. Just for the record, the true field-of-view of the human eye is 43mm!

Wide-angle

With shorter focal lengths and wider angles-of-view than standard lenses, wide-angle lenses are employed by landscape and reportage specialists. Remember you’ll need a shorter focal length on many digital SLRs than a 35mm or full-frame digital model.

This need for shorter focal lengths on many digital SLRs has produced a raft of new models. A 17-35mm model, such as the one shown below, gives a field-of-view equivalent to 25-52mm on a full-frame SLR.

Macro

If you’ve ever wondered how photographers fill the frame with small subjects such as petals and insects, the answer is the humble macro lens. Allowing for 1:1 (lifesize) reproduction and focusing from as close as 2in, true macro lenses are specifi cally constructed for close-up photography. They are commonly available in focal lengths between 50mm and 180mm.

Telephoto

Any lens that weighs in with a focal length above 50mm is said to be a telephoto lens. Short telephotos (between 70mm and 120mm) are ideal for portraiture, while longer focal lengths (between 135mm and 300mm and above) are perfect for sports and wildlife. Remember, the magnification of a lens on most digital SLRs is increased by around 1.5x, so a 200mm lens is equivalent to a 300mm on a full-frame camera.

As Panasonic declared the DMC-G1 in Sep 2008, the industry saw its first actual innovation for a while: an electronic view finder interchangeable lens digital camera with a large imaging sensor. Panasonic had managed to overcome a whole list of technical hurdles to produce the camera and the G1 featured an electronic view finder that got pretty close to a fine mirror and prism, plus a contrast-detect autofocus that in terms of speed and accuracy could rival ‘traditional’ phase-detect systems of DSLRs.

Nevertheless, the G1 was lacking one feature that had been a standard on digital compact cameras for a long time and had just found its way onto digital SLRs as well: video recording. There are no obvious technical barriers to the execution of a video feature on mirrorless cameras such as the G1 (in fact it should be much easier than on a DSLR) and therefore it did not come as a big surprise to anyone when, only a few months after the G1 launch, in March 2009 Panasonic rectified this ‘issue’ with the announcement of the DMC GH1. The fresh model is, despite afresh sensor design, essentially a G1 with an added film mode.

However, the Panasonic Lumix GH1’s HD film mode is more than just another accessory feature. In combination with the recently developed 14-140mm F4.0-5.8 kit lens that has, in terms of aperture control and focusing, been optimized for shooting video, it transforms the GH1 into a true stills/video hybrid that can record HD video while at the same time producing high quality stills images. And whilst doing all that it is still in line with Panasonic’s original reasons for introducing the Micro Four Thirds system; to produce smaller cameras that act more like compact DSCs whilst offering the quality and versatility of a DSLR.

The GH1 is, similar to the G1 and the recently declared Olympus E-P1, a Micro Four Thirds camera. Olympus and Panasonic declared the new, mirrorless format / lens mount based on (and compatible with) Four Thirds in August 2008.

The Micro Four Thirds system uses the same sensor size (18 x 13.5 mm) but lets slimmer cameras by removing the mirror box and optical viewfinder. The new format has three key technical differences: (1) roughly half the flange back distance (distance from mount to the sensor), (2) a smaller diameter lens mount (6 mm smaller) and (3) 2 additional contact points for lens-to-body communication (now 11 points). Removing the mirror mechanism allows this shorter flange back distance, meaning lenses for the new mount can be considerably smaller than current Four Thirds designs. The format will require framing to be carried out using Live View on either the LCD monitor or an EVF. Existing Four Thirds lenses can be used on Micro Four Thirds cameras using an adaptor.

The freshest release of Microsoft’s flagship software Windows has been been launched on Thursday. There are a great many changes to the OS, which has already been described by one analyst as “a shining release of Windows Vista”.

Windows 7 – Fresh start

From the very start, then: installation. Windows 7 is configured to be a markedly less bulky and resource-intensive operating system, so the installation should be relatively quick, and there’s a especially lightweight version for netbooks. The 1st thing to note is that it doesn’t sound all that different from Vista.

How to upgrade to Windows 7?

The troubles that plagued upgrades from XP to Vista are gone, since the structure of Windows 7 builds on the changes made in Vista. Evenly, however, that will make upgrading from XP difficult.

If you are aiming to upgrade immediately from Windows XP to Windows 7, be aware that Microsoft doesn’t recommend it. Not only is it probably to take significantly longer, the directory structure is different between the two and many applications may not work if not run after a “fresh” installation.

The release offers many new personalisation choices like desktop PCs. If installing Windows 7 on an older computer, it’s likely best to check with the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor program to see whether your PC is compatible or if you are likely to see the improvements in speed that the OS can in essence offer.

For the most part, software that runs on Vista will run on Windows 7; many big-name software vendors of programs that don’t upgrade easily have free of charge upgrades available on the web.

Microsoft promises that its Windows Easy Transfer will smooth the process of moving your files from an older machine to your new Windows 7 computer.

However, be aware that many simple programs for handling things like instant messaging are missing from Windows 7 on install; instead, the idea is that users will begin to use the cloud-based services that form Windows Live.

First Look at Windows 7

With Windows 7 installed, the first thing to note is that it doesn’t look – or, on startup, sound – all that different from Vista. One quickly noticeable difference is that the desktop widgets, or Gadgets, can now be placed wherever you like on the desktop. The taskbar along the bottom of the screen has had a few new features added to it: hover over the Internet Explorer bar, for instance, and up pop small previews of all the open Explorer windows, even if they’re running live video at the time.

Thumbnail previews of open windows

Hover over the previews, and just that window will pop up in full size, with all other windows minimised.
Carrying on the theme of simplifying your workspace, the stylistic “Aero” features first shown off in Vista have been explored, leading to new features. Too many windows open? Grab the bar at the top of a window, give it a shake with the mouse, and all other windows minimise. Repeat the action to re-maximise the other windows.

Aero Peek isn’t really a feature per se – a little patch of the right of the taskbar executes the function of the prior “show desktop” icon – but it simply makes the windows transparent, leaving behind their outlines.
Some of these features will be familiar to Apple users and have been available in similar forms in various Mac operating systems.

Increased networking opportunity

Microsoft has added a few new bells and whistles for home networking, too. Each computer that is running Windows 7 on a network can dictate what kinds of files will be shared – documents, music, or videos – and which will continue private.

The release allows detailed control of files shared on a home network. Also, there is new functionality in the “Play To” menu for media: users can play a multimedia out to other computers in the network or even an XBox. Microsoft has also refined the search function that was wholly revamped for Vista. As before, it searches across all hard drives, and keeps a running tally so that results are displayed more or less instantly, as you type – reminiscent of Apple Mac’s search. In Windows 7, the search results are broken down into sub-lists by type, such as documents, multimedia, programs, and so forth.

Users can also create “libraries” of certain types of files – not unlike Mac OS’s “smart folders”: a kind of virtual directory that contains for instance all of your image files, regardless of the folders where they actually reside.

Finally, Windows incorporates some familiar tricks having to do with “multitouch” functions, either on a mousepad or a touchscreen device, should you have one. Nevertheless, these multi-touch features work with all application programs. Holding one finger down on an icon while tapping with another functions like a right-click and two fingers can be used to zoom in and out of images or webpages, or rotate them.

For more information about Windows 7 check this website : Introducing Windows 7

As prices keep going down the Netbook Wars, staying competitive amongst a slew of Atom-powered mini-notebooks is a big challenge. While paying $500 for a Netbook was common just twelve months ago, nowadays, stripped-down yet still functional Netbooks are now pushing $300, headed by Dell and its bare-bones Mini 10v. Acer’s Aspire One aided define the Netbook to the masses, underselling the competition at $350, and the latest version cuts down the price (while slimming down the chassis) with the $298 Aspire One AOD250.

Just a couple of months ago, Acer launched the first 10-inch version of the Aspire One Netbooks, the AOD150. In Feb it cost $350, but it had its limitations: a terrible touch pad, reasonably bulky size because of a six-cell battery, and a keyboard that was positively cramped compared with the competition.

The AOD250 weighs less and is thinner than the AOD150 since it has a three-cell battery now, instead of six. The specs on processor, hard drive, and RAM are identical, but the new Aspire One’s more compact design makes it feel a bit less like a budget product.

Although it’s a decent-looking netbook, it doesn’t especially stand out as groundbreaking in any way, unlike what Asus did with the stylish new “Seashell” Eee PC 1008HA. On the other hand, the Seashell costs $429, while the AOD250 is $130 cheaper. That’s a huge difference in a low-cost product.

The keyboard feels comfortable to type on, and although it has a pair of full Shift keys (no ugly right-side compression), it’s still far from full size. As a result, the typing experience is more cramped than working on an HP Mini 110 or a Samsung N120. The keyboard could have gone fully edge-to-edge, and in the future we really hope Acer makes this shift. The touch pad is unquestionably an improvement: while it’s still tiny and inset, the bottom rocker button is much more clicky than before.

The 10.1-inch wide-screen LED-backlit LCD offers a 1,024×600-pixel native resolution, which is standard for a screen this size. Colors are sharp, and text and icons are crisp.

The stereo speakers, which are embedded somewhere within the Netbook (upon examination we still couldn’t find where the sound was coming from), are weak, both in volume and sound quality. While it’s not surprising for a Netbook, headphones are almost a must.