Then I discovered the Acer Aspire AS1410 & AS1810 series of "laptops" with 11.6" netbook sized LCD screens that had slightly better CPUs than the Intel Atom found in most netbooks.

While those earlier models were proficient, I was holding out and hoping for a dual core netbook to be released before we had to depart for a trip in late December 2009.

Luckily, the Acer Aspire AS1410-2285 become readily available with a dual core 1.2 GHZ Intel Celeron SU2300 processor, 800 MHz FSB,  2 GB RAM, a 160 GB 5400 RPM hard drive, and Windows 7 all for about $400.

It arrived a few days later via UPS in a large brown box with plenty of packing material inside.

To protect the laptop, I also purchased the Case Logic LNEO-10 neoprene sleeve for 10" netbooks.

This is the same sleeve that my friend uses for their Acer Aspire One 10.1" Netbook.

It fits the AS1410 snugly while leaving a tiny bit more room around the slightly smaller 10.1" Acer.

The glossy black case looked slick, but attracts fingerprints quickly.

A few wipes with a damp cotton LCD screen cleaning cloth restores the laptop lid to it's former pristine condition.

The keyboard is easy to type quickly on and I find it far easier to use compared to the smaller 89% keyboard on the 10.1" Acer netbooks.

I'd much prefer to type on my huge Microsoft Natural Keyboard but the AS1410 keyboard is excellent considering the size of the computer.

Some people may dislike that the keys have no beveling, which can make it more difficult to determine where one keys begins and another ends.

Experienced touch typists should quickly adapt and be able to detect the subtle ridges in between the keys.

If you plan on using this computer extensively at your home or office, I'd recommend hooking it up to a large monitor (via VGA or HDMI), a mouse (no Bluetooth ), external amplified speakers, and an ergonomic keyboard.

Then you'd hardly be able to tell that you're working on such an ultra portable yet highly capable machine.

I only played around with Win 7 for a few hours before deciding that I'd rather have Windows XP SP3 on it for our upcoming trip. The "Home Premium" version of Windows 7 doesn't come with "XP Compatibility" mode.

Since I use a collection of older programs in my workflow, I didn't want to waste time getting them to work with this version of Windows 7.

Windows 7 did seem to run fairly quick and have some flashy features, but I'll stick with the nearly a decade old Windows XP at least for another year or so.

The Windows 7 task manager showed that anywhere from 69-71 processes () were running after the computer finishing starting up.

To test the AS1410 with Windows 7, I ran the Passmark Performance Test (64 bit Win7 version) computer benchmarking program. It scored 429 on the first run and then 438.4 on the second run after a restart.

The Acer Aspire 10.1" netbook with a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor scored just 248.3 on the test.

(Note: I installed XP via a 1GB thumb drive and the hard drive settings in the BIOS had to be changed from AHCI to IDE in order for the installation to work.)

Once I installed all of my usual programs, I ran the test again and it scored 456. The XP task manager showed that the computer was only running 27-30 processes after starting up with a clean Windows XP installation.

I adjusted the performance and display settings of XP for "best performance".

Now my AS1410 desktop and OS look very plain, but it runs quicker than I had expected.

In the future, I may upgrade the RAM from 2 GB to 4 GB (or even more with Windows 7) and install a faster 7200 RPM hard drive with more storage space.

A similar upgrade of my old Toshiba A105 yielded excellent results.

The Passmark score of the A105 went from 440 stock, to 467.7 with the 1GB to 4GB RAM upgrade, to 526.1 with just the 320GB 7200 RPM hard drive upgrade and finally to 561.8 with both the upgrades installed at the same time.

Another advantage of performing a clean installation of Windows is that you can delete the Acer recovery DVD partition and regain a few gigabytes of space on the 160 GB drive.

What I dislike (but not much) about the AS1410-2285 is that is has a Bluetooth button but no Bluetooth, and that all of the ports/plugs/sockets are on the sides rather than on the rear of the case.

I'm used to the clean look of my Toshiba A105 when everything is plugged in to the back and there are no wires protruding from the sides.

These are very minor issues, and overall I'm extremely pleased with my purchase of the AS1410-2285.

The AS1410 is also available in blue and red.

I'd recommend avoiding the versions of the AS1410 that come with a larger 250 GB hard drive but only a single "solo core" 1.3 GHz or 1.4 GHz processor.

The dual core 1.2 GHz is surprisingly responsive even when performing tasks like encoding video in Adobe Premiere in the background.