Just this week I purchased a new Acer Aspire 1410-2990 and while researching this “netbook” I never could get a definite answer on if it would be able to handle this type of demanding Flash video that I would love to be able to view in a hotel when I travel. The answer is Yes it can handle almost all of it. Check out the results below for detail.

Hulu Testing

• Hulu 360p Windowed: Plays Perfect
• Hulu 480p Windowed: Plays Perfect
• Hulu 360p Full-Screen: Plays Perfect
• Hulu 480p Full-Screen: Plays Well (depends on video)

This test was conducted using The Office – Delivery, part 1 which played well but had a few dropped frames in fast motion scene at 480p full screen. I also played a few Family Guy episodes 480p which looked perfect but this is probably not a very intensive video because it lacks lots of fast motions and many colors. I also played an American Greed episode which played perfectly. Please note that the Family Guy episode and American Greed are standard format where as The Office is in wide screen.

YouTube Testing

• YouTube 360p Full-Screen: Plays Perfect
• YouTube 480p Full-Screen: Plays Perfect
• YouTube 720p Full-Screen: Plays Perfect
• YouTube 1080p Full-Screen: Slideshow

This test was preformed with OK GO’s new This Too Shall Not Pass (Rube Goldberg Machine) music video.

These test was performed with out of the box driver set and Mozilla Firefox 3.6 and Adobe Flash 10.0.45.2 running on Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium on battery with power plan set to “Balanced” over WiFi.

Specifications

• 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 Processor (Dual-Core / 1MB Cache)
• 2GB DDR2 667MHz Memory
• 250GB SATA Hard Drive
• 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N Wifi Connectivity
• 11.6″ HD WXGA Acer CrystalBrite LED-backlit Display
• Intel GMA 4500MHD Graphics
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life

Models

• Acer Aspire AS1410-2706 Ruby Red
• Acer Aspire AS1410-2990 Sapphire Blue
• Acer Aspire AS1410-2920 Diamond Black

Please notice that there are other 1410 models that have either a Core 2 Solo SU3500 or a Celeron M 743 both of which are single core processors that on most benchmarks I’ve seen don’t perform as well as the Celeron SU2300. These processor are slightly faster in clock speed and may have larger caches, but I don’t believe that overcomes the true dual cores advantage that exist in the SU2300. Don’t let the Celeron name scare you this is much faster than those Atom based netbooks.

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