The 11.6" widescreen netbook features the ports common for its class and thus provides good connectivity. 3x USB 2.0, an analog VGA port, audio in- and output, ethernet, multi-in-1 card reader with a good coverage of formats, and a Kensington Lock  should be enough for most demands.

The positioning of ports is far better than that of the already mentioned little brother Aspire One D250. We would admittedly have liked a more practical positioning of the audio ports on the front side, but the USB ports alone compensate for this - they are located far towards the rear of the left side and are far enough apart from each other (6mm). Therefore, a USB-cord of normal width (hard disks, printer, extension) can still be used next to an over-wide USB-stick (UMTS, TV, storage). The VGA-port is also appealing, it has been moved towards the rear side and causes as few limitations as possible through the fixation of the cable when an external monitor is connected. We cannot fully understand why the USB port has been implemented on the front side next to the card reader in spite of lushly available space, collisions are easily possible when a USB-device is connected and the mouse is used at the same time. It's good that there is a practical possible alternative on the left side.

The user has both WLAN and Bluetooth at his disposal when it comes to wireless connections, so both wireless networks and wireless Bluetooth devices, such as mice, cell phones, etc. can be used. The already prepared UMTS-slots that would make mobile internet access possible are not yet occupied. Here, the user either has to order a corresponding module via Acer's technical support (Info Acer), as long as it is available, or choose a solution by a third-party manufacturer (such as UMTS-USB-sticks).

The smaller 3-cell battery is admittedly not yet available, but is (according to Acer) supposed to be available in the Acer-Store or via specialized trade in the future .

In comparison to the combination of Intel Atom N270/GMA950, one has to accept considerable curtailments as far as the system's performance is concerned. The Intel Atom Z250 CPU with a clock rate of nominal 1.33 GHz in connection with the Intel US15W chip set and GMA 500 chip set graphics are deployed for the Acer Aspire One. We already know a variation of this combination from Sony's P11 series, it currently is the weakest version of Intel's Atom platform. The equipment of only 1 GB system memory and the seemingly de novo downgraded clock rate of the CPU (from which we could elicit a maximum of 1.24 GHz instead of 1.33 GHz) are also barely helpful here. The Hitachi hard disk with an average data transfer rate of 46 MB/s is admittedly not among the fastest, but it delivers a sufficiently quick performance, especially as the real bottleneck is found at CPU and GPU.

The technical data of the components are already inauspicious, and they achieve correspondingly bad results in the benchmark tests. The results of 3D Marks '01, '03, and '05 are at the bottom of the scale of our compared devices with 886, 395, and 136 points. They do not let any 3D-heavy software come into question as possible field of application. This estimation is impressively supported by the painstakingly reached 27 points in Cinebench R10 Open GL Shading, they only permit a respectful bow towards the fact that the test was completed without problems at all. Upgrading the system memory to 3 GB does not help here, since the results only show a a difference of some points (3D Mark01 / 908 points, 3D Mark03 / 396 points) which are thus within the frame of measurement inaccuracy.

The CPU test's result is similarly weak, the system needs 6708 seconds for the 32M Super Pi computation, which is about 30% longer than Intel's Atom N270 CPU with a clock rate of 1.6 GHz. The differences are similar for the Cinebench R10 CPU Rendering Test, our Z520 CPU could only reach 424 points at the Single CPU Test, and 661 points at the Multi CPU Test. Upgrading the system memory does not help here either.

It is recommendable nevertheless, since a perceptible boost of performance can at least be reached in the field of application performance. We reached a meager 692 points in PC Mark '05 with 1 GB system memory in the standard configuration, whereas the value could be increased considerably with an alternatively installed 2 GB module.

Those are only barely classifiable values in theory, but they entail extensive limitations in practice. So, what can the Aspire 751 deliver?

Using a browser or an office application and listening to music on iTunes at the same time works, doubling the system memory also helps in this sphere of action, it visibly renders what happens on the desktop more fluent. We already have a CPU load of 50-80% even in this field (browser and iTunes) nevertheless and see that there is no air for much more. Converting 5 test songs from MP3 to AAC virtually ran at real time speed x 1.1, it is thus about four times slower than the parallel tested Aspire One D250 with a N270 CPU. Our H.264 test movie "Shooter", which was at hand with a resolution common for iTunes (853x354 pixels), could only be played back as a slide show especially during the action-heavy sequences. Both image and sound had phases of interruption of several seconds even with reduced display resolution which were far from a fluent performance. Doubling system memory admittedly provided a visible improvement, but the interruptions could not be reduced to a tolerable extent. The combination of CPU and GPU (Z520/ GMA500) is just too weak for that, it is furthermore quickly pushed to its performance limit through the high native resolution of 1366x768 pixels. This is a pity, since the WXGA display in the 16:9 format offers a resolution fit for practice and a desktop surface especially suited for one or another movie or some image editing.

The USB ports' transfer rate can also be described as below average, the date transfer rate of 21.1 MB/s is far below that of good models, which deliver 30 MB/s. It is also still 5.6 MB/s below the performance we had on the Aspire One D250. Mass storage devices such as external USB hard disks are thus thwarted more than necessary and demand more patience than usual for data back-up, or moving data.

The Aspire One 751's minimal power consumption with 11.6" display is at 5.6 Watt, which is a very good value for a total system. The combination of Intel Atom Z520 CPU and GMA 500, harshly criticized during the performance test, of course has a large share of this - they can now fully lead their trump.

A possibly record-breaking battery life of 591 minutes in the Battery Eater Readers Test (maximum possible battery life) can be reached by the netbook (with the 6-cell, 54Wh battery at hand) with darkened display and switched off consumers like Bluetooth and WLAN. It is thus far above the promised eight hours - touché. Thus, the prestigious ten hour mark is only barely missed. This endurance-runner-performance is albeit bought dearly, it will only be reached by hardened permanent readers in practice. Both brightness of the display and system performance are just too low to still be able to speak of working relaxedly. If one adjusts these settings to a tolerable level, the device reaches 385 minutes (which is significantly less, but still good) in practical WLAN surfing with almost maximum brightness - a situation comparatively close to a full load scenario. We test this with the Battery Eater Classic Test (all components switched on, minimum reachable battery life), as usual, and reach a battery life independent from the power grid of 306 minutes at maximum power consumption of 13.7 Watt.