I put together this video to demonstrate Ableton Live 7 running on an Acer Aspire One netbook. As you can see from the video the screen is a little cramped but totally workable.

I have been experimenting with the recently released Acer Aspire One, using various music making applications and I can joyously report that they work incredibly well. The Intel Atom processor included in these mini marvels is not the most powerful in the world, so I had limited hopes when running Ableton Live 7. However to my delight I found that it would happily run many simultaneous loops and some effects as well before running out of steam. The photo above shows 8 loops running which is using around 30% CPU. The more processor intensive effects (such as reverb) can max out the processor quite easily, but used sparingly the netbook can be used as an ultra portable and inexpensive sketch pad. It is worth noting that to get the most out of the music software that an ASIO compliant sound card is required. I have purchased the Edirol UA-1EX to handle these duties, but have also tried my Novation X-Station with similarly impressive results. The 120Gb HDD ensures that plenty of audio content can be carried around with you and messed with when and wherever the whim takes you. Battery life is the main draw back however, being as the the Aspire One manages around two hours of use out of the supplied battery. That said there are 7800mAh battery replacements which apparently can supply up to 10 hours of sonic enjoyment!

Reason 4 appears to function well, however as before you need to keep an eye on the effects used and create your work using Subtractor rather than Thor. I need to have a bit more of a play with this but my initial impressions are that the screen restrictions make Reason less fun than Live. None the less this is possible to use and may find favour with some folk.

It is also worth noting that I have done all of this running on standard Windows XP with no tweeks or hacks. In fact I even have AVG anti-virus software running constantly in the background.

Here are some links to get you started:

Acer Aspire One A150-Aw Netbook, Linpus Linux Lite version, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB HD (Seashell White)

Edirol UA1EX audio interface

Replacement Extended Battery (White 7800mAh) for Acer Aspire One