The new Acer Aspire One 532h is a nice basic netbook for under $600.

While it lacks most of the bells and whistles of the most expensive netbooks, for $599 you’ll get a solid performer that handles all the basic essential tasks well.

Under the hood, you’ll find the usual specifications for netbooks, including an Intel Atom N450 CPU and 250GB hard drive. The good news is that this new Intel processor provides excellent battery life, so you can expect up to 10 hours when perfoming low-power tasks.

The 10.1-inch widescreen display with 1024×600 native resolution is also a fairly standard specification for an entry-level netbook. There’s also a touch pad, which is unfortunately on the small side and may prove tricky for anyone with larger hands.

Acer has also equipped the Aspire One 532h with 802.11n Wi-Fi (but unfortunately no Bluetooth).

The Acer Aspire One 532h is available now for $599.

Buy a cheap Acer netbook on sale in Australia

By Caroline Warnes