is a ssd compatible with an Acer Aspire 3000 laptop

No. The Aspire 3000 doesn't support SATA drives, only drives conforming to the old ATA (IDE) standard.

no. it is an almost a 10years old laptop with 256mb ram even if it had 512, is forced to run windows xp with pata interface. even if it had sata i cant find the need of an ssd on such a laptop.
http://www.miniputer.com/Acer/Aspire_3000.html .it clearly says ata100. try finding an ata100 7200rpm with a lot of cache.

The best upgrade you can do for Aspire 3000 is put the maximum 2 GB of ram in it. Put Windows 7 on it or Linux instead of XP. W7 has been around a long time now so you might get a licensed version cheap if you shop around. Sometimes you can find a licensed version from an old worn or broken computer for almost nothing to transfer to the laptop for almost nothing (some of them are transferable). You can disable services you don't really need in W7 or use Linux to make the machine fly, & even play most modern video well. I regularly keep mine plugged into my widescreen TV when at home to watch movies with.

The laptop uses a 2.5" PATA hard drive interface (also known as IDE), so is not compatible with modern SATA hard drives. The good news is they make PATA SSDs but there aren't many to choose from. A better option would be a Micro SATA or mSATA with a 2.5" PATA (IDE) adapter. An ordinary SATA drive with an adapter won't fit in your drive compartment, so you must use a Micro SATA or mSATA with a 2.5" PATA adapter for it to fit in there. Beware Micro SATA & mSATA are not the same thing, so make sure you get the right 2.5" PATA adapter for the drive you select.

You want to get the maximum GBs you can afford for your SSD. SSDs have a limited lifetime because they can only read/write so many times before they die. The less drive space you have, the faster it wears out. One with just barely enough space than you need may wear out in a few months or a year, where if you get one at with least 2-3 times the space you need, it can last a few years. The SSD's lifetime will also be related on how heavily you use it.

If you go with an SSD in the old Aspire, you really should put Windows 7 or Linux on it because they have better TRIM & SDD support than XP, to make the drive last longer, work better, & faster.

The ACER Aspire 3000 only has a 4200rpm drive it. For reason to long to get into here, a 5200rpm drive will make the laptop run almost twice as fast (more bits per square inch on the single platter), IF you get a 500gb or less drive. Where upgrading from a 5200rpm to 7200rpm drive may not show any noticeable improvement.

Most mechanical drives larger than 500gb have multiple platters & less bits per square inch so will take longer to seek, read, & write. Also get a mechanical drive with the largest cache you can find to speed up performance. So drive performance has a lot more to do with other factors than RPM... except 4200rpm technology is painfully slow for many reasons.

As long as a mechanical drive isn't banged around a lot or dropped, a good one can last over 10 years. They also give you a warning before they die like make noises, & are slow responding so you have time to rescue/transfer your data before it's lost.

With an SSD, within a few months or couple years you can find some day that the drive is totally dead & all your data or files are permanently lost or corrupted without warning.

Never store permanent data that you can't afford to lose on an SSD. Back up your stuff on a good mechanical drive.

SSD & all modern drives are SATA. The Aspire 3000 uses older PATA drives, or back in those days commonly called, IDE drives. They do make a few SSDs with a IDE to SATA adapter built right on them that's small enough to still fit in the space for your drive. But beware of SSD or SATA to IDE adapters that fit on normal sized laptop drives. The Acer Aspire 3000 space for the drive does not offer even a fraction of the inch extra to fit a normal laptop sized SATA mechanical drive or SSD plus the smallest adapter. The ones that do fit if you buy the SSD & adapter separately are the smaller than laptop mSata & Mico SATA drives. They're smaller than a standard laptop SSD so with the space taken up by an adapter, they should fit in the Aspire.

Also beware that SSDs fail without warning under heavy use quickly, especially if you don't have the proper software & trim support for them to run the SSD properly, or have limited RAM available. Ideally SSDs work best & last the longest in machines that have dual drives, where the the OS is on the SSD, & everything else is on the second drive, and/or you have lots of RAM so your system doesn't have to file swap with the hard drive much.

The most common mistake people make when getting an SSD is they get a capacity that's just enough to do the job. It wears them out to soon (sometimes in months). SSDs do not last as long as mechanical drives (average 2 years vs over 10 years). You need to buy the largest size SSD you can afford that will fit in there so it doesn't work as hard, & has lots of space to spare as clusters "wear out" & fail. For the Acer, I wouldn't consider anything less than a 120gb SSD with Windows 7 & good SSD TRIM support.

You need to upgrade to windows 7 or a recent Linux build to have any hope of supporting an SSD properly, so it don't fail in a few months. Make sure you have the maximum of 2GB of RAM too, to reduce file swap on the SSD. Sometimes you can find an old dead computer with W7 on it so you can get the license transferred or the OS to the laptop, or just copy its code legally & borrow a the install disk. W7 or Linux is the way to go on that laptop.

In W7 or Linux though, it's best to disable or remove services & stuff you don't need or the machine isn't designed to run well.

The Aspire 3000 comes with only a 4200rpm IDE drive. If you can find an affordable 5200rpm IDE/PATA drive you'll almost double the speed & performance, because most 5200rpm drives contain much more data per square inch so can access it faster, & if they're less than 500gb, they have a single platter which also increases access speed more than trying to access multiple platters on large drives. Many 7200rpm drives are not precision drives, so do not have more data per square inch, they sell by high RPM numbers rather than actual read/write speeds. Get a drive with 8mb or more cache to improve performance too. I think that Acer 4200rpm drive only had a 2mb cache.

The Aspire is almost an unbreakable workhorse that refuses to die - Built for durability & lasting a long time. But the speed of the SSD will far exceed the speed the laptop is capable of.

Get the full 2gb of RAM in it, & if possible get a nice laptop 5200rpm WD drive. Set your resolution down to 600x900 16 bit will also jack up performance, & lighten the load on your resources available. If the text & stuff is too big then, just go to customize & set your text, icons, & system to a smaller DPI. Believe me it will still look fine, but boost performance because the graphics has to work much less.

I play 720p movies on mine plugged into my widescreen TV, & it plays smooth with Windows 7 or Linux, 1.5gb of RAM, & a 80gb 5200rpm WD drive. But no matter what you do, it will never be able to play 1080p or games well. Yep it does the internet, Netflix, & You Tube well too. It's not my primary computer, but I still like it.