Lenovo joins the netbook market with the IdeaPad S10

[editor]

I'm mustard keen for this one, so long as it lives up to the battery life/performance. I can see this becoming a big hitter, seeing as Asus are busy confusing and pissing off customers with endless new incremental variations of their Eee netbook while their prices keep on going upwards (the Eee 900 starts at $100 more than the S10).

 

[jayeola]

darn, got back from work, kicked back and read this article http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4463382.ece. Was just about to post it and I saw this thread.

Well, the day my X30 dies I'm off to the shops! Thinkpads are made for abuse.

 

[editor]

Not a full review, but an early 'hands on' at Laptop mag sees them serving up large dollops of praise for the S10 and reckoning it could be the Eee/Wind killer. I'm still in!

Wide 10-Inch Screen
The 1024 x 600-pixel, matte 10-inch screen on the S10 is easy on the eyes (the S9 I saw seemed to have a glossy screen). The real estate was there to keep Internet Explorer open along with Windows Media Player. Above the screen is a 1.3-MP webcam.

Early Performance Thoughts
I couldn’t get the S10 to connect to the Net because of poor connectivity in the conference hall, but I was able to get a glimpse into the performance of the mini-notebook. Its 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor, 512MB of RAM, and 80GB 5,400-rpm hard drive booted Windows XP Home in less than 45 seconds (see the boot video below). There were no hang-ups when opening applications including Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Adobe Reader.

Lovely, Spacious Keyboard
Just like the S9, the keyboard on the S10 is extremely spacious and a match made in heaven for touch typists. I had no mistakes when typing in Web addresses, and the keys felt solid. There was also no bend to the keyboard. Oddly, however, the page-up and -down buttons are placed on the top row of keys.

The touchpad is a bit small for a 10-inch system. However, navigating the desktop felt smooth and there is a dedicated scroll bar. The touchpad also supports multi-touch gestures. Zooming in on pictures and Web sites by pinching my fingers on the pad worked without a hiccup...

Early Thoughts
The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 left a good taste in my mouth. I walked away from my 45 minutes alone with it only wanting more time with it. The solid manufacturing quality, along with its spacious keyboard, indicate that as a piece of hardware the S10 is one of the best. However, it is too early to make a call on the S10 until we see some solid benchmarks and battery life scores.

Pics and vids: http://blog.laptopmag.com/up-close-with-lenovos-ideapad-s10-one-sweet-10-incher

 

[jayeola]

# droooooling

 

[editor]

If the battery life delivers, then I can see it easilyy trumping the Asus "27 different varieties and still counting" Eee and the hard-to-track-down MSI Wind.

 

[editor]

There's another video here: http://www.liliputing.com/2008/08/yet-another-lenovo-ideapad-s10-video.html

Looks easy to change the RAM and there's a hard reboot switch too. Want.

 

[revol68]

I personally wouldn't get one of these with a hard drive. Moving parts = not a 'chuckaboutable' computer.

it's amazing how no one spouted this nonsense in regards to the 80gb iPods, infact i;ve never known anyone to have their iPod break from walking around with it on.

I mean what are you going to be doing whilst the hardrive is accessing, jogging?

 

[editor]

it's amazing how no one spouted this nonsense in regards to the 80gb iPods, infact i;ve never known anyone to have their iPod break from walking around with it on.

I mean what are you going to be doing whilst the hardrive is accessing, jogging?

It would be a bit weird to start chucking a laptop about while it's on and accessing data.

 

[revol68]

If a hardrive is good enough for an iPod it's good enough for a netbook, and considering the cost of replacing a hardrive to the premium of SSD, i'd happily buy a back up hardrive for around 30 quid if failure was a really big worry.

 

[cybershot]

RE: the hard drive debate, don't know if all laptop vendors do this as only been using IBM/Lenovo products over the past 4 years due to work buying them, but they have a bit of technology in the Lenovo ones where if they detect a slight bit of movement, the drive pauses to help prevent damage. Always fun watching that icon in the bottom corner. ALthough I doubt for £250 these products would feature that technology??

Also re the build quality of Lenovo products. I wouldn't say it's all that great. The Thinkpad range yes, utterly brilliant build quality although look ugly as sin, although the new slim version of the R61 is actually very nice, however our purchaser brought me an N200 model by mistake instead of a Thinkpad. Didn't moan as it looked much prettier, however it only lasted 2 days before the screen went on it. Got it back a month later and touch wood 12 months later it's been fine, however the build quality is nothing like the thinkpads, I seriously think If i dropped this down the stairs it would die, where as the thinkpad would probably treat it like a walk in the park. The netbook looks almost exactly the same as the N200 but slimer so im not convinced on that 'thinkpad' like build quality.