Lenovo’s most popular Netbook is with us today, let’s see what’s so hot about this product!
The Appearance
Yet another netbook it is, the S10-2 come in varying colors but the one with us today is the black version.
Here’s a closer look at the bezel (or whatever you call it) – notice the markings? You can’t feel the markings, it’s all just visible pattern but the surface is just as glossy smooth.
The keyboard that is comfortable to the press. Some may not like the plasticky (if there’s such a word) feel.
The touchpad. I like that the the touchpad buttons come in 2 separate pieces, comfortable to the click as well.
The ventilation and speakers.
The Specification
No better place than the official product page for specification details.
The Performance
It is yet another netbook with an Atom processor, what can you expect?
Seriously, I feel like copy and pasting the details from the Asus 1002HA review. 🙂
Anyway, it’s the usual test that I conduct on estimating battery life – web browsing with Firefox 3.0.11 doing multiple tabbed browsing and also having TweetDeck running on the background, doing tweet refreshes every 2 minutes or so. I didn’t have any music playing, however I did load videos from Youtube once a while. Monitor was set to the brightest.
The only difference this time was that Lenovo had provided me a 3-cell battery unit, that halves the available computing time compared to that of a 6-cell unit. I was informed that the one on sale would be using 6-cell battery, which you can expect at least double what I’m experiencing with the 3-cell battery, which is about 2.5 – 3 hours.
The LED backlit WXGA screens look fine, no complaints about that. Audio output was average, considering the speakers are placed at the bottom, a less direct path for sound to reach your ears.
Connectivity / Mobility
The system interfaced well with my 802.11g WiFi signals.
I thought the Asus 1002HA was light but the S10-2 is even lighter. That helps a lot when it comes to mobility.
The rear mounted battery mean that many of the connector components are found at the side. On the right side, 2 USB port and power connector. There’s also a 4-in-1 card reader near the touchpad, pardon me for the lack of care when taking the photo.
On the left side are the USB port, LAN, VGA output and headphone / mic connectors.
Ergonomics
Just as in any of the Lenovo products – I HATE the FN key placement!
C’mon guys, CTRL key has always have the lowest left corner and it should never be moved. Control, Tab, Shift, Alt, Space, Back Space, ESC and many other common keys are NEVER to be moved.
And from what I was told, the 6-cell battery would give the S10-2 a slight slant, thus making it more finger-friendly.
Conclusion
A few reasons why I think this netbook is popular – it’s small (as any other netbook), it’s light, it comes in appealing colors (reference).
If you’re looking for a netbook, do consider the Lenovo S10-2. The black and the white unit retails at RM1,499 while the grey unit and pink unit retails at RM1,549.
(The only thing you need to consider is that you need to get used to the FN and CTRL key position switch.)
I’m been wondering for some time now. Does a netbook do well in compiling programmes in C? But i’m seriously interested in ion netbook. Have to wait the price to drop i guess…
Agree with you on the Fn – CTRL key. I hate that location being replaced by Fn key.
hi! do you think it’s possible for me to run software like microsoft visio, adobe photoshop and ms office without causing the computer to go too slow? i am still undecided as to whether i should purchase this netbook coz’ most of my friends told me it’s not powerful enough to run software like visio and photoshop. :S
@fatty – i donno, the last program codes I compile was JAVA on those sub-1ghz machines. 🙂
@jayce – i want to CTRL+A, CTRL+C, CTRL+V also make mistake.
@dileen – it can run certainly, the Atom is still faster than many of the single core processor we used in yesteryears BUT you’ll just have to put up with the slow nature. I for one, wouldn’t use the netbook for such purpose. Not because of the processor but the small screen real estate. 😀