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(More customer reviews)I recently got a Lenovo S10e to evaluate for a friend. For the most part I was impressed.
First, the good points:
The screen is incredibly sharp for such a small viewing area (roughly 10 inches). It puts my 17" laptop to shame for clarity and brightness.
Boot times are equally impressive. Even after adding an anti-virus and firewall, the boot time from cold to ready is about 30 seconds. Shut down time is an equally impressive 20 seconds.
The keypad, although smaller than a normal laptop, still isn't bad. After 10 minutes or so I had no real problems adapting. Much better than the Asus eee netbook keypad and just as impressive as the Acer Aspire One netbook.
As most Lenovo's are, it's built rock solid. Minimal flex anywhere and the keyboard is sure and precise.
The track pad is nice and the buttons give a reassuring click when pressed. Some don't like a clicking noise although I see no problem in it. Also, the right and left mouse buttons are on the bottom of the pad where they belong unlike the Asus that has them on the sides (thereby necessitating a two fisted approach to activate the buttons).
Bloatware is minimal. I got rid of the 60 day Microsoft Office trial but, oddly enough, Norton wasn't installed. Instead, there was an icon on the desktop that allowed you to either install the program or just delete the icon. I opted for the latter.
Wireless connection was quick and sure once I entered my security key. Reception was no better or worse than any other laptop I've used; however, once locked on it stayed locked without dropouts.
Nothing much seems to keep the processor from processing. I purposely downloaded 3 large programs at the same time while surfing the web. Nothing jammed or bogged down in the process.
You get a Lenovo update program with this unit and it automatically updated drivers and the OS without being asked. For the most part, it works in the background while you do other things.
It comes with an express card slot! I have full size laptops without this feature but this netbook has it! When I need extra wireless coverage I pop in my wireless N card and go to town!
The charging pack is really small which makes transport easy. Some laptops come with a power brick that weighs nearly as much as the computer itself.
The recovery option is already on the hard drive. Many netbook manufacturers have gotten into the habit of giving recovery disks without realizing the unit itself doesn't have a CD or DVD reader.
Really easy to upgrade components. My Asus netbook literally had to be cannibalized to replace or upgrade the RAM and hard drive. The Lenovo merely requires removing the bottom plate (2 screws) and both features are readily accessible for easy upgrade.
If you change the power plan from balanced to performance, it seems to overclock the Atom 1.6 GHz chip. The icon I added to monitor performance showed the chip going from 800 MHz at the low point to 2 GHz at the high end in performance mode.
All this for $300!
Now for the not-so-hot points:
It has an SD card slot, but it's not a flush unit. Popping in a card leaves a good quarter inch sticking out. An accident waiting to happen. Conversely, it does make removal easier than some flush units.
The cover is shiny and an instant fingerprint magnet. Should have gone with the matte finish normally found on Lenovos. The rest of the unit doesn't hold fingerprints, just the cover.
The keyboard enter and shift keys are ridiculously small and easily mistaken. Several times I meant to hit the shift key and nailed the enter key. In all fairness, I guess this sacrifice had to be made to allow the overall large keyboard (about 90% of a standard keyboard's size).
This unit comes with a quick start feature that allows you to surf the net, listen to music or view photos without booting to Windows; however, it's poky at best. Although this quick start boots within 8 seconds, clicking on the Internet icon brings up a version of Firefox that takes a good 30 seconds to become active. This is actually slower than just booting to Windows in the first place. In addition, this version of Firefox is stripped and you can't even reset the home page far as I can tell. Good idea, bad execution.
The quick start browser is nothing short of snail-like in speed. It takes a good 20 seconds to render some pages but if you boot to Windows and use Firefox, it takes a few short seconds to render the same page. Can't figure that out. From what I've been told, this may be due to the limited RAM given to this quick start feature. It stayed slow even after I upgraded RAM to the max of 1.5GB.
The e version comes with just a 3 cell battery and a 60 GB hard drive (the regular S10 unit comes with an 80 or 160 GB hard drive and 1 GB RAM). Both are too light for the average user. I can get no more than 3 hours on a charge. The hard drive is easy enough to upgrade; however, the 6 cell battery costs 1/3 of the original cost (dangerously close to $100). If you do replace the hard drive keep in mind that you'll probably have to burn a recovery disk to install on the new hard drive.
It gets warm, but not overly so. My old Apple notebook gets much hotter. The unit does have fan noise, but nothing I can't live with. Some users don't like the heat but that's the trade off for having a small unit.
For the most part, this is a much better unit than the Asus netbooks and a very close bargain to the Samsung NC-10 (although the latter costs, on average, about $150 more than this Lenovo).
By the way, you can get these units for around $300 if you do judicious shopping!
Click Here to see more reviews about: S10E 10.1" 512MB 80GB HDD
pIdeaPad S10e Netbook designed to keep pace with your busy lifestyle. Possibly even simplify it. it is so light and portable. You can take it wherever your day takes you. Plus it is loaded with thoughtful standard features to make your life a little easier. A winning combination of mobile technology and exceptional engineering at a fantastic price. All at your fingertips. /p
Click here for more information about S10E 10.1" 512MB 80GB HDD
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