Samsung NC10 netbook priced at �299

Samsung's NC10 netbook is pretty much the same 10-inch 1.6GHz Atom kit as all the rest, but What Laptop says it'll be priced a little more aggressively than the others at £299 ($532). Sure, that's not a huge savings, but in a market saturated with me-too machines all running a 10-year-old OS, price might be the only differentiating factor left -- hopefully Sammy sees fit to undercut the competition Stateside as well.

[sockatume @ Oct 1st 2008 8:36AM]

This is the first of the machines with a 6-cell battery to come in at under £300 RRP, so that should shake things up a little.

[King Mustard @ Oct 1st 2008 9:27AM]

My Eee PC 901 has a 6-cell battery and cost me £299 retail.

[Hosain @ Oct 1st 2008 12:13PM]

Your 901 is a 9" not 10.

This has a proper Right Shift key which is deal breaker of other netbooks (for me at least).

[noyp @ Oct 1st 2008 8:42AM]

Who still uses Windows 98? Raise your hand!
At first when I saw 299, I was like :) When I saw the pound I was like :(

[konshuss @ Oct 1st 2008 10:37AM]

i guess our friend nilay wants to really hammer home the point that xp is old by, i don't know, saying it's even older than it is? sometimes it makes sense to clarify your exaggerations, or do more than over exaggerate by a whopping 3 years.

[Martin @ Nov 3rd 2008 3:39PM]

>Hosain "This has a proper Right Shift key which is deal breaker of other netbooks (for me at least)."

Must be just you. I've been using computers since my first encounter with a SWTP 6800 in the late 70's, and subsequently since the mid 80's IBM PC's with roughly the same keyboard layout we all use today..... and I can't *ever* recall using the right shift key. In fact I had to look closely to see if I even had one :) I noticed I have a right control key too....never used!

In the market for a Samsung, hopefully with better plastic than my monitor that dismantles itself every few months with temperature changes - pity the dollar/GB pound is not still up around $2.10 though.

[Dopefish @ Oct 1st 2008 8:46AM]

Still, when you can get the base model Acer Aspire One for £200 or the 120gb hard drive model for £230, £300 suddenly seems quite a lot.

[avester @ Oct 1st 2008 8:48AM]

Add in smaller display, lack of a good battery, and you have Aspire One!

[Mikey Bee @ Oct 1st 2008 8:50AM]

Not when you have to pay £280 for the XP version and you're still only talking 8.9-inch screen and the cramped acer keyboard - oh and 3-cell battery. This puts it more in league with Asus 1000 whihc is still £349 at basic

[sockatume @ Oct 1st 2008 9:01AM]

I'd pay £70 for a touchpad which makes me not want to die.

[Dopefish @ Oct 1st 2008 9:19AM]

Correction, £180 for the Acer from Amazon....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001BZ923O/ref=pd_luc_mri?_encoding=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

[Major4Play @ Oct 1st 2008 8:47AM]

"but in a market saturated with me-too machines all running a 10-year-old OS"

Really netbooks run Windows 98 now ? when did that happen ?

[jakem @ Oct 1st 2008 8:50AM]

Nilay's referring to Windows XP rather than 98. The thing is, time works differently in Engadget's fanboy world. Either that or an understanding of basic arithmetic isn't a condition of employment here.

[Tarnation @ Oct 1st 2008 9:02AM]

Are you surprised Mac loving Engadget editors are too cool to learn how to count? And these are all running XP SP3 I am assuming or at least SP2. Microsoft still considers XP SP2 as basically a completely new version that they were forced to give everyone because SP1 sucked. So, 6 year old OS technically doesn't even fit unless of course they count Alpha and Beta stages then maybe we could give them 8 years.

On another note I think it is great that Linux has found its way into commercial machines, but why do all those machines have to be horribly gimped.

[Major4Play @ Oct 1st 2008 9:22AM]

Yep he is talking about XP , which was launched on Oct 2001, now seeing as this is 2008 thats actually a 7 year old OS.
Why not just type 7 instead of 10 well fanboys like to stir up controversy but they just come off looking like mac loving technically uninformed idiots who didn't manage to pass basic maths.

Hope Nilay has someone else checking his change everyday people might start talking advantage.

[sockatume @ Oct 1st 2008 9:00AM]

By the way, I'd say that usability is the main thing that differentiates Netbooks from eachother, not price. They all cost pretty much the same, but the keyboards and input devices vary widely. The NC10 is one of the brave few that don't have awful things going on in the bottom right corner of the keyboard.

[fRiJeC @ Oct 1st 2008 9:05AM]

Any words on when they'll be available in europe ?

[humps @ Oct 1st 2008 12:00PM]

Play.com and saveonsamsung.co.uk are saying expected delivery on 1st Nov 2008 and taking pre-order at £329 (play) and £300.01 (saveonsamsung, >£300 with free delivery, that's why the odd 0.01). Not sure about the rest of Europe.

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 1st 2008 9:05AM]

OSs get to be ten years old for a reason, son.

Oh wait, in this case the reason is it's successor is a pig and a whole mess of machines came out that make good use of it.

WTF, it's win-win for Microsoft, innit?

[Luke D @ Oct 1st 2008 9:47AM]

fRiJeC, sometime this month.

Official press release plus lots of gadget pr0n worthy pics here:

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-16742-Samsung+kicks+out+its+new+10.2%27%27+Netbook,+the+NC10.html

Two differentiating factors I see here: a full-sized right 'shift' key and anti-bacterial keyboard.

I think the netbook looks very professional and really thin so those are factors of interest for me.

[Ian @ Oct 1st 2008 10:09AM]

If they include the NT version which is what XP is based on (because they couldn't simply upgrade using Windows Me as a base, could they?), then the OS is around 10 years old. Sure, there have been a couple of upgrades, but they were more fixes for flaws that shouldn't have been there, along with a few features to keep the OS from being completely useless. Vista is the major upgrade, regardless of how much work was put into SP2.

@Mikey Bee: The Acer Aspire One's keyboard isn't cramped. It's probably one of the best I've used on a netbook.

[dervheid @ Oct 1st 2008 10:37AM]

Still TOO EXPENSIVE for the spec.

[Mario @ Oct 1st 2008 10:43AM]

Nice keyboard and touchpad, nice non-glossy 10" LED backlit display, very nice six-cell battery, and a pretty nice price.

Samsung FTW!

I'll wait until it's reviewed, but unless it runs far too hot, or isn't built well, this is the netbook I'll be buying.

[Big Bad Bun-gee Cord @ Oct 1st 2008 11:19AM]

too much money man. this thing needs a serious 100-150 dollar price drop.

[Ogo @ Oct 1st 2008 11:36AM]

Keep in mind these are £ just converted to $. Products are usually 10+% cheaper in the US vs UK.

[Coriolan @ Oct 1st 2008 11:27AM]

There are two photos in WhatLaptop's article - the one on the right has significally bigger touchpad with nice slim buttons, though all the other ooficial photos show considerably smaller touchpad with bigger buttons. What's the catch? Is it some kind of prototype? I'd choose larger touchpad any time.

[Matt @ Oct 1st 2008 1:11PM]

I still don't understand why these things come with VGA outputs. I doubt I'd ever really use it, but it would be nice to have the option of DVI/HDMI output instead.

[Mario @ Oct 1st 2008 3:32PM]

DisplayPort would be even better:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displayport

[Peter @ Oct 1st 2008 1:26PM]

why is HSDPA not included!!??
it totally keeps me from buying it

[MikeWard1701 @ Oct 1st 2008 3:29PM]

Let's see;
-Good spec: check
-Looks good: check
-Made by a manufacturer I've heard of more than once: check

My £300 goes to Samsung!

[MichiganDork @ Oct 1st 2008 7:07PM]

What if this machine runs 8 hrs of battery life, ppl?

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/17756/18780/samsung-nc10-netbook-ultra-portable-launches.phtml

[CJ @ Oct 2nd 2008 6:11AM]

Dear Mr. Patel, Engadget:

Please stop using the phrase 'me-too'. Just stop it. Not only are you;

a) Feeding a troll, but also;
b) Justifying his (unwarranted and UNjustified) position on particular products, and;
c) Ruining what little respect you had left when it comes to bias towards a, ahem, particular brand.

Thankyou, and please, grow up.

CJ

[Rob @ Nov 25th 2008 8:09AM]

Late to the party, but only just got to play with a couple of these, and I am impressed. Weight and size are a little larger than I was hoping for, but the keyboard is very comfortable. The trackpad is a nudge too small for comfort, even after whacking the resolution up to the highest, and the screen doesn't seem quite as nice as the glossy Dell Mini, which was my other contender. Still mulling it over. They each have their pros and cons. The Dell Mini's Fn keys aren't quite as annoying as I'd originally thought they'd be, although the lack of F12 means an external USB kbd is needed when PXE booting, if you ever do it. I'm just about swayed back to the idea of a mechanical HD by the 160GB Samsung jobby compared to the Dell 16GB SSD, which is way restrictive (after formatting, and full XP, Office 2003, and antivirus, expect barely 7GB left. nLite is your friend here!) and would have been an extra cost as I was planning on replcing it for a bigger one shortly after purchase anyway.
And as for the people b1tching and whining about the age of XP; deal with it. There are more important things in life. The point of XP being based on an even older NT system is a valid one but kinda stupid considering the current incarnation of MacOS is considerably older (BSD anyone?), and Unix distros have a heart and soul to put both to shame. People who like easy set-ups, remote working, and quick and brutal hacks and fixes like XP on these machines; the complete control freaks who aren't happy unless they're reconfiguring the MTU size on their wlans like Linux flavours; and those users who like nothing more than sitting in Starbucks pretending to write the next War and Peace love MacOS. It's got nowt to do with age. The older of the three is the most configurable, the newest is easiest on the eye. Seems to be the way it's always been.