Lenovo's IdeaPad S10-2 reviewed: great battery life, but more of the same
Lenovo's S10-2 was a minor update to the original S10 (to put things nicely), but that's not to say it's not worth a look for those in the market for a 10-inch netbook. Boasting a slightly thinner, more beautified frame, the S10-2 also includes a tweaked keyboard, optional 3G, an extra USB port and none of the quirks that plagued the first edition. The benchmarking fiends over at HotHardware managed to sneak one of these things into their labs for testing, and while they largely found the S10-2 to be about the same as every other N270 + GMA 950 netbook out there, the 5.5 hour battery life was definitely impressive. All told, the S10-2 was found to be solid from top to bottom, but the $350 price tag did feel a bit steep considering just how many alternatives are out there. Still, even with the positive vibes, it's hard to recommend buying a WinXP netbook now with Windows 7 (and thus, no hardware limitations) just around the bend. Tap the read link if you're jonesing for more.


















After owning a Lenovo Tablet , I can testify that these laptops are built like bricks and seem to last forever.
The only dissapointments I had was the lack of a built in camera and lack of built in broadband card.
Totally agree, they are not the prettiest laptops but solid and work dam good. The only issue I see with these new netbooks is missing the red nipple next to letter G, I use it a lot on my big lenovo brother and it rocks
S12 review, please
Sounds a lot like another gadget that now ends with an S. Slight improvement but more of the same.
I won't get a laptop (especially a Lenovo) without the TouchPoint!
I absolutely hate the glide-pad thing!
Completely, utterly, whole-heartedly agree.
by now im just sick of small little increases. its a waste of time. this whole market needs to refresh its gotten very old. 100 models all with the same specs.
The netbooks are all the same, dunno why people keep reviewing them. N270 + GMA950 is in basically every one of them (except for the rare Ion platform, or even rarer Nano+Ion setup). Wake me when we see netbooks that are more than just tiny versions of say my 6 year old Thinkpad T42.
Absolutely agree. Why would I want to waste my money on something with a small HD (or an even smaller SSD), and only 1 or 1 GB of ram and crappy graphics, when there are similar sized dual core laptops which can run a real OS and replace a desktop if needed? At best, I see the netbook thing as a second computer, never as a main computer like I use my real laptop.
If my S10 would have had that keyboard, I would probably still have it...
The shift key on the previous version was unusable.
It's hard to consider the same old Atom tripe...
When Acer has recently released a 15.6 inch NETBOOK for $299! Has any one heard of this? This super netbook model dubbed the "Eee PC AS5516" is available at Best Buy right now for less than $300 and includes free walk-in shipping!
For that price you get:
- a whopping 15.6 inch widescreen with 1366 x 768 resolution
-Windows Vista Basic Edition
-AMD Athlon 64 TF20 processor
-160GB Hard Drive
-2 GB RAM
-8x DVD Burner
-6-Cell Battery
-ATI Radeon Xpress 1200 graphics
-and weighs less than 6 pounds!
What more could you want in a netbook? At six pounds, there's just more to love and plenty of screen real estate to make up for it! Advanced users would probably want to swap out Vista for XP! ....no word on Battery Life or 1080p playback....
Also Dell recently had a similar netbook deal with a customized Inspiron 15 under their business website. For $424 + shipping you were able to get a rather powerful 15.6 inch netbook behemoth!
An Inspiron 15 customized to:
Glossy, widescreen 15.6 inch display (1366x768)
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6500 (2.10GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic Edition SP1
2 GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
8X CD / DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD
Dell Wireless 1397 802.11g Half Mini-Card
High Definition Audio 2.0
4-cell battery
1 Yr Ltd Warranty, 1 Yr Mail-in Service, and 1 Yr Tech Support
Unfortunately, Dell has hiked the price up to $454 for this same configuration. You can check it out on their website!
1080p and HD Flash playback is said to be as smooth as butter!
I can tell you right now neither of those "netbooks" can do 1080p on the native screen.
Needs more ION.
All this talk of netbooks, specifically Sony's entrance into the market makes me laugh... I've had a Sony VGN-T17GP for 4 year now which has 512mb Ram, a 1.1Ghz Pentium M and after 4 years still gives me 4 hours of battery life (with Wifi and the DVD drive on).
Netbooks are nothing new for Sony, despite their claims to the contrary.
ya, personally i think Lenovo should offer Track Points on all their laptops, not just the thinkpads.
the trackpoint is exactly what netbooks need.
If lenovo releases an x200 with some sort of graphics adapter that can pull off even the smallest of gaming, they will be god.
i wish more ultraportables in the 12.1 inch size had some sort of gaming (oomf!!)
yeah, I agree. Actually they were talking about a Thinkpad netbook, but I decided not to wait and got an x200 instead. I might have regretted it if they put a Trackpoint on the s12, but they didn't.
Support the US by buying an American brand like Dell and HP :)
Bwahahaha.
*snerks at Chinese parts*