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The Lenovo Ideapad S10 netbook

February 09, 2009 07:42 PM Filed in: Gadget

I recently had shoulder surgery and am currently going through physical therapy to regain the range of motion. Carrying an 8-lb laptop between home, office and client sites became a serious issue even before the surgery. Short business trips were worse carrying this behemoth. I got a back pack for the laptop but the backpack did not solve the real problem, it just distributed the problem (weight) over two shoulders to ease the burden. I knew I needed a very lightweight laptop that had enough computing power without breaking the bank. Did such a laptop exist?

Initially I looked at the MacBook Air and the ThinkPad X300. These were good laptops but were priced from $1500 to $3000 depending on the configuration. Then one day I saw Cobus carrying a tiny, 1-inch thick laptop weighing in at 2-lb 10-oz. It was the Lenovo Ideapad S10. It looked so much like an oversized palmtop computer that someone at the office said, "How did your smartphone get so big?" It is one of a new breed of computers dubbed "netbooks." They are meant to be low power and low cost. The $399 price got me interested at once. I immediately started looking into whether it could meet my needs for work and travel. My expectations were high because I was used to a fully loaded Lenovo ThinkPad T61 with a beautiful 15.4-inch display, built-in AT&T 3G WAN, built-in SmartCard reader and a host of other features. Here is what I found.

  • The CPU is a low power Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor. It is not meant for editing high-definition video but in practice it is plenty fast and very usable for email, editing Microsoft Office documents, surfing, listening to music, watching videos and using skype. It is also plenty fast for the corporate applications we use at my work. The laptop does not get hot like the high power intel laptops do.
  • It came with 1GB of RAM but I upgraded to 2GB for $30 from Fry's - painless, quick and worth the money. This contributes to the snappy performance.
  • It has a 160GB hard drive — more than enough for what I need for work.
  • The display is gorgeous, LED-lit, 10.2-inch with 1024x600 pixels. The resolution isn't as great as the ThinkPad T61 but it is plenty for traveling — the 1024 pixel width makes it very usable. I hook it up to a 19-inch 1440x900 monitor at my desk, and the built-in Intel graphics card handles it with ease.
  • There is a built-in web cam above the screen and the built-in speakers are decent. There is also a built-in microphone. Video telephony using Skype couldn't be easier. There are also ports for microphone and headphones if you want better sound quality in your telephony, or if you need to listen using headphones without disturbing your neighbors.
  • The bluetooth chip did not come installed in the S10 but there is a slot for it inside and the drivers are installed. I ordered the bluetooth chip from ebay for $27. It arrived from China in two weeks. The installation was easy and it started working right away.
  • The built-in WiFi is very reliable. It connects quickly at work and on the Apple Airport Extreme at home. There is also an ethernet port for wired connections.
  • It has two USB ports and (my favorite) an Express Card slot. I use an AT&T WAN Express Card for high speed connection when traveling. Compared to the built-in version of the ThinkPad T61 I have found that this combination is more stable (does not freeze or crash), has a more reliable connection and has a faster 3G connection. It is also in 3G speed more often than in EDGE speed which makes an even bigger difference.
  • The keyboard is 90% of '-full-size'. This is enough for my hands but the right shift key did take a few weeks to get used to.
  • It comes with a 3-cell battery which gives you about 2 hours of usage. This was the one attribute of the laptop that I did not like, so I went ahead and bought a 6-cell battery when it became available. Now I get over 5 hours of usage, but it adds a bit of weight and raises the back so the keyboard is at a slight slope (see photo). I also got some extra power supplies so that I don't have to fold up the power cords every day to and from work.

It is quite amazing that one can buy all this in a tiny portable package for less than $500. My huge backpack now sits idle in my den. Instead, I have pulled out my tiny Tumi laptop bag that I used several years ago, dusted it off and started using it again. It is such a pleasure to use. The S10 has solved the problem without simply distributing the burden. Now several people at the office are getting this laptop and when Ken Snyder came to visit Houston from London, he bought one as well. See Cobus' review of the S10 here.

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