I’d a chance to play with Lenovo Ideapad S10 at the International Trade show, New Delhi. After my introduction with their product manager at the booth, I used the unit for nearly half-an-hour. Unfortunately, I had not previously decided that I would be going to the Trade Show so I was not carrying my digital camera with me. So, I was left with no option but to take pictures from my HTC Diamond. Also, since this is going to be my quick thoughts, don’t consider it to be final review.
Here are the quick specifications of the Lenovo S10:
- 10.2″ WSVGA (1024 x 600) display
- 1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom Processor
- 1GB DDR2 SDRAM @ 667MHz
- Windows XP Home Edition
- 1.3MP camera
- 160GB HDD @ 5400rpm
- Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
- Broadcom 11b/g Wi-Fi wireless and Bluetooth
- 4-in-1 Media card reader and ExpressCard slot
- 3-Cell Li-ion battery
- Size 9.8″ x 7.2″ x 1.2″
- Price: $499 (Rs 25000)
Design, Build Quality
The unit I used was black in color. The unit was solid and the body is plastic. The plastic was quite tough and does not flex at all, which is a nice thing.
READ full review here
Display
The unit has a 10.2″ screen just like most of the netbooks in the market. However, the Lenovo was able to squeeze in full 10.2″ display in a much smaller size than other netbooks in the market which sport 10.2″ display. Unlike, the ASUS EEE 1000H, they bezel is not big.
Keyboard
Unlike the 10.2″ devices in the market, which have quite spacious keyboards like the EEE 1000H (reviewed here), which sports 95% of laptop size keyboard and HP mini 1000 which has 92% of laptop size keyboard, the keyboard on the lenovo S10 was like the ones included on the 7″ and 8.9″ EEE PCs (EEE 700 series, 900, 901 except 904HA(reviewed here)).
So, don’t think that you can touch type on it with the same speed that you can do on EEE 1000H and normal laptops. Your fingers will start paining after typing on such cramped keyboard.
Touchpad
The touchpad is also small compared to rest of the netbooks in the market. When I popped this question to the product manager, he said that the main idea was to incorperate a 10″ display in a compact form factor. I see their concept implemented very well in the final product. The touchpad is easy to operate and is a Synaptics touchpad with excellent sensitivity. It worked well with no problems. The touchpad also has multi-touch feature. I was able to do the zoom-in and zoom-out by speading/pinching my fingers.
Battery Life
The S10 comes with a 3-cell battery. With the atom processor, one can easily get battery times between 2-2.5 hours with it with normal web-surfing with wifi, but don’t expect it to last it 5 hours like ASUS EEE 1000H, which comes with a 6-cell battery. I asked the product manager about its battery life and he told me I should be able to get 3-3.5 hours with it. Well, according to my knowledge, to achieve that you must not use wifi; leave the unit idle and keep it at lowest brightness settings, if you want to squeeze that much out from your laptop. I sometimes think where do they get these figures from ;)
Luckily, according to him, a 6-cell battery is in the works.
I also played with the Linux version which has 8.9″ display and has a thick bezel around the screen just like ASUS EEE 904HA. Here is a picture of it:
I’ve also requested Lenovo for the review unit. Let’s hope to get a review unit from them soon.