Customer Reviews

Lenovo Ideapad S10 10.2-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, XP Home) Black

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I originally bought the tiny Asus eee PC for a good friend, basically as an "upgraded thumb drive with a screen" capable of web browsing. Needless to say, with Linux, a 4 gb "drive..." wi-fi, web cam and not much else, it was pretty sad and limited - but at the same time, it clearly showed some potential. But let me be perfectly clear: DON'T buy one of these.... It's basically a quirky toy. I can't tell you about the newer models.

I decided to pick up an Acer Aspire One for myself and overall, I was extremely pleased. With the familiar XP interface and a 160gb drive, a noticeably better web cam and far better performance via the extra 512 memory even running XP. It felt substantial, the monitor was gorgeous, keyboard far better than the baby Asus, battery life was good - but not great. The only rub came when it was time to upgrade the memory. The Aspire One came with one gb on board with the potential to add only an additional 512 memory chip. Still, every bit helps on the small netbooks.

And there's when you find the nightmare. The Aspire One is an absolute NIGHTMARE to upgrade memory OR replace a hard drive. It involves removing the keyboard, the mainboard, numerous levels of wires, screws and connectors. There are "how to videos" on YouTube - but they are not for the faint of heart.

While I could have gone on being generally happy with the Acer, I was really disappointed in the absolutely and uncharacteristically WRONGHEADEDNESS (for Acer especially) of this consumer unfriendly design flaw - especially since there is an easy access door on the bottom that only leads to an empty compartment for a possible future LAN card upgrade which many, if not most, users will never use. Then there was a growing amount of consumer complaints concerning overheating, thermal shutdowns, defective fans and more. Two more of my friends has bought Aspires after seeing and playing with my machine and one friend nearly immediately had thermal problems. Not a good average.

The final "temptation" to switch came when Lenovo managed to release it's S10 model with the 10.2 inch screen earlier than expected. Among the most prominent kudos in almost every review was the absolute EASE OF CONSUMER UPGRADE. One panel on the bottom accesses BOTH your *hard drive and memory slot. You can upgrade *either or both easily in under five minutes. I had the extra half gig in and running with virtually no effort nor silliness and the little extra punch made the already speedy little machine feel even quicker. Definitely worth the time and small price.

The unit feels light but sturdy, much like the Aspire. The monitor is simply spectacular! Bright and crisp!

*Note: Among Lenovo's more interesting features is a "one button restore" feature which enables the user to restore the hard drive back to the original factory computer configuration with all original programs and drivers intact and ready to go should something turn the drive into an unrecoverable basket case. (Of course this is why God invented ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE and made it so easy to use...)

BE WARNED: IF YOU PHYSICALLY REPLACE YOUR EXISTING HARD DRIVE, LENOVO'S MANUAL SAYS THAT THE ONE BUTTON RESTORE FEATURE WILL NO LONGER WORK. So far, I have not been able to get a clear answer as to whether another drive cloned with Acronis WILL work or not as the restore function seems to depend on files already stored on the original drive and not some physical recognition scheme. I can't help but believe that a clone, even one of a different sized hard drive SHOULD be recognized, but I'm not going to risk the restore feature just to experiment right now. I'll just save an identical sized clone drive for down the road.

Strangely - VERY strangely - probably the biggest reason I switched came from the difference in the 10.2 in screen. I'm a newspaper reporter and I frequently have to do photos and graphics modifications on site. You will be absolutely amazed in the jump from 8.9" to 10.2". ESPECIALLY when you are doing something that you have ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS DOING on a netbook... RE: Graphics mods and retouching.

The Keyboard is just about as close to a full sized notebook as you'll come. It's more comfortable and responsive than the Acer which is not bad in it's own right.

So all in all, it's really close. I've had great luck with Acer products over the years, but this time the LENOVO S10 just had a "LITTLE" too much of an extra edge to ignore.

BTW, regardless of which netbook anyone finally decides on, I should share that I was able to find one of the new Total Micro Technologies flat Power Station batteries ([...]) and these things are nothing short of AMAZING! They generally run over $400 each but I was able to find a gentleman who overstocked for a major project and bought two brand new for $99 each. Long story short: They will power the LENOVO with FULL POWER, NORMAL TO HIGH VOLUME, FULL SCREEN BRIGHTNESS, EXTERNAL USB DRIVE AND DVD for WELL OVER SEVEN CONTINUOUS HOURS. Prowl around Amazon and Ebay. You might get lucky!

Hope this helps! Do remember to check out the ACER, ASUS and LENOVO USER FORUMS - especially under TROUBLESHOOTING and KNOWN ISSUES before you take the final plunge. Good luck!

This is my second Lenovo notebook -- the other being an R61. Based on my excellent experience with the R61 (the best built, most reliable, sturdy laptop I have ever owned), I bypassed other netbooks available in the local stores to order the S10. The advantage with the one listed on Amazon is the expanded memory and larger hard drive. I wish manufacturers would package other computers the way Lenovo has done with the S10 -- straight forward without all the useless software I would end up taking off anyway. The machine is amazingly quick and does what it is designed for exceptionally well. The only real quirk as shipped was the use of a FAT32 file system on the primary partition of the hard drive that runs XP. That was easily changed to NTFS using the XP convert utility. When I was downloading files, I connect the S10 to an USB port that hosts various optical drives, a very old HP printer, and a variety of hard drives. It recognized all of them. It is hard to imagine that the S10 is probably half the weight of my first 40MB hard drive and cost less. Battery life on both this and the R61 are modest, but for me, the quality outweighs this 'minus'.

I'm comparing this with my wife's Asus 901. The Lenovo build quality (and style/design) are really quite good, and it feels more solid than the Asus. Bigger keyboard, slightly better trackpad, bigger screen. I immediately installed Ubuntu Linux and its quite speedy, and suspend/hibernate are flawless. The biggest problem is the battery life: I haven't done a quantitative comparison, but the Asus battery lasts much longer - I plan to order a 6-cell battery if/when they're available. I've tweaked power performance with PowerTop, but its still not what I would want for a long trip. Its a shame to have to plug something so portable into the wall!

FWIW, I actually ordered the 512MB memory and 80GB hard drive, and they're plenty, at least for Linux. I can't imagine what I would want a 160GB hard drive on something like this, unless you were storing your DVD collection for travel (see battery life issue, above).

I purchased this netbook yesterday and really like it, so far. I have gotten about three hours of use on a full charge, with the low-power option on and the screen brightness turned down. Even at a low level of brightness (next-to-lowest setting), the screen is still well-lit enough for easy viewing. After getting the unit out of the box, I had it set up and was online within just a few minutes. I have not yet upgraded the 1GB memory, but I have not experienced any significant problems with moderate use (e.g., watching videos on Youtube, using the webcam, having multiple websites open at once).

I researched several netbooks online and physically compared the ones I could at some retailers (Circuit City, Best Buy, etc.), prior to purchasing. Although the Asus seems to get good reviews, I was leery of buying one without having the chance to look at it physically first, and there seem to be a few quality issues that keep popping up in the reviews of the Asus and which are requiring returns/replacement of some of these units, whereas I have not seen these issues mentioned in any reviews of the Lenovo. The keyboards on the MSI and HP seem slightly larger, but this keyboard is adequate, and, significantly, this unit feels a little more solid than the Acer and the MSI. As others have noted, I also plan to purchase a six cell battery at some point in the future.

The primary reasons I'm not giving this unit a five-star review are: (1) the need to purchase the six-cell battery; (2) the keyboard could be just a mite larger; and (3) the fact that it only has two USB ports. Given the tradeoffs among the various netbook makes and models currently on the market, however, I honestly don't know that I would have given any of them a five-star rating with no reservations. Nevertheless, at less than $400, the Lenovo S10 is a good buy, and I am very pleased so far with this purchase.

This is a great little netbook. I have the 160 G version. I researched and researched and it came down to this one and the MSI Wind. I bought this one becaause although the Wind had great reviews and a six cell battery, people seemed to be struggling with the trackpad. And, I have a Lenovo T61 which I also like a lot. So, I ordered a six cell battery. Right out of the box plus Windows Home and Student, it works wonderfully well. I also play Netflix instant movies on it so it seems fast enough. I also checked the Lenovo site and found same price but Amazon ships faster. Great size, good keyboard, good connection speed solid build, small enough size. Order a six cell battery.

I wanted a light, low cost mini notebook that would allow me to journal, do computations, and access limited internet.. in essence, a machine suited for jotting notes and to travel with on short business trips. As I intend to make short video messages for my children, the larger 160G HD was also appealing. And, I needed Windows to communicate (virtual tunnel) with my company's systems & MS Office formatted files. I also wanted a 10" machine as smaller ones (8.9") are harder to read (especially for those of us in the latter half of a career). I bought the Lenovo (3 days ago) on the basis of the company's reputation and some e-zine reviews. I selected it from the internet and did not view it in advance, contrary to my usual rule of 'don't buy unless the object has been seen in real time". I paid $463 for the 10", 1m memory, 160HD, XP system Ideapad, including 2 day shipment.

The keyboard is nice. I can type with relatively few errors. (My hands are not big). With only 1M memory, the XP system boots relatively quickly, something else that I am pleased with. The display is good. And, the webcam helps produced satisfactory 'talking head' movies. However, what takes away from the machine's attractiveness is that other than IE, there are few MS products, including the usual complementary MS Works. As a minimum, Works should have been installed. So, I will install Open Office or AbiWord, etc. The second shortfall is that of the 160 HD, only 100 G is available to the user. 30G is taken up with system and Lenovo's unique 'One touch' backup/restore system that makes a mirror image BU takes up another 30G of hidden HD space. Bottom line: I'm only getting 60% of the advertised HD space for my own use.

In short, I think I will be happy with the machine, but will have some lingering resentment over the lack of MS Works (cheap!), and the reduced HD space. I intend to buy an additional battery (relatively small & lightweight) to carry on flights longer than 3 hours. Should some improved version come out, I may let my children take over the machine and move onto a new & improved version.

I am not going to go into every little detail about this machine as there are many many wonderful reviews about it. I suggest you read through all of them and this one too. My review simply compliments everything above.

I bought this laptop for one of my younger kids to play some online games.

It is FANTASTIC.

When it first arrived it was a bit on the slow side...slow in terms that the hard drive was blinking non stop...this is due to the 512mb that it ships with.... Simple solution...I bought a 2gb dimm from Amazon and installed it after receiving it in 1 day...overnight. Awesome speed Amazon!!!

XP, to me is dated....Vista is a beast...so I opted to try the Windows 7 beta on this machine after reading many blogs that suggested that 7 was perfect on netbooks. Very True. I downloaded the public beta of 7 and using some google searching created a bootable 4gb usb thumb drive. We turned the Lenovo off, inserted the drive, and it immediately booted to the 7 installation. EASY...... The installer found every driver on the S10 without issue...with the exception of the power management drivers...which can be found easily on the Lenovo website.

7 works spectacularly with the keys on the keyboard, including the brightness controls and volume controls. All perfect!!!!

One great feature, with windows 7 is that once you close the lid on the s10 it puts the machine automatically into hibernation. Once you press the power button, it resumes without flaw... My $3500 thinkpad doesnt even do that as easy as the s10 does.

My ONLY issue with this netbook....like there are with other netbooks...is the size and placement of the right shift key...it can drive someone nuts when writing a review. haha! Perfect for kids....but if you type a lot...then it may drive you crazy until you get used to it.

Final word...great machine, great value, get the 2gb upgrade, enjoy!!!!

Quick Update on 02/19/2009:
We have been using the heck out of this laptop and have since purchased a couple of the PINK ones (daughter and wife). They are all running perfectly with either XP Preloaded or with Windows 7 Beta. I cannot stress enough the need for the 2gb memory upgrade which is now about $23.98 on Amazon. GREAT Laptop and GREAT Usability to this day.....

The netbook computer concept is great: they're small, light, easy to travel with, and connect nearly anywhere to the internet with WiFi. Most have an integrated webcam, as well. Speed and storage capacity exceed any computer I currently or have previously owned. Weights are less than three pounds, and screen size is from 9 to 10 inches. There are plenty of reviews on all of them so it is important to read as much as you can before ordering to make the best choice.

That said, I chose the S10 and am pleased with my choice. In other reviews you will see the battery being criticized. It is a 3-cell battery and with proper power management should be good for about three hours. For me that has been sufficient. The S10 has a matte finish screen and an integrated camera. The operating system is Windows XP which is fine with me because that's what's on my desktop and I didn't want to move onto Vista and have to deal with two OS.

The S10 is easy to upgrade. Two screws hold a small panel cover on the underside. Inside, it only takes a moment to remove the factory 512 Mb RAM stick and install a 2Gb stick (costs about $20).

What is the best netbook? I think it's the Samsung NC-10. In features, it's nearly identical to the Lenovo. It costs about $60 more than the Lenovo, but comes with a 6-cell battery. If battery duration is an important consideration, go immediately with the Samsung. A 6-cell battery for the Lenovo is costing nearly $100, and does not integrate well into the streamlined shape of the computer. The Samsung looks designed right from the start for the larger (capacity) battery.

Bought this little beauty and have had it about 3 days, and I have to say I absolutely love it. Compared to many of the other netbooks I've tried out (ASUS, Acer, etc), this one is so sturdy and has such a nice fit and finish. The screen is bright and vibrant. If you're thinking about this netbook versus another, pick this one! You will not be dissapointed.

With all the junk in the market these days, I'd been dreading the purchase of a new computer for a long while until I found the Lenovo Ideapad S10 "large capacity" model. (Mine's black.) Even though I paid full MSRP, I think it's the best value on the market.

My only real complaint is with keyboard layout. I would like to be able to hold the Fn key to use the left and right arrow keys for Home and End, and the up and down arrows for PgUp and PgDn. Given how complete the keyboard is, I'm also surprised that there isn't a "mute" key.

For desktop use, I connect a full-size USB keyboard and plug in a monitor, which gives me a second desktop. Having only 2 USB ports is a little tight, especially since I usually keep a Bluetooth adapter in one and a CDMA modem in the other.

The Atom and aggressive power management perform well for only a 3-cell battery, giving me usually about 2 hours of use on a full charge. I often use my S10 in my car (and with the addition of a Velco strip, it sits on my Subaru's cup holder), giving me music, Internet email and Web (via a USB CDMA modem), GPS, etc.; on longer trips, I plug the AC adapter into a small inverter. I'm also pleased to see that there's a third-party 6-cell battery available on Amazon.

Windows XP comes installed, but erroneously indicates two processors, though it's really just due to the hyperthreading ability of the one Atom N270 processor. I'm a little annoyed that Lenovo did not include a Windows XP installation CD (even though the S10 has not CD drive), but haven't yet called them for one. (I find that Windows often requires re-installation.)

The 160GB HDD is a Hitachi (my favorite brand, and not surprising since Lenovo and Hitachi are both effectively ex-IBM). The overhead and one-touch restore feature leave only about 100 GiB usable, which is still plenty, even after installing Fedora 10 Linux to make it dual-boot. (Doing this was surprisingly easy, as I could boot from a USB memory drive while trying it, then didn't need to erase anything to repartition the HDD and install Linux.)

Little kids especially like the built-in camera.

The Lenovo Ideapad S10 "large capacity" is the best computer deal I've found.