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64 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect Netbook, June 17, 2009
This review is from: Samsung NC20-21GBK 12.1-Inch Black Netbook - 6 Hour Battery (Personal Computers)
I wanted a netbook or laptop to replace an old laptop we used in our kitchen. I wanted something that was ...
1) Light weight and portable.
2) Easy to carry and/or pack when I travel.
3) Quick accessing the internet for news and email.
4) Would run Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
5) Had an easy to read screen, and
6) Cost less than $800.
I strongly considered 10" netbooks by several manufacturers (Samsung, HP, Asus, etc.) but decided I wanted a larger screen after I found myself "leaning in" to read the screen on the 10" netbooks. Laptops had bigger screens, but were LOTS heavier (>5.5 lbs) and would be much less convenient both in my kitchen and to travel with. Getting a 12-14" screen in a light weight laptop or a Mac was going to easily cost me more than $1000. The Samsung NC20 fit my criteria the best. I was a bit apprehensive to buy it though as I was unable to see one locally. In the end, I decided to take the plunge.
Boy am I glad I did. This computer is simply great. Perfect size, very portable and light weight. Screen is easy to read and very bright. One complaint I had heard about the NC20 was that the speakers weren't very good, but I would disagree with this; they're fine! The keyboard is easy to use, even with my big fingers. Battery life is excellent. In addition, the setup was a breeze. I've set up a lot of computers in my time (both PC and Mac), and honestly this was by far the easiest (even easier than my Mac's)! Microsoft Office went on fine, easy setup of my wireless network and file sharing with my desktop. I also loaded Norton Internet Security on it, and it runs just fine (no noticeable reduction in speed). It has handled everything I've given it just great!
I added a USB-CD/DVD drive and a USB-mouse (although it has built-in Bluetooth), and these work great. When purchasing I thought about upgrading the memory to 2GB but decided to wait and see. Now that I have it, I see no need for this currently (but it's nice to have the option for the future).
My NC20 is currently sitting on my kitchen table, running Microsoft Office just fine and accessing my emails and the internet like a champ! If you're looking for a secondary computer, laptop or netbook for doing simple tasks and travel like I was, I would highly recommend the NC20.
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57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Almost Good Enough, August 17, 2009
This review is from: Samsung NC20-21GBK 12.1-Inch Black Netbook - 6 Hour Battery (Personal Computers)
I'm a picky person when it comes to computers, as I spend pretty much all day on them - I'm a work-at-home programmer. I was in the market for a portable and light laptop that had enough battery power to last a good chunk of the day, while still having a decent monitor size and resolution. Since I was primarily interested in coding (which doesn't require very much CPU), the Via processor met my needs. This was almost the perfect laptop for me, but there's a few things that Samsung didn't do a good job at.
Pros:
- 12" screen with 1280x800 makes this comparable to a "real" laptop as far as screen real estate goes. Quite helpful if you work with programs that demand lots of space, and makes web browsing much easier. I use a lot of software that just cuts off dialog boxes half-way on my Eee, because of the tiny 1024x600 resolution. NC20 solves this problem, and many others.
- Very light, and while it's indeed 12", it still feels small enough to take anywhere you'd take a 10" netbook.
- Battery really does last almost 6 hours.
- Doesn't get very hot (compared to most laptops). Fan kicks in a bit more than I'd want it to even in an air-conditioned room, but it's never felt uncomfortable placing on my lap while doing ordinary tasks. You'd still want to put it on a lapdesk/laptop cooler when watching movies though.
- Easy to upgrade RAM and hard drive from the bottom.
- Cheap. (can buy 3 of these for the price of one MacBook Pro)
Cons:
- Bad keyboard layout (no Windows key on the left side, Backtick/Tilde key directly left of the spacebar, half-sized left/right keys share space with PgUp/PgDn).
- Power cable plug is on the middle of the right side. If you use a wireless mouse next to the laptop, the cord will get in the way quite a bit.
- The hard drive that it comes with is pretty slow (benched at ~52MB/sec buffered reads, whereas my Eee's drive benches almost 70MB/sec). I opted to try a OCZ Vertex 2 SSD instead, which made startups insanely fast - even faster than my C2Q Q9550/10k RPM Raptor desktop setup).
- Atheros AR5007EG card usually had bad performance with my D-Link DIR-655 router, even with the latest drivers. From a local SMB server, I get read speeds of 1.5-2MB/sec, with lots of packet loss - where my Vaio (Intel Wifi 5100) and Eee (also Atheros AR5007EG) don't. Streaming H264 movies is pretty bad, even with a 3,000ms buffer.
- Hardware acceleration on video playback makes Xvid, MPEG4, etc. is decent; however, I have mixed reviews about how H264 fared. Generally, there would still be dropped frames (<10%) even when played off your hard drive. Of course, you typically don't buy "netbooks" for these tasks, so I'm not complaining too much about it.
- Video sites using Flash are disastrous. YouTube only plays in SD (HQ usually drops to < 10FPS, HD is a slideshow). Sites using H264 codecs in their Flash movies just were miserable to try watching on. Given the prevalence of Flash and H264 in Web 2.0 sites, it's my opinion that Flash performance is also a very important factor of "netbook" performance. After all, netbooks are supposed to be for browsing the web. Shouldn't have to switch to a desktop just to watch some short clip on [...] without major lag.
- Sites with a lot of text and JavaScript (e.g., Slashdot) scroll a lot slower on Firefox than on my Eee 900HA, which uses the Atom N270 CPU and GMA950. I guess this is where the Via chipset just doesn't excel at.
- Specific to the laptop I received from Amazon: Mine had 3 dead pixels (two very minor ones that can't been seen very easily, near the edges, and one grey one right in the middle that shows quite a bit against a white background). Also, probably a defect, but about once every day, it will completely freeze up (mouse locks up, then a single PC speaker beep - hardware failure?).
While I almost loved it, it's not something I can happily keep, and am exchanging it for a MacBook Pro 13" since I guess I'm a bit pickier than the price bracket can afford.
However, if you mostly use computers for text-browsing and the sites you frequent are light on Flash animations, this "netbook" may be the one for you, especially if the 10" netbooks with 1024x600 resolution are too small for your tastes.
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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific Netbook, July 21, 2009
This review is from: Samsung NC20-21GBK 12.1-Inch Black Netbook - 6 Hour Battery (Personal Computers)
I have now ordered and tested six different netbooks (via my university). This includes two different ASUS models (1002HA,1002H) the MSI Wind, the HP Mini, the Samsung NC10, and, last, the NC20. All have delivered fine performance and various members of my department are very attached to each. For me, however, the NC20 is my clear favorite and the one I will be using from now on.
The reason is simple; the extra size of the screen and the keyboard makes the NC20 much more usable to me than the others. Given my aging eyes, that is hardly surprising. What was surprising to me was that the extra size did not make the NC20 any more difficult to travel with than the others, nor was there any appreciable difference in performance or battery life.
I just came back from a week-long research/conference trip and used the NC20 every day and on a 4+ hour plane trip. I barely used 50% of the battery power on the flight (WiFi off) and found the screen and keyboard to be delightful. I also had zero issues running MS Office 2003 with some moderately large data sets and everything ran just fine.
So, as much as I like my previous netbooks, this is the one that I will be carrying with me from now on.
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