Tech Review: Lenovo S10-2 Ideapad Netbook

Its been just over a day that I bought a new Lenovo S10-2 Ideapad, a sleek ultra-portable Laptop, known as "Netbook" these days. Its an upgrade to the earlier Lenovo S-10 launched last year. Rather being too descriptive & technical I would keep the review rather short to make it easy for a layman to take a decision.

I got this from Hypercity, Malad, Mumbai for Rs.20,999 which also includes an excellent Headphone (with Mic). The Netbook has 6 cell Battery Pack, 3 USB Ports (2 at the right & 1 at the left), an Ethernet (LAN) Port, a VGA Port (to connect to external displays) & a Memory Card Reader (in the front). It has the typical Netbook config - 160GB HDD, 1GB RAM, Intel Atom N280 Processor & Wi-Fi - Bluetooth inbuilt. It comes pre-installed with Windows XP Home Edition. The company has provided a Glossy topping to the Netbook (which I personally liked) along with the Lenovo emblem.

(+)Likes -

1. Even after installing many applications, the Netbook still runs pretty fast.
2. The Keyboard is nicely layed out.
3. The Battery Pack is built with such an angle that it gives an inclination to the Netbook. You feel as if the Netbook is placed on a traditional Laptop Stand. This inclination makes it easy for typing & also keeps the Netbook cooler when placed on a table, as there is empty space created due to the angle.
4. The 1.3 Mega Pixel webcam is of excellent quality. I tested it with Skype & it works very well.
5. Since the speakers are placed at the side, the sound is much clearer. The output is Dolby Digital enabled.
6. Has a dedicated button for System Recovery. You can create images of your System Partition whenever you want & recover your System with the saved image as & when required.
7. The Touchpad is very sensitive & also supports scrolling.
8. The Windows comes pre-installed with Lenovo's Veriface Face Recognition application. It hardly takes 30 secs to train the application for each user configured on the System. A user can then logon by displaying his face in front of the webcam on the logon screen.
9. The webcam can be turned on/off directly using shortcut keys on the keyboard.
10. The Bluetooth is easy to configure & allows your Mobile Phone's Bluetooth Headset to be easily configured with Skype, without making much changes to your System. So as soon as you Turn On your Bluetooth Headset, Skype automatically switches from the Netbooks Mic & Speaker to the Bluetooth Headset.
11. The Wi-Fi is of good quality & has a large coverage.11. The Battery Backup is good. It almost gave me 4+ hours without connecting it to the Power Outlet even with Wi-Fi turned on.12. Comes with a nice carry case.

(-)Dislikes -

1. Touchpad is too small.
2. The Function Key (Fn) & Control Key (Ctrl) are wrongly placed. Most of the times I would press "Fn" instead of "Ctrl" for Copying & Pasting.
3. It comes pre-installed with an EISA utility partition which is used for System Recovery. This utility partition utilizes quite a lot of space & hence the entire 160GB of Hard drive space is not realized.
4. The pricing should be around Rs.20,000 to make it competetive.
5. The Netbook's body easily catches stains.
6. Does not come with a Micro-Filter cloth to clean the display.
   

I feel the inclining Battery Pack should be this Netbook's USP, along with the Face Recognition application. I am currently not in a position to set my expectations from a Netbook, as this market is quite new & yet to be matured.

Overall I found this Netbook to be very stable & user friendly & would definitely recommend others to go for it. Please comeback to me if you want to know more about this Netbook.