Reg Hardware

Comments on: Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbook

good review - great netbook 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 11:46 GMT

i have owned one of these for about four months now.

i bought it because it was the smallest physical shall that contained a 10" screen, as this is what matters to me in a netbook above all else; diminutive size.

i can recommend it to all except netbook gamers who might find the vertical screen resolution of 576 pixels an impediment.

operation flashpoint from GoG works great tho.

Value 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 12:00 GMT

"At £249, it's competitively priced and worthy of consideration. If you need extra battery life, consider the similarly specced Samsung NC10, with double the battery life, for only £50 more."

£50 represents an increase of over 20%... on the other hand, I guess it's the cost of a good 3 course meal with wine...

why 16:10 and not 16:9 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 12:13 GMT

Thought the justification of 16:10 format for PC monitors was that you could display a 16:9 video fullscreen and have enough pixels left over to show a status bar/control buttons underneath.

Small range of viewing angles is actually good 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 12:37 GMT

Coat

For those of us who work on public transport this is actually a must-have feature. My HP screen has nearly 180 degrees visibility which means that all people sitting next to me can read it. I would gladly change it for a screen with under 30 degree viewing angle.

No 3G 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 12:45 GMT

Is that a general statement and a limitation of Linux, or just this netbook?

How about doing a round-up of 3G services? I quite like the look of these netbooks, but I ma not going to buy one if it will cost me £50 a month in service charges. I'll run XP if I have to.

PC Card and 3G? 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 12:53 GMT

Go

"PC Card slot - does anyone use these any more?" - yes, of course. For 3G cards, much more convenient than USB dongles, as they do not stick out this much!

Fair review 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 14:11 GMT

I've been using the S10e for about two weeks now, it's about the same as all the other netbooks on the market. I find the build quality and keyboard feel slightly better than most models. OSX runs a treat on it as well, bar the wired ethernet.

I don't get it ... 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 14:44 GMT

.. this company inherited the smallest navigation device around, ie the pointing stick (aka the nipple) and they don't use on a compact computer. Smells of a re-badge methinks.

Little red thumbsticks? 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 15:26 GMT

I was really hoping that with the Lenovo offering, we'd finally have a netbook with what seems the most logical of input devices - those little red thumbsticks/mini-joysticks from the Thinkpad series; they take no space whatsoever, and while non-technical users do take a little while to get used to them, they're faster and much more precise (try selecting a specific pixel or drawing a straight line accross the screen, not to mention every-day operations like dragging icons etc on a pad). I can't believe there's a prohibitive cost or structural problem with placing them in netbooks - so why is it that none of them have it, even as a secondary option?

First company that produces a netbook with one of those has my money; otherwise, I just can't see myself spending actual cash on a device with a tiny, imprecise, aggravating input method that basically forces me to install a mouse :(

@AC No 3G 

Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 21:00 GMT

It's just that splashtop doesn't have support for 3G dongles built in. Most dongles work fine under linux, but depending on the dongle and the distro you might need to get the helper app from here:

http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/

Who decided to swap the Ctrl and Fn keys? 

Posted Saturday 7th March 2009 10:22 GMT

Coat

"Who decided to swap the Ctrl and Fn keys?"= Nobody. This is the absolutely normal layout at all IBM / Lenovo keyboards.. like the one i'm typing now...

3G 

Posted Saturday 7th March 2009 12:57 GMT

Hi Chaps,

The latest Ubuntu works a treat with every 3G dongle I've tried, even the Split-Mode ones. I was merely saying that SplashTop didn't support it - which is a big down side.

As far as the lack of nipple - remember that this is not a ThinkPad branded laptop - it's a Lenovo :) Personally, I love the nipples and would have liked to have seen one!