Mini-notebook of the day- Lenovo IdeaPad S10
Let’s start the week off right with an announcement by Lenovo of their new IdeaPad S10 mini-notebook. We’ve been sitting on this one for a while under embargo but Lenovo has lifted it and is announcing the S10. The S10 looks interesting with a 10-inch screen and a starting price of $399 which is reasonable for one of the larger minis. A number of things set the S10 apart from the crowded mini-notebook field, an LED backlit 10-inch display for one and a multi-touch trackpad for another. Of course it doesn’t hurt that the S10 is from Lenovo, a firm that knows a thing or two about making notebooks.
The S10 will be available in the US in September in two configurations- a 512 MB/ 80 GB for $399 and a 1 GB/ 160 GB for $449.99. Both configurations have Windows XP installed and Lenovo tells us that some countries will have a 9-inch version sporting Linux. The US S10 will be available in white, black and red and come with advanced thermal engineering to keep heat off the palmrests and bottom of the device.
Specs:
- Integrated 1.3M Camera
- 2 stereo speakers
- Multi-touch Pad & near full size Keyboard (85% full size)
- Integrated Wireless 802.11 b/g,10/100 Ethernet, Bluetooth
- Express card slot for WWAN expansion
- Up to 2-GB Memory
- 4 in 1 Multi-card Reader
- Form factor optimized (250.2×183x22-27.5mm (9.85×7.2×0.86-1.0in), lightest configuration of 1.1 kg (2.4 lbs)
- Large Panel 10.2” wide, LED backlight 1024×600 WSVGA
- Intel Integrated Graphics GMA 950
- Processors and Chipset – Intel Atom N270 CPU 1.6 GHz & Intel 945GSE Chipset
- Large HDD capacity 160G 9.5mm 2.5” SATA HDD (5400 rpm)
- Battery up to 3 hrs. w/ 3 cell Battery & Up to 6 hrs. w/ 6 cell
The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 is looking like a pretty fully equipped mini-notebook for that $399 price tag and I can’t wait to get one in my hands for testing. Right Lenovo?
512 MB RAM? Why do they keep insisting on fitting these things with meager amounts of memory? Is that their plan for differentiation? Make a low-end product so undesireable that everyone will buy the “high-end” version?
Or, maybe they figure everyone will install their own memory anyway. So, if they have to put in something, might as well put in as little as possible since it will probably just be thrown out.
Dang! Why couldn’t they offer a Linux version? Lenovo already has the infrastructure for supporting it, too… oh, well. Still looks very nice.
Well, my primary question nowadays concerning these subnotes is: Can OS X run on it?!
Why no link to a website, jk? And you should have de-metricized the dimensions for us un-metric Americans.
Mike, when this was posted at 5 am there was no active link yet.
good American based websites would have had 1 man at the top convert the measurements so that everyone reading could understand. instead of having a bunch of readers at the bottom doing the converting.
OK, conversion to inches has been added. Sorry but at 5 am my math wouldn’t work.
looks great, i also have high hopes coming from a company like Lenovo.
but why is it, i hear about these mini laptop announcements almost daily but never actually SEE any readily available for sale? in the US, besides the EEE & HP where are they?!?! the Wind you can kinda almost get if you dont mind the 3-cell battery. but at this point most of these laptops are just PR announcements.
thats quite small for a 10″ laptop, they must be making very efficient use of the bezel around the screen.
what does 1.1kg weigh in pounds?
2.4 lbs (added to post). BTW, if you go to Google and enter “convert 1.1 kg to pounds” in the search bar you get the answer back. Works great.
“good American based websites would have had 1 man at the top convert the measurements so that everyone reading could understand. instead of having a bunch of readers at the bottom doing the converting”.
The other half of the world uses SI units you know.
Try here:
http://www.onlineconversion.com
A pattern seems to be developing. A wonderful-looking machine is announced, at a wonderful price, for availability in the near future.
The launch date comes and goes, and no machine appears (at least, not in a way that ordinary folk can get their hands on it). Weeks or months later it appears, at a higher prices, and with a somewhat less wonderful performance than was announced.
So, I’m not getting too excited, not because it doesn’t look good.
I kind of wish I’d been able to wait before buying a mini-notebook, but I went with the best available option for me at the time–the HP mini-note (loved the JK review of it, btw). It’s a good machine, but it sure does run hot, and I hate that it won’t open flat when it has the 6-cell battery on board. And it does a long time for windows to come back up after stand-by. Ah, well–no machine is perfect, I guess.
Want! If the entire unit was scaled down to use a 8.9″ screen it would be perfect… But if teh features and price are correct, wow
The spec’s look interesting. I’d rather have 1280×800 resolution with a 10″ display. Any word on whether the RAM is SODIMM or Micro-DIMM? A 2GB Micro-DIMM stick will double the price of this device.
Overall the platform has potential. With a few design tweaks I’d be willing to pay 2-3X this price for a reliable, business-ready tablet with a similar form factor.
tnkgrl, according to PCmag, “A 9-inch version of the S10 will be available overseas.”
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2327025,00.asp
From the article above:
“Lenovo tells us that some countries will have a 9-inch version sporting Linux”
@Gavin
> The other half of the world
> uses SI units you know.
Don’t tell them (US Americans) that they are “half of the world”… that’s what they think already
while they are only ~5%… so 95% of the world are using SI (i.e. metric) units. Actually, only 3 countries aren’t using the metric system: U.S.A., Liberia, and Myanmar (source: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm )
why don’t they include a DVD player for movies on the run?