2010 Subaru Outback 2.5i Premium CVT

I am by no means an expert when it comes to automobiles, but I have always been moderately intrigued by them, and when it comes specifically to the vehicle that I own, I obsess over it. Just recently I was in the market for a new car, and I emerged with the all new, redesigned 2010 Subaru Outback 2.5i Premium CVT. For the record, I was never much of a Subaru fan until the new Outback caught my eye.

The new Outback is exceptionally different from it's ancestor models. It sits higher, is larger all around, and presents itself in an SUV style. These are all points which helped sell me on the new Outback. Gone are the days of awkward (and random) oval windows, flat (smashed) looking bodies, and the boring (yet admittedly convenient for families) station wagon style. The redesign has caused such a distrubance in the Outback's line that even Subaru and the FDA are unsure how to classify it. According to Subaru (and many independent automotive authorities) the new Outback is in a class of relatively new vehicles called "Cross-over Utility Vehicles", or CUV for short. The more traditional category, and the one used by the FDA is the Sport Utility Vehicle, or SUV, category. Either way, I personally welcome the changes made to the Outback line.

PROS
A number of things are good and truly unique to the Outback and the Subaru family of vehicles. For starters, their symmetrical AWD is truly impressive. Coming from an impressive implementation of the 4WD in Jeep's Grand Cherokee line of SUVs, I must say that I'm not disappointed with the change. Both AWD and 4WD still have their place, but they serve different purposes. Until I am ready to spend more than 80% of my driving time off-road, AWD just makes more sense to have.

Equipped with the latest improvement to Subaru's Continuously Variable Transaxle (CVT) I was initially skeptical about having it. I had only ever driven a traditional automatic in the past. Since owning the new Outback for about 3 weeks now, I can say that I am pleased and impressed with the CVT's performance. You aren't going to race this (or any other) Outback. You're completely derailed if you think that the Outback is in that market. Better stick with the WRX if racing is what you want. If what you want is a practical vehicle and that has enough power to get the job done, the Outback is right up your alley. It's nice to know that the CVT helps to improve gas mileage awhile providing a smoother ride.

Built-in MP3/WMA factory stereo reduces the need for an after-market unit. This is nice because it also reduces the concerns about theft, as after-market stereo units are a large factor to many automobile break-ins. Having this all factory installed includes the steering wheel mounted audio controls, which are very nice to have.

Fuel economy couldn't go without a mention! In terms of vehicles that are coming out today, I would place the new Outback squarely in the "average" circle. But in relative comparison to my previous Jeep Grand Cherokee, I'm getting an average of 10 miles per gallon improvement. That makes this "average" fuel economy pretty attractive, none the less. I could do even better with the fuel economy if I would just slow down a bit on the freeway, but then where would the fun be in that? :-P

Specific to the configuration of my Outback, the Graphite Grey exterior color is beautiful and the interior off-black cloth is not as bad as I thought it would be. For awhile, I was upset that I wasn't able to get the leather interior, but the premium cloth is starting to grow on me, and so far, it's been pretty easy to clean with a Shark hand vac. I've gone to the beach several times with the car, and while I am careful not to bring any sand back into the car, it inevitably happens. The material resists trapping the sand and the Shark vac is able to remove any sand residue without any trouble at all. I spent about 20 minutes cleaning out the interior yesterday, and when I was done, it looked just like brand new.

CONS
The Boxer Engine is in fact pretty interesting and has many pros, but the one con I identify is the noise. The engine is quite noisy and worries me at times, though nothing has gone wrong yet.

The new Outback is only rated for 170hp/170ft.lbs which is a bit less than my previous Jeep Grand Cherokee. I do plan on having the towing package installed, and at some point (probably in the next 9 months) I will need to use it to tow a trailer. I reserve my final judgment on this for now, but I am worried that the new Outback might not be able to handle the task.

Aesthetically, I am generally pleased with the new Outback with all but one area. I feel that the front end of the vehicle looks awkward. Almost like it retains the "squashed" look of the older Outbacks. They should have made it a little taller, in my opinion, but this is a very minor concern.

Intentional or factory error? I've noticed that at higher speeds, a discrepancy between my speedometer and my GPS unit surfaces. At around 70 miles per hour on my speedometer, the GPS unit begins to read a different number than the speedometer. When my speedometer reads 80mph, my GPS unit reads about 74mph. I found this to be very strange, and I wasn't sure which instrument to trust. A part of my initial intuition wanted to trust the GPS because it was always spot on in my Jeep and the GPS utilizes some very sophisticated science and technology. After doing some research online, I came across people suggesting that the auto manufacturer's may intentionally mis-calibrate the speedometers. One speculation to why is to try and reduce the speed of drivers. Many drivers lock themselves into these "speed" margins where they feel like they should go 72mph on the highway when the speed limit is 65mph. If they mis-calibrate your speedometer on purpose to read 72mph, you will psychologically be satisfied, regardless of how fast the car is actually going. I'm personally not okay with this, for whatever the reason. I would prefer my instruments to be accurate and at the moment, they are not.

NEUTRALS
Paddle shifters are a fun toy to include, but honestly, they don't serve much purpose. It becomes particularly difficult to derive use from them if you're driving on a road that is not straight or need to make frequent turns. This is because the paddles are mounted in a relative spot on the underside of the steering wheel. When you turn the wheel, the paddles move with it. When you're making a 90 degree turn, that pretty much flips the position of the paddles and can be difficult/confusing to try and shift up or down at that point in time. Aside from really being a toy, the only merit I find from having them is the ability to perform engine braking, additional controlled acceleration and an introduction to the concept of gear management, a prerequisite to driving a manual transmission vehicle (something which I've never done).

FINAL THOUGHTS
All in all, the new Subaru Outback is actually a very awesome car and I am happy with my decision. Under my excellent car and obsessive attention to detail, I'm sure the vehicle will last for many many years. It may end up being one of the cars I pass down to my first child when (s)he is ready to start driving, haha.

Netbooks: Lenovo's S10

My latest major purchase in terms of technology equipment has finally been determined. No less than 15 minutes go, I finished the online purchasing form for a new Lenovo S10 Netbook computer. This is Lenovo's offering in the netbook class of mobile computing devices against the likes of the Asus EEE, MSI Wind, Acer Aspire One and others. Many review sites regard the S10 as one of the more superior options, which certainly contributed to the list of reasons why I decided the S10 would be my choice. Other reasons include: I currently work at IBM (the parent company of Lenovo) which entitles me to a small discount, I appreciate the style of the S10 (as opposed to the class of ThinkPad notebooks, which had a style I never liked). The cost of the device came to about $320.00 which is about average as far as netbooks go. Funny, considering this class of mobile computers first started with the goal of being SUPER cheap (around the $100 margin). Well, the S10 really isn't that bad, and for what you get, I feel it is well worth it. If they watered down the specs of the computer, I wouldn't even consider buying it, as it wouldn't be able to do half the things I need it to do.

This review of the Lenovo S10 will be written in 3 parts. Part 1 will give a quick introduction to the Lenovo S10, what it offers and some reasons why it may be the better choice over other netbook computers, but of course, also some reasons why you may want to look elsewhere. Part 2 will give a review about the netbook right out of the box with minimal customizations. Some observations and benchmarks will be provided in order to get an idea of how the computer plays right when a customer first gets it. Part 3 will be written last, and will include a number of different upgrades done to the computer. Depending on finances, the upgrades may be done all at once, or this section may actually be written in multiple installments, after each subsequent upgrade. A similar style of metric gathering will be done in order to provide a useful comparison to the netbook as it was observed in Part 2. Alright, let's begin!

Part I: Introducing the S10

Part II: Out Of the Box

Right out of the box, the tiny computer put a smile on my face. It is very sleek and appears durable. I wasted no time in putting in the 3 cell battery and plugging the computer into the nearest available wall outlet. The computer boots up like a charm, entering Windows XP. Surprisingly, there is minimal bloat ware from Lenovo, which is nice, since I usually throw all of that away. It's especially good considering the laptop needs to be very sensitive to performance issues, and bloatware certainly taxes the performance of any computer (hence the affectionate name "bloatware").

One of the software packages that comes with the Lenovo S10 is Norton Internet Security, but it's a pretty limited version with only 90 days of use. I'm not a big fan of Norton any way, losing over 200GB of data a few years ago and the only root cause I could determine was that Norton was having a field day on my hard drive. Many other reviews of Norton Security software also talk about it's short comings and especially the amount of computing power it requires in order to run. Again, an application that requires a lot of computing power is not something we want to put on such a conservative computer. I opted to not install it and carry on with my first run.

A second issue I noted, as I tried to access the wireless at my friend's house, I was running into an odd amount of trouble. I actually couldn't get it to connect at all. That made my initial use of the computer quite limited. What troubled me further was, even after taking it home to my own wireless network, it still would not connect. Now I'm thinking possibly a bad network card. But then, I tried it again with another network, and it worked! The only thing I could determine was the security protocols on each of the networks. After a few more tests, I discovered that the netbook would not connect to a wireless network if WEP was being used. Now, right, WEP is an ever-becoming antiquated technology, but there are still a few networks that use it because of device compatibility. It's strange that the Lenovo S10 would have trouble here. So I took this opportunity to reconfigure my home wirless network to WPA2 and AES encryption and, as the trend predicted, it connected fine. Also, the computer is capable of connecting to a network that has no security. So it seems that just WEP is the problem here.

Some notes on the size and placement of keys on the keyboard. The keyboard is roughly 81% the size of the keyboard I'm using for my desktop. I find that the normal QWERTY keys are easily accessible, but other auxillery keys such as the tab and shift keys have some issues. The tab key is only 40% the size of a standard tab key and the right shift key is directly next to the up arrow, which often causes me to hit the up button when I mean to use the shift key. Issues with the keyboard aren't so horrible that I would ditch the computer, they're just something to note. It's been about 3 weeks using the Lenovo S10 as of this writing, and I've gotten comfortable with the smaller keyboard during this time.

Apparently, the S10 comes multi-touch ready. For the life of me, I am unsure why Lenovo doesn't advertise this. Maybe it's because very few Windows applications benefit from multi-touch, who knows? I accidentally discovered the feature when I went to investigate why the zoom in my browser would spontaneously change. I'd be tapping around the touchpad and then all of a sudden I'd be at 500% view. I then realized that the (now becoming standard) finger motion of having two fingers moving away or moving closer to each other will perform the zoom out and zoom in commands, respectively.

Benchmarking! To keep my life simple, I'm only doing one benchmark test, and that's a test of the overall performance of the machine. I'll be using SiSoftware's Sandra 2009. The scores that the Lenovo S10 got right out of the box are:

Performance Index Test, 02/25/2009

Processor Arithmetic: 3561 MOPS
Processor Multi-Media: 7379 kPixel/s
Memory Bandwidth: 2.65 GB/s
Physical Disks: 45.15 MB/s
Network (LAN): 2.24 MB/s

Performance Index: 153

Well, that's all for Part 2.

Part III: Modifications and Finale

Due to financial constraints, I have been unable to perform all of the upgrades that I want to do. I prioritized the upgrades based on their utility to me and the extended battery won as the first upgrade. Interesting situation, Lenovo only supports a 3 cell and a 6 cell battery. But if you have a look over on ebay, you can find a third party manufactuerer that sells a 9 cell battery! I was a little skeptical, but decided that if it was true, it'd be well worth it. The 9 cell battery cost just over $100. This brings the S10 to roughly $430 now. The 9 cell battery arrived and I was amazed how how large and heavy it is. It certainly pulls back some of the better mobility aspects of the S10, though funny enough, I actually enjoy the extended battery because it provides a "handle" to hold the laptop when laying down. The laptop is so small that it often falls outside of the comfortable viewing area when your laying down and by stock there isn't a way to mitigate this. The extended battery allows you to hold the laptop with one hand and position it in a better view. The laptop is still light enough that it won't fatigue you to do this.

Now for the exciting part; on the 3 cell battery, you'll get about 2-3 hours of full performance computing time. On the 9 cell battery, you'll get about 9-11 hours of full performance computing time! Even the low-ball of NINE HOURS. That's phenominal! And also take note that we're at full performance here. Lenovo put a half decent power management tool on the laptop that can reduce the power consumption to 4 different presets. If you were to lower it to maximum battery life, I'm sure you'd get more than 12 hours of computing power. But honestly, I'd prefer full performance and at 9 hours, that's more than enough to get me through a single day of classes and work.

Part 3 is not finished and will be continued.
List of Modifications

• Upgrade from 3 cell battery --> 9 cell battery (INSTALLED)
  
• Upgrade from 512MB RAM --> 2GB RAM
  
• Upgrade from Wireless G Card --> Wireless N Card
  
• Upgrade from HDD 5200rpm Storage --> SSD Storage
  
• Install Bluetooth Card