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
