It’s been awhile since my last Claud talks Gadgets where I reviewed the Lenovo U330. And for this issue, I’ll be sharing my personal experience with the small, cute and steady Lenovo S10. (Which I featured in CtG Vol2.) Before I begin, please help do something for me?
If you do, please please please help vote for me!
Lenovo is having a contest – Express Your Ideas from 1 Nov to 28 Nov 2008. The best designed skin will win a S10! So please help VOTE FOR ME. Go to the contest website, on the top navigation click on Vote Now than go to Page 2 and you’ll find my submission there – Floral Expression by Claudia Lim! Yes! That’s the one! Click on it and vote for me k? Thank you so very the much!
Of course, if you’re keen, do take part in the contest too. But vote for me first k?
Alright, now, let’s get to what’s good and not so good about the Lenovo S10 IdeaPad…
I love how it closes flat. This netbook is one of the better built in terms of feel and steadiness imo. The finishing on the cover is also less prone to having fingerprints stuck to it. But the weight of this tiny thing is quite heavy for its size and supposed to be portability. It felt almost the same weight as the Thinkpad X300 with its 6-cell battery and full size keyboard.
If you’re planning to use the S10 for more than 2.5 hours, you’ll need to bring a slightly bigger bag to keep the charger too. The unit I got comes with the standard 3-cell battery and the lifespan with mobile broadband connection in use lasts me around 2.5 hours. Not that bad if you are using it while on the go and not for the entire day for work or play. Although the power adapter is much smaller than the usual size, but if only it comes as compact as the power block for my macbook…
Let’s take a look at the ports available on the S10…
On the right side, there’s the PCI express card slot, headphone and microphone jacks, 1 USB2.0 port and the LAN port.
And on the other side, there’s the fan louvers, AC power adapter jack, VGA port, multi-media reader slot (for SD card, MMC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick pro) and the 2nd USB2.0 port.
The keyboard on the Lenovo S10 is 85% of the full size keyboard. My fingers got used to the keys pretty quickly. The only problem I had was with the shift button where I keep pressing the Up arrow instead. Other than that, I could type pretty smoothly on it. As witnessed at Podcamp Singapore where I was live blogging on the Lenovo S10 (it was also my first day on it).
The touchpad on the S10 is multi-touch enabled too. You can do the pinch gesture to zoom-in or zoom-out while navigating a website or viewing photos. However, with the size of the touchpad, doing too much of these actions might end up cramping your fingers.
One thing that I felt was well planned on the S10 is the position of the speakers. Having it in front makes listening easier as the sound is projected towards the user. The quality can be considered good for such a small machine. With such good sound quality and pretty good display, if the S10 comes with a built-in DVD drive, I’m sure many aunties or drama fans would probably get this one instead of a portable DVD player.
There’s also an in-built webcam on the Lenovo S10. I did a short video with it and the quality is not bad too. This video was taken with my lights off in the room, with only the morning sun coming in from outside my window. Only added in the title, music and credit to make the mute video more complete.
Video edited with the window movie maker on the S10 too.
Lastly, I would like to touch on the special button on the S10 (and many of the Lenovo machines too).
(The orange U-turn-like button)
Lenovo OneKey Recovery is an easy-to-use application that can be used to back up the data on your system partition and then easily restored when required. You can create a backup of an entire system partition, saving it in your local hard disk. You can also back up your data to a CD, DVD or other removable disk too.
If you need to recover your system, you can use the OneKey Rescue System to help you detect and remove viruses, and recover Windows system and data. (However it’s still recommended that you have your own virus protection installed.)
You can press the OneKey Rescue System key to activate the system when your PC is turned off. Within this you can restore your system to the original factory status or to a previously created backup. You may also transfer critical data or files to other storage devices from this system. So you’ll not have to worry about losing those important files and data!
Overall, I enjoyed my experience with the Lenovo S10. I don’t mind carrying it everywhere I go. The machine and the messy cables fit in my black bag and I still have plenty of rooms for more stuff. This will be a great companion for long distance traveling on the bus or train.
Well, if you ask if I’ll ever buy one for myself, I’ll probably not. I’m the kind of person who prefers working, playing and sharing from one machine (even if it means heavier bag and tired arms and shoulders from carrying the heavy machine everywhere). And after experiencing both mac and windows, and having encountered numerous crashing on the windows, I would still probably get a mac if I were to upgrade my machine.
That’s all for this issue of Claud talks Gadgets. Coming up next in Claud talks Gadgets, I’ll be reviewing the Sony Ericsson W595 (with 2 pairs of concert ticket to give away!) and my experience with the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 too! Stay tune!
Click here to view photos taken with Nikon D40
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