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IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

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or the most part, the Lenovo IdeaPad

S10 is your standard netbook. It’s small,

lightweight, and sturdy and runs on

Intel’s Atom platform. We like that our review

unit shipped with a 160GB 5,400rpm hard

drive—as opposed to the small budget SSDs

found in some netbooks. We also like the S10’s

sturdy hinge, bright matte screen, and decent-

size keyboard. It’s not the roomiest keyboard

we’ve ever seen on a netbook; it’s bigger than

the Asus Eee 901’s cramped quarters, but

slightly smaller than those found on the MSI

Wind or Acer Aspire One.

Because of the S10’s small chassis, we

found that our palms hung off the end of the

machine, making it uncomfortable to use for

long periods of time—like when writing this

review. And like the MSI Wind, the Function

and Control keys on the S10 are reversed,

which we hate.

We’re also not thrilled by Lenovo’s deci-

sion to ship this machine with just two USB

ports instead of three, the standard on nearly

every other netbook. Worse, the ports are on

opposite sides of the case, so some external

drives that require multiple connectors, like

our OWC Mercury OnTheGo, are left cold.

The S10 off ers some small surprises in

terms of performance. We ran our standard

netbook suite (described in full in our Decem-

ber 2008 netbook roundup feature) and found

the Lenovo S10’s Photoshop scores best in

class, beating the MSI Wind and Acer Aspire

One by nearly half a minute, and coming in at

less than half the time of the Asus Eee 901’s

abysmal run.

Like the other netbooks, the S10 wouldn’t

play Quake Live, but it had no problems dis-

playing H.264-encoded video. In our battery-

rundown test, the S10 performed as well as

the other three-cell netbooks we’ve tested,

shutting down at just a hair under two hours.

The S10 shows a lot of promise, and its

style and performance are nothing to sneeze

at. At $470, it’s a serious challenger to the

$500 Wind and even boasts twice the hard

disk space. But two USB ports are one too

few. And we still maintain that the $350 Acer

Aspire One off ers the best price/performance

ratio in netbooks today. – N A T H A N E D W A R D S

Lenovo IdeaPad S10

Surprising performance, with a surprising omission

90 | MAXIMUMPC | HOLIDAY 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

+ -

VERDICT

$*70, http://www.lenovo.com

7

Nice brig^t matte

screen, roomy ^ard

drive, decent looks.

Only two KSB ports,

and t^eyÊre on oppo-

site sides of t^e

mac^ine.

BLUE ANGELS

LENOVO IDEAPAD S10

SFECI<ICATIONS BLUE DEVILS

DISPLAY 10.2” TFT WSVGA @1024x600

PROCESSOR Intel Atom N270 @ 1.6GHz

CHIPSET Intel 945GSE

GRAPHICS Intel GMA50

RAM 1GB DDR2/667

STORAGE 160GB WD Scorpio

PORTS 2 USB, VGA-out, audio in/out,

multicard reader

WIRELESS Bluetooth, 802.11b/g

OS Windows XP

LAP/CARRY 2lbs 11oz /3lbs 7oz

The IdeaPad S10 is nearly

everything we could want

in a netbook. Nearly.

700

1:59

Yes

WNR

Photoshop (sec)

Battery (hrs:min)

H.264

Quake Live

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