Lenovo IdeaPad S10 at 11:34 PM

So a while back I posted that I was in the middle of testing some of the top net books up for sale.  All together I tested three different net books.  The Acer Aspire One, the ASUS Eee PC 901, and the Lenovo IdeaPad S10.

 

So finally the Lenovo IdeaPad S10.  The specs on this system include a 10.1”  (1024x500) widescreen, 512MB DDR2 RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, and the 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor.  At first I was a little worried about the system only having 512MB of RAM, I mean it is XP but still that’s not a lot of RAM  After popping the battery in and going through the normal XP setup I was up and running.  Believe me when I say, you don’t really miss the other 512MB of RAM at all.  It preformed just as well as the other two net books even with less memory.  I LOVED the 10” screen, you wouldn’t think another inch of screen would matter, but it does.  I also liked the feel of the Lenovo, it felt very solid and seemed to be very well put together. 

I also liked the easily accessible door on the bottom of the system that gave access to the memory slots as well as the hard drive.  The other two systems have to be taken completely apart to get to the hard drive if you wanted to upgrade it.  The Lenovo is two screws, and the hard drive literally slides out.  I give mad props to Lenovo for thinking this out!  The keyboard on this unit is also my favorite, it is very close to a full blown laptop keyboard, so very easy for even my fat fingers to type on. 

Overall I just liked this system better, although I would probably add more RAM just to get it up to 1GB.  I give this net book 4.5 out of 5 stars.  The only reason this system did not get a full 5 is because of the smaller hard drive and lower amount of RAM that comes standard.  The Acer model came with 1GB of RAM and a 160GB Hard Drive, I wish the Lenovo had these same specs.

 

So out of all three systems, Lenovo takes the gold.  Once the Hard Drive and RAM are upgraded this system just plain rocks compared to the other two.  Thank You Lenovo for another great laptop.

ASUS Eee PC at 10:45 AM

So a while back I posted that I was in the middle of testing some of the top net books up for sale.  All together I tested three different net books.  The Acer Aspire One, the ASUS Eee PC 901, and the Lenovo IdeaPad S10.

 

Next up is the ASUS Eee PC 901.  The specs on this system were similar to the Acer, 8.9”  (1024x500) widescreen, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 8GB solid state drive, and the added benefit of Bluetooth.  I have say right out of the box I was very unimpressed with this net book.  It had the same screen size as the Acer, however the dimensions were much smaller as well as the keyboard.  Now I will admit that I do have pretty fat fingers, so that could be part of the reason I hated this keyboard.  I did get the opinions from several people, and they all felt that unless you were a kid, it was pretty useless.  I will say that it was pretty snappy and I believe part of that was because of the 8GB Solid State drive, however 8GB isn’t much to work with these days.  In my opinion it is not worth the extra 100 bucks for this unit.  On the Rob scale it gets a measely 2 stars.  Sorry ASUS, you may be a top contender in the field, but not in this geek’s eye! 

 

BTW the tests of these machines were performed for the company I work for because we are looking to buy several, this model was sent back without any further consideration.

Acer Aspire One Netbook at 6:13 PM

So a while back I posted that I was in the middle of testing some of the top net books up for sale.  All together I tested three different net books.  The Acer Aspire One, the ASUS Eee PC 901, and the Lenovo IdeaPad S10.

 

Let’s start with the Acer Aspire One.  The model I tested had an 8.9” (1024x600) widescreen, 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, and a 160GB Hard drive.  Straight out of the box I was impressed with this tiny, lightweight net book.  In keeping with the Acer standard it was very well put together and felt very sturdy, and did I mention shiny!  After using the net book pretty exclusively over a weekend I found that it was good for general surfing, but when it came to doing any kind of work it really felt lacking.  I ended up reaching for my Lenovo T60.  But this is mostly just my preference, I believe with enough time with the device you would get used to the smaller keyboard and screen.  This would also be great for kids, my five year old couldn’t put it down.  On the Rob scale, out of 5 stars I give it 3.5.  This would be a great holiday gift for kids, college students, and anyone that just does mostly email and surfing.