Flip the netbook on its belly and the single memory slot can be accessed by removing a small panel. This comes with a 1GB SO-Dimm installed but will gladly accept a 2GB card – something the pre-installed Windows 7 Starter OS will be eternally grateful for. Accessing the rest of the components, isn’t quite so easy and requires the removal of the entire base.
Memory is easy to upgrade - other components less so
Samsung has taken the opportunity to shuffle the placement of ports compared to previous models, but it’s still the standard netbook array of three USB, VGA, card reader, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet and analogue audio. Wireless networking comprises 802.11n, and Bluetooth 2.1 is included too.
The 1.66GHz N450 might be the latest Atom processor, but, as with other Windows 7-based netbooks, performance is a little sluggish. Firing up a web browser takes a few seconds and we occasionally experienced short pauses before keystrokes were recognised.
As always, Linux provides a noticeable performance boost, but our test run with Ubuntu wasn’t exactly plain sailing – the most notable issue being the OS' refusal to recognise the Realtek RTL8192E wireless card. We managed to get it working by using the XP driver with NDISwrapper but although this worked fine for us, we’ve heard reports of stability issues cropping up with long-term use.
COMMENTS
Agree
I have used the power button on my Lenove s10e about 10 times since I bought it last april. It is always suspended to RAM. Eats about 1.5W in that state and is fully on and ready to use in under 2secs.
The power button on a netbook is an irrelevance. It might have as well been a whole here you have to plug a toothpick like those force-eject holes on a laptop. It would not have reduced from its usability.
price != netbook
huh? some would say if its over 300 quid it aint a netbook?
no...netbook is all about the formfactor/weight... not the price. my old libretto was anetbook but cost near 800 quid. my current netbook was a cheapy thing - 180 quid... but is the same size.
now, a 250 quid 15" laptop is not a netbook...its a laptop.
N120 owner
I have the older N120 and I would gladly swap it for a matt screen. However why still 1024x600? That's REALLY annoying! Up it to true x768 at least!
Also I bet the secondary PCIe slot is missing like on UK N120's (It's not on US models I believe so you can add a HD decoder card for £25. Otherwise it means soldering the slot on yourself and invalidating your warranty).
How does it handle HD BTW? I can play 720P (Just) with CoreAVC and in overlay mode with no fancy Win7 GUI on the N120. 1080P is a no go though.
That was my reaction when I first used a Macbook
But I'm surprised Apple hasn't patented that silly keyboard design!
Unimpressive and bad value for the money
Windows 7 "we are like the iPad no-multitasking joke edition", wifi card unusable under Linux (NDIS wrapper is not the answer, NDIS wrapper is the question and the answer is NO), battery performance wholly unimpressive, video performance not impressive either. All of that for 320 quid? No thanks, I'd rather pay 100 less and get a proper netbook or 100 more and get a proper laptop which has Broadcom or Intel WiFi in it.
Pine trail was supposed to be "quantum leap" as per the marketing literature. It looks like it is not a quantum leap, but a cheap "move bits around to lock Nvidia out of the market" ploy as most of us have suspected. The video performance, memory performance and power consumption improvements have quite clearly failed to materialise.
It looks like I will be keeping my S10-e with Debian and refurbishing my old faithful NC4000 also with Debian for the foreseable future (I had to replace another hinge on it on Wed).
Definite thumbs down.
