Thanks for the memory - not
A fresh stick of Ram should be your first purchase but, irritatingly, there's only one SO-DIMM socket in the underside of the NC110. It’s easily accessed, but upgrading the memory means either eBaying or binning a perfectly good stick of Ram or, even more annoyingly, engaging with eBay to get rid of it. Ordinary punters will probably just put up with an arguably underperforming machine.
The small chiclet keyboard is pleasant for rattling out emails
The NC110 turned in a set of unsurprising results under testing: 1642 in PCMark Vantage Pro is roughly par for the course for an NC110 netbook, and compares favourably to Samsung’s other recent machines - again, not a surprise given they share a basic specification.
Storage is provided by a mechanical, 250GB hard drive, and given the NC110's underwhelming performance an SSD should be near the top of your wishlist, although you’ll have to unscrew and unclip the entire bottom plastic panel in order to access the existing disk. Still, 250GB is a decent amount of space, while one powered and two un-powered USB ports give options to those who need more.
The mechanical hard disk doesn’t seem to hurt the NC110’s battery life too much. The NC110’s battery is an extended, six-cell block that barely disrupts the machine’s smooth lines, other than providing the laptop’s angled poise when on a flat desk.
Tasked with running PCMark Vantage until death, the NC110 soldiered on for an impressive four hours 46 minutes, while simply leaving it alone with the screen on and nothing else happening produced a lifespan of just over nine hours.
Next page: Benchmark Results
COMMENTS
Non-Glossy
I welcome return to proper Matt screen. Like we had nearly 10 years ago. Shiny on a screen is stupid. For YEARS people researched how to make screens Matt.
I think Matte may refer to photographic and cinema Masking? Unless El Reg has relocated.
In film:
* Matte (filmmaking), film and video technology
* Matte painting, a process of creating sets used in film and video
* Matte box, a camera accessory for controlling lens glare
* Open matte, a filming technique that involves matting out the top and bottom of the film frame in the movie projector
Matt: In British English, of a surface: having a non-glossy finish
Matte: In American English, of a surface: having a non-glossy finish
Anyway a glossy screen gives headaches due to eye re-focusing automatically on any moving reflection. Alleviated by careful position of desk etc. A Matt screen may not look so pretty in showroom, but is less distracting and less tiring. I suspect the glossy screens came in because they are cheaper and look prettier. For a tablet a glossy screen also shows up fingerprints worse than Matt. Matt is superior in brightly lit environments and outdoors.
Anyone remember the high contrast ultra-matt Victor 9000 / Sirius1 screen (done by a very fine nylon matt black mesh probably) compared to Shiny Goldfish bowl screens on all other Monitors? It was nearly 15 years before CRT colour monitors caught up (can't use mesh as it's not fine enough and you get moire fringing with mask/slots)
Otherwise nothing special on this netbook?
I hope the Matt no-gloss screen sets a trend.
Can we go back to 1200 lines/pixels (or better) instead of 1080 or lower please for those of us that want to read PDFs and Word DOCs and DTP layout "page at a time". Maybe even option for 4:3 screen and not WS. Some people actually use Laptop for working, not watching Video.
1G RAM is plenty for a netbook with a decent OS. You didn't buy it to run 5 server images or play a high end game?
wrong direction
Maybe it's just me, but if there was an edge-to-edge 7" netbook, it would fit in a jacket pocket. Am I the only one who thinks that would be VERY convenient?
"...the price has gently declined..."
No it hasn't.
The range for a netbook has always been between £175 and £329. It hasn't changed a bit in two years or more.
Given you can get the Packard Bell DOT-SE-911 from John Lewis for £229, and as far as I can see it's the same spec, this is just a basic machine at a silly price.
I was honestly expecting a machine like this to be £150 by now. But no-one wants to sell machines that cheap - they'd rather price netbooks too high, then say "no-one wants them" - so they can concentrate on making bloody tablets that loads of people don't actually want.
Re. "...the price has gently declined..."
>making bloody tablets that loads of people don't actually want
But want to be seen with.
On the whole I agree with your post netbooks are in general overpriced, 250 should be the absolute top, 300+ is a no buy.
Me too
That was the first thought I had too.
Clearly we've been on the internets for too long.
Anyway, it annoys me that the author of the article says that netbooks arn't doing anything new and different whilst simultaneously not reviewing any netbooks that are.
