INTRODUCTION

Netbooks are a fairly new category of streamlined laptops in the sense that they are not equipped with things you would normally find on full size laptops such as hard drives, CD/DVD drives, display size, etc.. They make up it though in the are of size, weight, portability and convenience.

Netbooks are not intended to replace your desktop but to be a device that is light and accessable giving you the freedom to take some of your work in ways you could not with larger laptops and desktops. With services such as Google Docs and Windows Live Spaces you can do a lot of tasks on the web so location is no longer an issue.

Netbooks are powered by a new generation of power saving CPUs from Intel. The S10 uses the Intel N270 Atom CPU. Running at around 1.6 GHz which is more than adequate for a "netbook" device .

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POWER IN YOUR HANDS

The overall size of the S10 is the winner here. It wieghs a little under 3 lbs and slips easily in and out of my roll around case. As I fly quite a bit it makes it very nice to be able to get it in and out quickly going through airport security especially.

The size also makes it unobtrusive when typing on the airline's tray table (as I am doing now while typing this review). The S10 also comes in several colors. The one I am using is black but white, pink, blue and red are available as well.

The screen is a very nice 10.2 inch diagonal display with integrated camera. A few netbooks have smaller 8.9" screens which I feel is makes it a little hard on the eyes sometimes.

The keyboard is a 90% the size of a full desktop keyboard so it is fairly comfortable. I am more used to the larger keyboard but on the S10 it did not take long for me to adapt to the smaller form factor. The keys are also very responsive and low profile to accomodate the size and overall thickness of the Netbook.

The S10 also utilizes a touchpad pointing device with the usual left and right buttons directly below it for ease of access. I am used to using a Trackball at home so once again a little adjustment but a positive experience as the touchpad has some tricks up its sleave that make things easy to navigate through documents and webpages.

The S10 uses a 3 cell battery which can give on average about 3 hours of continuous use. There are several power profiles which allow you to balance performance and battery consumption which helps to maximize the total time you can use the S10 before searching for an AC outlet which you can also use to recharge the battery or when you just want to conserve the battery life.

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CONNECTING TO YOUR WORLD

The S10 is equipped with 2 USB ports as well as an ExpressCard slot something you do not see on many netbooks. It also has a nice multiformat card reader so you can use SD memory cards and such for transferring and storing files such as pictures from a digital camera. There are also audio input and output where you can connect headphones and external speakers and microphones or other audio input/output devices.

A VGA output is suplied as well to give you access to multiple display options such as connecting to a larger monitor or projector.

Networking is covered well as the S10 has built in Ethernet as well as a wireless network adapter which allows you to connect to the Internet or other networks through the wide array of "wi-fi" hotspots that are springing up just about everywhere.

The S10 features a built in video camera and microphone which is great for doing Internet calls and video conferencing. I actually set up a Skype account to try this feature and I was very impressed with the call quality.

My review S10 came loaded with 1.5 gb of Ram along with an 80 gig hard drive. The drive was divided into two partitions, one for the operating system which in this case is Microsoft Windows XP and one for documents (or whatever else you would wish to place there).

There is also a third hidden partition that the S10 uses for its "OneKey Rescue System". This is a fail safe system that has the original computer configuration stored so if something really bad should happen you could restore your original system as it came out of the box. The only drawback I can see with this approach is the fact that if something happened to the physical hard drive then you would not be able to restore as all of the files are on the single internal hard drive.

All in all Lenovo brings the best of power, size and usability together into a very well thought out netbook. I wanted to see just how far I could take this little wonder by using it in various functions and applications.

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THE SURFER

Well this is called a "Netbook" so the first task to discover is how well it functions surfing the World Wide Web. I had a chance to try it out on several wireless networks during my travels over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays from Orlando to Dallas and beyond.

I was able to pick up connections most anywhere. It is amazing how many hotspots pop up when you first open up the wireless connections browser. There are many services that charge a subscription fee (T-Mobile, Boingo, etc.) but most are free especially in hotels and restaurants.

Checking in with Gmail and surfing around was painless as long as you had a good wifi connection. The hard wired Ethernet connection was a welcome addition as you are not always guaranteed a hot spot connection so if the location supports it you're covered.

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AT THE OFFICE

I am using WordPad to work on this review and wanted to do it here on the S10 for a proof of concept. I can say it has been a nice experience and nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing different from working at my desktop at home is the altitude and the beverage service. You have to factor in the smaller workspace but it becomes less of a factor when you get used to working the "netbook" way. The S10 keyboard is very well constructed as you have a very solid feeling when working with it.

That being said I feel the S10 is a great office tool you would be comfortable using with your favorite office software.

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MEDIA CENTER

You may be scratching your head about this one but it was one of the nice surprises I uncovered during my review. Since the S10 has a VGA out I wanted to see what would happen when i plugged it into out LCD Television in the living room. Just a couple of connections for audio and the home network and I was in business. I also had a Logitech USB wireless mouse and keyboard combination in order to make it easier to use in the Living Room enviroment.

It was something to see the Windows desktop on the big screen. It was during the Christmas season as we were putting up the decorations and I tuned the S10 into a streaming radio station playing all the Christmas favorites. I also had an iGoogle page set up that displayed the local weather and monitored incoming email.

The next thing was watching videos. We love to watch the online sermons from Times Square Church in New york City and being able to watch them on a larger format screen was very exciting. You almost forgot you were watching this coming from the Internet. We also watched a little Christmas In Connecticutt on Google Video...wow. The video quality of course has to do with the source material and the speed of your connection (we have a very reliable 10mbps) but again very watchable and entertaining.

So playing videos and music were a snap for the S10. The size of the netbook also was a plus in this situation as you could just plu and unplug with little or no muss or fuss. Having the wireless USB keyboard and mouse made things very transparent.

Also since you have the memory card options it would not be out of the question to load up an SD card with your favorite music and/or videos and use Windows media player to handle the playback. The built in audio works fine to listen with headphones. The built in stereo speakers are not intended to rock the house but they are a nice addition to get a feel for how something sounds quickly and are great when using them for Internet calling.

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THE WORSHIP LEADER

The S10 could surprise you in the sense that it can be sort of a worship leader's "swiss army knife' of sorts handling a lot of the tasks you might have to tackle in planning and presenting a worhship service on any givien opportunity.

The word processing features are great for putting service notes together. I actually did this for a service I was leading at the end of the year. It was great to have the netbook to be able to put things together and email the church with the details when I got back home.

The audio and video functions also could come in handy as it is not unthinkable to load up Media Shout, Easy Worship or any other presentation application and play the service from the netbook. Using the VGA out you could connect it to a projection input and use the dual display option so you could trigger slides and audio from the netbook and have the results projected through the auxilliary display going out on the VGA. This is a great option for a small church especially who do not want to have the expense of a large desktop system and it make it very handy for the worship leader to have all the tools right at his or her fingertips.

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THE MUSICIAN

Well this an area I especially wanted to explore. I travel as an accompanist throughout the year and it is a toss up at times as to what condition the piano you will be playing is in. There are other instances where there is no "acoustic" piano available and you are forced to use an electronic substitute. The range of digital piano alternatives goes from all ends of the spectrum and I wanted to find a solution using sounds I know will work.

Further info can be found here: The Netbook VST instrument Project

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WINDOWS 7

I know a lot of talk has been going around the past couple of weeks since Microsoft released a public beta version of the upcoming Windows7. The S10 comes with Windows XP with the latest service packs installed but I was curious to see what type of experience i would have with Windows 7.

Well again with no CD/DVD drive i had to get creative. I had an external USB hard drive that i turned into a virtual bootable DVD. The S10 allows you to boot from USB so you could also use thumb drives or other USB storage media to do the same thing.

Setup went very smoothly and everything was recognized out of the box. There was an issue with the power management device but an update popped up and directed me to the proper place to download and install it.

Windows 7 is very different to what I was used to seeing with XP and since I had not worked with Vista I had to spend some time getting used to the changes.

One of the nice surprises Windows 7 gave me in the audio category was supplying Wave RT drivers for the on board audio chipset. This improved things a great deal when using the S10 playing VST instruments as the Wave RT drivers cut down on some of the overhead in the communications between Windows the CPU and the audio hardware. Asio4All recognized the WaveRT drivers and allowed me to use the full capabilities the new drivers provided for.

I really like the look and feel of Windows 7. The Aero "glass" interface brings some dimension to the desktop. The S10 displayed all the bells and whistles without giving the hint of trouble. It also does not seem that there are any significant slowdown in performance (at least I cannot tell much difference).

Conclusion

All in all everything about the Lenovo S10 was very positive, it did what it was designed to do and when pushed a little it did a little bit more. Lenovo has made every effort to put together a very solid package You can visit the Lenovo website for additional pricing and ordering information.