Lenovo comes up with its new netbook line of Ideapad S10-2 cutting off the weight (with 0.2 pounds) and thickness (with 0.2”) of its previous S10. With its white glossy plastic lid and the hinge covers that look like a pair of used thumbtacks, the aspect of this Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 appears to be a little bit unattractive. Even if it has a slimmer line per ensemble, the 6-cell battery is bulging out of the frame in such a way that confers the system an extra 0.4” thickness at the back of the device compared to its previous model.
Ports include 3 USBs, Ethernet, VGA-out, audio in/out, a 4 in 1 card reader and a Kensington lock. The keypad presents itself larger than it was on its predecessor that makes typing a much more comfortable task to perform. The touchpad is also larger, but smaller than those pertaining to Samsung N120 and Toshiba N205.
The screen is 10.1” wide with a native resolution of 1024x600 and a bit more spacious than the S10e and few other Netbooks from HP and Dell. Images show themselves in a brightness and color that fade away as you get closer to 90 degrees along screen’s vertical axis. Quick Start OS is a Lenovo branded version of the Splashtop instant-on OS and has its apps that incorporate a web browser, music player, photo viewer, IM client, Skype client and Flash games portal. After activating QS button, in 10 seconds appears the screen offering you choices of the applications you want to launch.
As to its performance, S10-2 incorporates a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and 1GB of Ram, scoring 1,598 on PCMArk05, thus beating the Average of its category by more than 200 points. The Hard Drive speed of 5,400 rpm, 160 GB managed to boot Windows XP in 46 seconds, which is faster than the netbooks average of 54.7 seconds. As to the file transfer the rate of 18.5 MBps revealed a 20% stronger drive than the average of 15 MBps of other netbooks. The Broadcom adapter of 802.11g showed transfer rates of 20 and 17.4 Mbps from 15 to 50 feet, higher than the average rates of the majority of netbooks, excluding Toshiba Mini NB205.
