Lenovo does about-turn on netbooks

Lenovo is best known for its solid ThinkPad line of notebooks purchased from IBM years ago, but like virtually all notebook manufacturers, it has also jumped onto the netbook bandwagon with both feet with its S10 netbook. Now, it has announced that it will be upgrading its S10 line of netbooks with a new S10-2 machine.

The tiny netbook will weigh 1KG and have a profile only 18mm thick. Among the changes are some new colors with patterns on the lids with white, pink, black, or grey color choices.


_{Above: the S10-2 family. No, that odd chequered effect is not poor quality photo resizing... it's the rather odd pattern applied to the back of the screen lids. Closeup below.}



CNET US reports that the most notable improvement on the machine was a new and improved keyboard with a larger right shift key, in the position it is supposed to be in unlike some Asus machines. Right shift keys are often where netbook keyboards fall short with shift keys so small they are hard to hit or you end up hitting one of the arrow keys.

Not everyone is hailing the S10-2 an improvement on the S10, though. One online forum poster wrote: "Major design fail! Seriously WTF was Lenovo thinking releasing this? The only reason why Lenovo s10 even became popular in the first place is because of it's aesthetics, and the expansion slot.  It looks better than any other netbook out there, and has expansion capabilities. There are a few flaws with the s10, such as mic location, speaker sound, and short battery life (on 3 cell), but that's about it. I can't believe they have the audacity to call this piece of crap the S10-2?  It looks like a cheap plastic toy.Try again Lenovo with the same frame as the Lenovo S-10."

Here's the before and after shot, showing the thoroughly business-dressed S10, contrasted against the my-little-pony style S10-2.



Internally, the S10-2 is more of the same, with the class staple Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB HDD.

A quick launch non-Windows OS will be included, which is utterly useless to most netbook users. In fact, we'd really like to know how many people -- on any platform -- use the BIOS-based OS touted as such a big selling point by notebook makers.

The little machine will also use VeriFace facial-recognition software that the current S10 features. VeriFace is a cool idea, but a quick search of Lenovo's user forums reveals many threads along the lines of "VeriFace doesn't work", "how to uninstall VeriFace", "frustration with VeriFace and so on.

Prices for the machine will reportedly range from $US349 ($AU463) to $US399 ($530) with the more expensive version offering a 3G modem inside. Current pricing on the original S10 in Australia is $699, and it is currently selling for $US349 in the US, so we don't expect the S10-2 would be any cheaper than $699 -- on the high-end for netbooks.