Samsung’s four-way netbook play

When Samsung pulled up its stumps and exited the Aussie laptop market some two years ago there was no such thing as a netbook.

The concept of a small, low-cost and lightweight laptop existed only as a glimmer in the eye of some engineers at Asus.

Fast forward to 2009 and the netbook has soared from an unheard-of zero to a top-selling hero in barely 18 months. Last year they provided the solitary spike on an otherwise flatlined PC sales chart. Tech analysts Gartner expect Australian sales of netbooks will continue to surge this year, climbing 40 per cent over 2008’s success to claim almost 14 per cent of the overall laptop market.

Which is precisely why Samsung has returned to the local laptop market and why four netbooks are in the first wave. It’s perhaps deliberately ironic that Emmanuele Silanesu, who spent the last two years at Asus Australia in charge of what could be called the ‘Eee PC era’, is now driving Samsung’s netbook and notebook push.

This morning Silanesu took APCmag through Samsung’s netbook line-up. The company already has a head start with its netbooks, which have won plenty of awards and a legion of fans since launching in the US and Europe late last year. Local enthusiasts have resorted to buying Samsung’s highly-regarded NC10 from online outlets in the UK and having them shipped out to Australia.

NC10

Speaking of which, the NC10 is of course part of Samsung’s netbook armada – but you won’t spy it at the retail stores. Silanesu says the 10.2 inch netbook will be offered in Australia as a dedicated 3G netbook sold only on a subsidised mobile broadband plan (similar to Vodafone’s 3G bundling of the Dell Mini 9).


Silanesu told APCmag that the the NC10 would be offered through multiple carriers so that potential NC10 buyers had a choice of networks and plans.

And for those who’ve already imported an NC10 from overseas, good news – Silanesu confirmed that Samsung Australia honour the netbook’s 12 month warranty and will carry out repairs at its service centre.

N110 & N120

This pigeon pair of pint-sized portables shares the same familiar netbook platform as most other offerings in the 10.1 inch space: Intel’s Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive pre-loaded with Windows XP Home, 802.11b/g and Bluetooth, a trio of USB ports, memory card reader and 1.3 megapixel webcam. Pretty standard stuff.

What’s not the norm is a meaty six cell 5900 mAh battery rather than a smaller three-cell pack. Silanesu claims this is good for nine hours of non-stop usage and five hours of video playback. Even if those are typically optimistic numbers, benchmark tests carried out by respected overseas publications such as Laptop Magazine have seen the N110 run for almost 7.5 hours at a stretch.

Weight is 1.28 kg including the six-cell battery, which is designed so that it doesn’t protrude from the rear of the netbook – one of the advantages of the larger battery being part of the original design rather than clamped as an after-market option.


Another useful touch are the icons which flank the keyboard on the top desk to identify every port and slot around the chassis – there’s no craning of the neck and fumbling with the fingers to try and work out exactly where that USB key or headphone jack clicks in. Both the N110 and N120 will likely be offered with an optional embedded 3G modem down the track.

So how do you tell these Korean wonder-twins apart? The $849 N110 is the stock model, dressed in black and sold through Samsung’s channel and specialist retail partners to the business market.

The $899 pearly white N120 is aimed at consumers and sells through mainstream chains. In line with its mass-market audience the N120 also gets a 2.1 channel sound system for multimedia appeal, with the small but punchy speakers in the screen bezel complemented by a sub-woofer parked in the netbook’s underbelly.

NC20

The successor to the NC10 upsizes to a 12.1 inch (1280 x 800) screen with a full size (18.5 mm pitch) keyboard and swaps Intel’s Atom N270 processor for the competing VIA Nano ULV U2250.

This clocks at a slower 1.3GHz compared to the 1.6GHz Atom, presumably to squeeze more run-time from the same-size 5900 mAh battery as used on the N110 and N120 (the batteries are identical and thus interchangeable, ditto for the power brickettes) and thus offset the impact of the larger 12.1 inch panel.



The rest of the spec set is identical to the N110 – you don’t get the N120’s sub-woofer – with an overall weight of 1.52kg.

The NC20 retails for $999 and makes its debut in pearl white; Silanesu says that black, blue and pink will be added to the palette in Q3.

N310

Silanesu also gave APCmag a sneak peek at Samsung’s netbook roadmap, with the next-gen N310 due here in Q3. The specs are typical netbook – Atom N270, 1GB of RAM etc etc – plus the expected flourishes such as a full edge-to-edge 10.1 inch screen and ‘chiclet’ keyboard.

The style, however, is anything but the norm. A Japanese designer was set loose on the N310 project and turned out a netbook that’s minimalist on the inside but encased in a playful rubberised (albeit not exactly ruggedised) casing replete with gentle rounded edges and available in a burnished orange and what ice cream parlours call ‘bubblegum’.


Oh, and there’s also a whopping great Samsung brand embossed onto the back...


We reckon this is going to be one of those netbooks which almost instantly divides people into love-it or loathe-it factions.

Right across the range, a unique value-add from Samsung is that its netbook (and notebook) warranty includes free pickup and return delivery via DHL Couriers rather than the usual return-to-dealer or return-to-depot arrangement.

After a service call has been made a DHL courier will turn up at your nominated address anywhere in Australia – “anywhere you can receive mail, you can have your Samsung notebook collected and later returned to that same address” according to Silanesu.

The courier will provide a carton with foam packaging and help you bundle up the ailing netbook for its journey, and bring it back to you when the netbook has returned to rude health.

There will also be the option to bring the netbook into a “consumer service plaza” run in co-operation with a retail partner and located in what Samsung describes as “major cities”, beginning with the state capitals including two each in Sydney and Melbourne.

And as you’d expect from one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, almost everything in the Samsung netbooks comes from its parent company. “Up to 75% of the components are made by Samsung” says Silanesu.

“The cells and the batteries, the screen, the hard drive, the memory and most of the components. About the only things we don’t make are the CPU and the operating system!”