Written by: Kenneth Kwok
** Edited the part about the X4500 and rewrote that part of article**
Today, I happened to check out Lenovo's site to see if there are any announcements on the Ideapad S10. To my surprise I found the site for it here. So I decided to write an article about it today. Let's do a small comparison to current 10 inch netbooks such as the Asus eee pc 1000H vs. the Lenovo S10.
Next up is the 80GB 5400RPM hard drive, it may not be an S.S.D. but it is more stable in terms of speed. At times when flash S.S.D.s are used for small file transfers they have speeds similar to a 5400RPM hard drive. That is only part of it, the 80GB hard drive makes the overall cost of the netbook to be much cheaper than a Flash S.S.D. would. Unfortunately even when the Asus eee pc 1000H sports a 80GB hard drive, it is price significantly higher than the Lenovo.
Lenovo utilizes a Broadcom b/g Wi-Fi wireless adaptor, which I personally have not used before. Chances are that it will provide pretty standard performance, unless Broadcom has any faults for their wireless adaptors. It is lacking a wireless n adaptor but most networks still use wireless g.
Then there is the battery, Lenovo uses a 3 cell and currently offers no 6 cell. The Asus eee pc has a 6 cell battery. The Asus eee pc has theoretically double the run time on their eee pc over the Lenovo. Although Lenovo may offer a 6 cell battery in the future. As of now, the Lenovo Ideapad S10 only has the 3 cell option.
Lastly the Lenovo Ideapad S10 is smaller, lighter and the build quality looks better than the Asus eee pc. Although the build quality may not be as good as it looks. Until we get one in our labs to test, we can only say that it looks better in terms of quality than the Asus netbook. Some other things that the Lenovo Ideapad S10 lacks is a smaller keyboard (95% vs. 85% of a standard keyboard and one less usb port. The Lenovo does have an express card slot allowing for user expansion. This makes the Lenovo more customizable and would take much less work than doing internal modding.
Overall the Lenovo has a lot going for it, it's got a netbook on it's hand that is cheaper, lighter, smaller than it's main competitor Asus. The Ideapad S10 looks very nice itself and might be lacking the wireless n and only has a 3 cell battery but at $429, you can't expect much more. The most surprising thing, is the ability to price it so low with Windows XP Home as the OS. Not only does this have a chance to dethrone Asus but it might already have. The Lenovo Ideapad S10 is available for preorder today in three different colors here, with it being released in October of 2008.
**UPDATE- Thanks to cheaplikeafox on Eee User for pointing this out! From source
The S10 is out! Shipping time is 2-3 weeks. Regular price is $430. This price can be reduced in multiple methods.
Using the Lenovo CPP website and applying the USEIDEAPAD5 coupon it comes to $359.07. www.lenovo.com/cpp
Passcode:704919
Using the regular website and applying USPIDEAPAD15 it comes to $364.65. It may be possible to use the 10% Live.com cash back making it $328.19.
Shipping is free for all methods.
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