Lenovo heralds netbook PC duo

Lenovo has signalled its entry into the netbook market with two mini machines. Lenovo_S10 Lenovo's S10 (above) and S9 are its first netbook PCs The IdeaPad S9 has an 8.9in screen, but the flagship S10 sports a more attractive 10.2in display. The netbooks weigh in at just over 2 lbs (1kg) and are designed for surfing the …

[David Gosnell]

Namespace

Couldn't Lenovo have come up with a model number they hadn't already used for one of their own mobile phones?

Interesting anyway, so long as the 9-incher is altogether slimmer, which I doubt.

[Alex]

Slim Jim

Would be nice if the 9inch would be slimmer than the 10er. 1kg for one of these is admirable.

I hark back to the days of the Tosh Libretto.. that thing was just brilliant! About the same size as a paperback and it WAS usable to boot. Just crappy speed and addons where expensive and bulky.

Liking these little chaps (all makes) quite a lot! Now, I wonder if it will last well in high altitude climates...?

[Anonymous Coward]

windows tax?

Press release says "from" on the prices - presumably this is the basic one with Linux - XP will cost more?

[Ishkandar]

@Alex - high altitudes ??

How high ?? I think Lenovo can test them up their side of the Himalayas as a publicity stunt !! High enough ??

Now if they (S9 and S10) have Skype capability, they could threaten the fancy-phone brigade !!

[Torben Mogensen]

Screen resolution?

Given the relatively high price, I hope the screen resolution is better than the 1024x600 that seems to be standard for 10.x" laptots.

My ageing Lifebook P2120 has a 10.6" screen with 1280x768, so I would not "downgrade" to smaller resolution, even if the new laptots have more RAM (512MB is max for my P2120) and faster processors (mine is a 900MHz Transmeta Crusoe).

[William Towle]

Not thought through...

From the press release:

"One Key™ Rescue System requires Microsoft XP and recovers to factory default settings unless user enables recovery to when last data saved. AnitVirus required a minimum of 1 GB of memory and Microsoft XP or Vista operating system."

Now say that name again, three times quickly.

[dom]

High Altittudes??

Oh yes they will have maximum altitude in the spec, quite normal really. In fact I think S10 means you can use it in 'S'pace 10 miles outside orbit.

[Alex]

@Ishkandar

That was the idea - I know that many laptops fail even at Basecamp due to the cold temperatures (hence High Altitude). Was just a thought :o)

@dom : Tsk... there's always one trying too hard isn't there....

[dabotsonline]

"160 GB of hard disk drive space...

"... or 4 GB of solid state drive storage."

That's a bit tight.

[Henry Cobb]

With tiny laptops comes tiny pointing devices?

Why aren't they using the trackpoint to save space for keyboard keys?

[Nexox Enigma]

@Torben Mogensen

"""My ageing Lifebook P2120 has a 10.6" screen with 1280x768, so I would not "downgrade" to smaller resolution"""

I totally agree. Seems like nearly all of these new tiny laptops have resolutions that I'd find acceptable on a pocket sized device. I've got a Lifebook P5020 with a similar screen, and there's no way that I'm ever getting an actual laptop with a lower res.

So I grabbed a HP 2133, which does 1280x768 on an 8.9 inch scren. It's slower than my 4 year old Lifebook, and the via hardware doesn't work perfectly with Linux, but it's far more useable to me than any of the other toy Eee clones would be.

[Cathal Gantly]

How much?

I'm writing this on a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li2727, that cost £249 about two months ago. It's fully featured, and other than it's running Windows Vista, I don't think I've ever bought any IT equipment in 22 years that has been such good value, or delivered as much bang-per-buck for the money. It's even less expensive than the last two PDAs I bought.

The point being, that while all these sub-notebooks are rather good... they are a bit expensive. I know they have fallen from thousands to hundreds, but the Acer Aspire One... that's the price point that they need to hit. The success of the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee PC was its price.

When will El Reg test the Acer? I've only read good things about it elsewhere.