Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Lenovo Ideapad S10 it is



Well I did my small part in propping up post-late-capitalism-2.0 by purchasing necessary consumer electronics devices, by finally ordering an Ideapad S10 Netbook (512MB/80GB) I think it was a black one, can't remember.

A number of stars aligned and it was a tossup at the end because there was Dell Mini-9 package for around $410 with 8GB SSD with Ubuntu and I really wanted to support a vendor that preinstalled Ubuntu (because I will be running it afterall) but here are the reasons I went with the Lenovo:
  • I hate Dell Laptops, although the M4300 I'm using right now is tolerable but I love my Thinkpad T-61. I had positive experiences with Lenovo support, the unknown of Dell support scares me. They don't call it "Dell Hell" for nothing
  • Expandability - the Lenovo case is really easy to pop open and the drive is a SATA, so I can pop in the 120GB from my wife's dead MacBook. And I can wait until prices some down on SATA SSD's. I think the 1GB stick from the MacBook should work, too. Dell just has 1 SODIMM slot. PCI-Express port., probably more for a SSD than wifi since I have a USB, although the 2 USB ports could come back an bite me.
  • Price - with the Lenovo Corporate discount, it was $30-40 cheaper.
  • Aesthetics - Lenovo is boxy with a matte finish vs. rounded and shiny. Looks more professional
  • OS/Storage - I can install my Own Damn Linux and it is not a bad thing to have another OS with XP on it. It will be interesting to see how lame the Atom is, but the larger hard has the potential of making it usable as a real computer (or so I think) vs. only as Linux netbook. I will either dual boot or pop in a new drive.
  • Screen Size - 10" vs. 8.9 with my eyes really blurry right now I need every larger pixel I can get.
The battery life is going to suck compared to the Mini-9 but there is a 6-cell that is available.

1 comment:

Bill Marquette said...

I just bought an Asus EeePC 904HA for my son. The larger keyboard for when I ummm commandeer it was important to me. The 10" screen was a consideration, but since he'll be the primary user, the extra $50 wasn't worth it (it's already expensive enough!). I spent a number of hours comparing all the different netbooks and ultimately dropped the SSD in favor of the six cell battery and XP (as much as I'd like to force linux on him, I don't want to deal with stuff not working and kids sites tend to favor Windows technologies).