I finally got my netbook

I had to. From the time, Asus and then MSI launched their netbooks, I am following closely with drooling eyes the development of these cool gadgets. I made up my mind that I need one of these long time but waited for the technology to get better a bit.

I decided on Lenovo Ideapad S 10-2 but ultimately went for the Samsung N110 because of the free external DVD writer offer and my good experience with Samsung products.( I have recently bought a air-conditioner, refrigerator and two mobile phones and their service is exemplary.)

I was following the reviews of the leading netbooks on offer for quite some time and Samsung fared quite well in all of them. Although there is not much to differentiate from one netbook to another, the Samsung NC10, the predecessor of my N110 was a clear winner and won a lot of praises in most reviews I read online.

My reasons for going for a netbook instead of a proper laptop

I did not have enough money to spare for my wish to own a laptop. I was wishing to get one from the day I gave up the one my last company gave me.

Even if I had the money to buy a desktop replacement laptop, I prefer laptops to be small and portable. I dont like to move around with a powerful machine that gives me a pain in the neck but with most features I wont need on the road.

My basic uses with a laptop are word processing, blogging and net surfing, may be a bit of basic image editing. While on the road, I will not mind watching a movie using my headphones. With netbooks, you can easily work on a word document, surf the net and listen to music simultaneously. So don’t belive myths that multi-tasking is not possible in netbooks.

The screen size may be a bit of a worry. But, remember we use our mobile phones with much smaller screens all day and never complain! The keyboard is only a bit smaller than proper laptops but I am typing on this for quite some time now without a hitch. The feedback from the keyboard is also quite good.

I wanted the netbook more so that I can work at different places of my house with my family and keep working. I checked out the WiFi and it works fine. I use a Netgear wirless router at home and I got “very good” signal from about 75 feet away through thick walls of a pre-independence building.

The most important benefit of a netbook is that gives way more battery life over a normal lappy. The Samsung I got has dished out more than 6 hours in the battery drain tests and this means I dont need to carry around the charger on regular office days.

No MS Office for my netbook

I love OpenOffice. Considering the limitations of a netbook, my obvious choice was the lite and effective OpenOffice. MS Office would have hogged a lot of disk space and power if not rendered the tiny gadget unusable.

The obvious choice for browsing was Firefox.

My guess that at INR 22,000.00 with an external DVD writer, I got a good offer and made the right choice.

Specs
CPU – 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270
RAM Included – 1GB
RAM Upgradeable To 2GB
Hard Drive Size – 160GB
Hard Drive Speed – 5,400rpm
Hard Drive Type – SATA Hard Drive
Display Size – 10.2 inches
Native Resolution – 1024 x 600
Graphics Card – Intel GMA 945
Video Memory – 128MB
Wi-Fi – 802.11b/g
Bluetooth 2.0
Operating System – MS Windows XP Home
Ports (excluding USB) – Ethernet, Headphone, Microphone, VGA
USB Ports – 3
Card Slot – 3-1 card reader
Size 10.3 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
Weight 2.8 pounds