Review: Lenovo IdeaPad S10e

Lenovo's netbook shows more polish than many of its rivals

Pretty much every PC vendor has now introduced a mini laptop 'netbook' model, but the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e is not just a me-too product. The system has inherited the quality feel of the firm's corporate ThinkPad laptops, as well as borrowing some of their more useful features.

Available since late 2008, the IdeaPad S10e follows the now familiar netbook specifications of a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, Windows XP, up to 1Gb memory, a footprint smaller than an A4 sheet of paper, and a low starting weight of just 1.1kg.

Like most netbooks, the S10e has the advantage of being affordable and highly portable. It also shares the same failings of other models, such as a less-than-impressive battery life and a slightly cramped keyboard.

However, unlike most others, Lenovo has equipped its mini laptop with a standard 160GB 2.5in SATA hard drive rather than a Flash solid state drive, and an ExpressCard slot allowing users to plug in extra devices such as wireless modems or FireWire adapters.

Lenovo has also configured the system with two pre-boot environments in addition to the main operating system: Quick Start lets you surf the web, play music or make Skype phone calls without having to boot into Windows; while the ThinkVantage rescue and recovery tool lets you restore the system to its factory settings if Windows becomes unusable.

Our first impression of the IdeaPad is that it looks like a smaller ThinkPa d, in that it has the characteristic clean lines and black casing, although it's also available in other colours. It feels well made and robust enough to take a few knocks, another attribute it shares with the ThinkPad line.

In use, we found that the IdeaPad handled office applications with little difficulty. We tested our review unit with a trial version of Office 2007, which ran perfectly well with no issues. One minor criticism is that it is only possible to push the laptop lid back to an angle of about 120 degrees, which means that, when used on your lap, the screen points towards your chest rather than your face.

The screen is 10.1in across the diagonal, an improvement on the tiny screens of earlier netbooks but still a little small compared to mainstream laptops. It also operates at a rather odd native resolution of 1,024 x 576 pixels, instead of the 1,024 x 600 you would expect on a wide-screen display.

This should not cause too many problems, but we found that dialogue boxes in some applications were too large to fit inside the display area, making it impossible to click the OK or cancel buttons as they were off the bottom of the screen. This is a problem we've encountered on other small portables with low resolution displays.

Lenovo's keyboard is one of the best we've seen on a netbook, with a comfortable and pleasant typing action from the keys. The keycaps are about three-quarters the size of those on a full-sized laptop, with the exception of the minuscule function keys across the top of the keyboard. We could manage a reasonable typing speed, but still hit the wrong keys a few times because of the close spacing between them.

The touchpad controller is inevitably rather small, but the Synaptics driver makes life easier by letting you scroll quickly through long documents by swiping the right hand edge of the touchpad or by making rapid circular motions on it with a fingertip.

Review: Lenovo IdeaPad S10e

Lenovo's netbook shows more polish than many of its rivals

Lenovo ships the IdeaPad with Windows XP Home Edition, which is standard across most mini laptop models. This is largely identical to the full XP Professional, but lacks some key business-oriented features such as the ability to join a corporate network domain.

There is also a Quick Start environment that lets users surf the web, play digital music, make Skype calls or use an instant messaging client, all without having to boot into Windows.

This uses Splashtop, a compact Linux build from a company called DeviceVM. Users can enable or disable QuickStart from the Bios setup screen. When enabled, the IdeaPad boots into Splashtop, which takes only seconds. From the main screen, users can then run one of the pre-loaded applications or choose to start Windows instead.

In case of disaster, users can also boot into Lenovo's ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery tool by pressing F11 when the power-on messages are being displayed. This restores the IdeaPad to its original state, a feature that we found handy when a benchmark tool crashed and left our review unit in a semi-functioning state.

Rescue and Recovery took a little over an hour to reinstall Windows and all the applications, but could prove a life saver if the worst should happen while travelling, for example.

To test performance, we used Business Winstone 2004, an old benchmark but one we've used on many Windows XP systems. The IdeaPad scored 13.4, which is almost identical to that of the Asus Eee PC S101 and better than the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, which seemed to be held back by a slow Flash SSD.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of the IdeaPad is its three-cell 2600mAh battery pack that results in a short battery life. Under the Battery Eater Pro benchmark, the S10e lasted for just 1 hour 51 minutes in Classic mode, which simulates typical activity, faring a little better at 2 hours 43 minutes in the Reader test that simulates someone reading a document. An optional six-cell 4800mAh unit should nearly double the length of time the IdeaPad can be used away from mains electricity, but will add to the weight as well.

On the plus side, Lenovo has made it easy to access the hard drive and memory, should either need upgrading or replacing. These are located behind a panel on the underside of the chassis, secured with a couple of screws. Once opened, we were able to pop out the hard drive and SO-DIMM module in a matter of seconds.

Connectivity options consist of 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 10/100 Ethernet. The Ethernet port shares the right side of the IdeaPad's chassis with a USB port, audio jacks and a single 34mm ExpressCard slot. The right side of the screen hinge features a slot for a security cable. To the left of the chassis is a second USB port, 4-in-1 Flash memory reader slot for SD Cards and Sony Memory sticks, external VGA and the power connector.

Standard applications on the IdeaPad include Norton Internet Security with 90 days of virus definitions, PC-Doctor 5, Windows Live and Lenovo's energy management tool that overrides the Windows control panel settings.