Samsung NC10 - with 7 hour battery (Netbook) Reviews: Windows XP Home 10.2" Screen Laptop computer

+ An impressive amount of memory, and both keyboard and screen are great quality. I wouldn't believe the battery time though; presumably you can get that time if you don't so much as breathe on the laptop, but the moment you want to actually want to use it, it eats power. If you're also hoping to run a usb DVD drive off it, you might get the length of a movie out of it. Still the best on the market though - it just bothers me that they feel the need to exaggerate. To date, it seems the best netbook out there by far, though like all its peers, it seems to suffer from rather cheap plastic interior bezels once you've opened that wonderful shiny lid. Aside from that, build quality seem great to date; to give a comparison, I've previously had the ultra-compact Vaio and a neat little Compaq tablet. This one stands head and shoulders above its present competitors.

- No bundled software at all, which considering the price is unforgivable. Having had a white keyboard before, I also wouldn't recommend one, unless you like having that attractive ground-in dirt line to the edges of all your nice white keys which you have t get out cotton wool buds and alcohol to clean (yes I do wash my hands - you still get it!). Also if, like me, you take and use your laptop everywhere, you'll soon find that you blind yourself on a sunny day if you look at the white keyboard a lot when you type! I chose the blue, which I haven't regretted yet, though as I said, the bezels once you open it up ar a little cheap and tacky, but then that's a common feature of the new batch of netbooks for some reason. All in all, there's nowhere near enough bad points on this little beauty to let 'em dissuade you from buying it.

+ I read a lot of reviews and tried out some alternatives from Acer and Asus and this came out on top in many ways, but particularly its overall specification.. It connects very easily to the internet and I have loaded MS Office via an external DVD and it copes fine with basic Word and Excel files. The Integral SD slot allows me to easily view my photos. I have used both iTunes and LastFM and quality of the sound and volume control perfectly adequate. Great Keyboard compared to some alternatives.

- None. If you know you definately want a Netbook this is the one to go for. Just be aware of the limitations between a Netbook and a Laptop.

+ Very light and compact with normal-size keyboard keys (most keys are in the expected position but the left shift button is absent which can be problematic). Sleek and stylish look - this has one of the best, if not the best appearance in comparison to other netbooks on the market. The thin metallic strips that runs around the circumference of the netbook is really a great touch. Good battery life - I have used this for 3-5 hours intensively before without charging. Without intensive use I imagine the battery could sustain itself for up to 8 hours as the manufacturer indicates (so no lies on their behalf).

- The Intel Atom is not a strong processor in comparison to normal laptops. To get an idea you could probably run Internet Explorer/Mozilla Firefox with 6 or 7 tabs/windows open and loading up to which point the processor would struggle to let you run any other serious application like an office application or mp3 player. However if you're buying a netbook then this is to be expected I guess. Another major negative is some of the keyboard glitches and the finger pad design. There are a couple of keyboard glitches for instance if you hold Shift or Ctrl and touch the mouse pad it will zoom in/out as there is an in-built mouse scroller (a stupid idea). This can be frustrating when typing an email for instance as the zooming in/out actually requires quite a bit of memory and can take a while to correct. However there may be a way to disable this annoying feature I haven't yet checked. This problem is enhanced by having such a sensitive finger pad. The finger pad is also quite poorly sized, my main concern is that it is too short. The width of the pad is fine but most people who have used a normal laptop will struggle to adjust to the new shape (widescreen shape). Overall I have been satisified with the Samsung NC-10 and have not encountered any major faults or design errors. I would recommend this netbook to someone who is looking for a stylish, highly portable computer and only wants to surf the net or use very basic applications (i.e. Microsoft Office).

+ Would recommend the Samsung NC10 to everyone. It's light, compact and easy to use. I can't believe how long I have muddled along with my "large" laptop for, when these little beauties are on the market.

- I have only found two bad points-the bag that comes ith the laptop is a bit flimsy and doesn't fasten and the keyboard comes set for the American market-so make sure you change this setting before trying to use.

+ Excellent netbook. As an independent IT Consultant, I have to support lots of different systems and I have loaded my NC10 with a triple boot choice of operating systems: Original Windows XP
Evaluaton copy of Windows 7
Linux Ubuntu Works like a dream in all OSs

- None

+ Works as expected, very small & light, excellent battery life, quick to boot-up and was great for our trip to abroad.

- Reviewer left no comment

+ It is well worth spending that little bit extra on the most expensive option as the whole netbook feels and looks very classy and well made. Performance is fab, and the battery life is phanominal, even when I first got the laptop out of the box i was running it on battery whilst installing, Norton security, microsoft office, scanning for viruses everything that usaully sucks the power out of a battery but it still lasted 5 hours!!! This is a great netbook and I highly reccommend it to anyone.

- The cooling fan can get a little bit annoying as although its not loud, when I am working late at night and there are no other sounds, the fan comes on for a few seconds then goes off, comes on for a few seconds then goes off, and it can get annoying eventually but nothing to worry about as i'd rather it doing that than overheating! Apart from that no bad points at all.

+ Design, keyboard, display performance...it's just very good at it's job.
At home I use it with an external monitor, mouse, keyboard and stereo and it works a treat. I recently had it concurrently running I.T. examination software, MS Office, playing music and downloading a movie at the same time...no problems. Recommended.

- ...erm.

+ My 9/10 for everything speaks for itself. Nothing ever gets a 10 with me, because nothing is ever perfect. But this little beast is very close! It does everything my previous £1,000 laptop did, only showing itself a little slower on very onerous tasks such as video re-encoding. It does this fine too, just a little slower.Other tasks, there is no noticeable difference at all. Good keyboard, good screen, decent size hard drive - it's a little gem. If you can manage with a 10" screen, then I would recommend this product, without reservation. Just check prices very carefully and don't pay more than necessary.

- 1. The touch pad is small, which is OK and to be expected in a tiny PC. But it is made effectively smaller still by the 'extra' functions assigned to its edges. These can be turned off, but I'm not sure if the whole area of the pad then becomes released for normal movements. Also, it's almost impossible to distinguish by touch between the pad and surrounding case, as they have identical textures. The tiniest lip or indentation would fix this absolutely.
2. Grey symbols printed on dark blue case are illegible in anything but good light - again easily fixable by manufacturer.

+ Excellent netbook, by far the best on the market at the moment (Jan 2009). Does exactly what i want - a second really portable computer to read my emails anywhere in my house but i can also use it as a
work tool as a programmer/debugger PC, especially when not much desk space for a conventional lap-top.

- None really, but you really need to invest in a decent netbook bag because the slip case supplied is a joke - its only good for making sure all the broken bits of your netbook are keep together if you are unlucky enough to drop it!

+ Boots up quickly, runs Office 2007 without problems, screen size and resolution fine for web/email/Office, keyboard rigid, well-designed and usable with a bit of practice. Battery life 5 hours 20 mins on auto speed, moderate usage, wireless and bluetooth enabled - very impressive. Fan almost inaudible - brilliant. Overall a light, compact, working tool that feels like it will withstand a lot of punishment. I've started leaving my bulky laptop at home.

- Wireless g rather than n. Wireless range not great, but I've tried using a wireless n USB adaptor and the range is no better - but I never get close to the claims for range anyway, whatever I'm using (n or g, Netgear or Belkin or Draytek or Billion, PCI or USB).

+ Excellent small laptop. We have been using it off mains power for hours and never had to panic about plugging it into the mains. Wireless set up was easy and shared our Music and pics over the network easily also. Web cam go, but couldbe sharper quality. Slightly higher resolution would also be good to see full size web pages. All in all a great machine and exactly what I was looking for. My 9 year old daughter loves it and can use use everything. She cannot however understand why she cannot get the internet in the car and at her Grans, but then again, neither can my wife.

- A DVD drive would be good. Touch pad can be a bit slow, and comes up with arrows. Not sure why yet?

+ Compact design but with an almost full sized keyboard. Good battery life and large HDD.

- Wifi chipset not compatible with my router - apparently a known issue on some forums. Also the disk partitioning default setting left just 40GB of the 160GB available on for the C drive. Very poor - suggest you manually select the partition during setup. Beware you only have one opportunity to do this.

+ great size screen light well made

- cost could be a bit cheaper

+ long battery life, small, lightweight, almost full size keyboard, excellent wireless capability, user friendly, easy to set up

- shiny black cover shows every fingerprint - hard to keep clean