Monday, February 16, 2009

Bought a Samsung NC10 Netbook - First Impressions

On Saturday I bought a Samsung NC10 Netbook. I was in NYC and stopped by J&R, one of the few stores that actually carry the device. Amazon and a few other online stores carry them but its always nice to put your hands on one. The one I bought is black (also comes in white and blue) and comes with the 6 cell battery.

The reason I bought a new computer was because my Acer C110 tablet PC which I bought in 2004 is starting to show some problems. The touchpad works on and off and there was a crackling sound coming from the device every now and then, I think from the speakers. I have been reading many positive reviews about the NC10 and since I was impressed with the Samsung Q1 I decided to go with the NC10 over other netbooks.

As you may remember I switched back from to the Acer from the Q1 because I missed the larger screen (10" v 7") and the keyboard (Acer has one, Q1 doesn't). I blogged that the only things to make the Acer a perfect machine for me was to have better battery life and a better screen. In these two areas the NC10 delivers. The battery is advertised to go 8 hours. I haven't done any formal tests but I have no doubt it can go at least 6 hours under my normal usage scenarios. The Acer was limited to 2 hours. As for the screen, it is much better than the Acer. The Acer was a bit washed out and the NC10 is very bright and vivid. Doesn't seem as good as the Q1 but the NC10 screen is much better than the Acer.

So is the NC10 the perfect machine for me? Unfortunately no. The NC10 has a 10" widescreen and the Acer had a normal 10" screen. While the Nc10 screen is a bit wider it is not as tall and to me its more important to have more height than width when it comes to laptop screens. Its not a showstopper but I would have preferred the Acer screen at least with regards to dimensions.

Other impressions are similar to what others have written. The overall build quality is great, the hard drive capacity is large (160 GB), the touchpad takes a bit to get used to, the keyboard is easy to type with, and it was extemely easy to upgrade the RAM to 2 GB.

These are some first impressions, I'll write more after a few more days of use.