Even though it is one of the world's lightest netbook in its 10.2" class, weighing just 1.33kg with a powerful 6 cell battery, the NC10's innovative design is packed with the... more
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mind, the Samsung NC10 is expertly crafted to complement peoples fast-paced and digitally interconnected lives. The result is truly ground-breaking giving people...
mind, the Samsung NC10 is expertly crafted to complement peoples fast-paced and digitally interconnected lives. The result is truly ground-breaking giving people...
mind, the Samsung NC10 is expertly crafted to complement peoples fast-paced and digitally interconnected lives. The result is truly ground-breaking giving people...
mind, the Samsung NC10 is expertly crafted to complement peoples fast-paced and digitally interconnected lives. The result is truly ground-breaking giving people...
A review by non_sense on Samsung NC10 March 26th, 2009
Author's product rating:
Speed
Fast
Look & Feel
Excellent
Comfort & Portability
Excellent
Robustness & Durability
Good
Value For Money
Excellent
Advantages:
Small, stylish, excellent price .
Disadvantages:
Not for gamers, small touchpad
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I've not had the highest success rate with small laptops. I dropped my 10" Vaio, shattering the screen, it's replacement got stolen and I followed on from these with a 9" Samsung with an external keyboard that eventually just drove me nuts. I'd settled for a larger screened Dell (a massive 13.3" screen) but after 13 months of successful and happy operation the GPU decided that it couldn't handle being so warm for so many hours each day and decided to give up, leaving me with no way to use my otherwise functioning laptop.
Swift action was required as I travel a lot and really really need a little laptop (slightly overstating the need I suppose, but I do go quite mad without one).
The previous month I had seen a shiny looking black Samsung NC-10 whilst out shopping and thought how nice it looked. A few weeks further on I saw a shiny blue one and spent rather too long looking at it, the seed was sown in my mind but I was determined to resist buying a new shiny thing, I didn't need another laptop. Then of course my Dell stopped working, giving me a perfect excuse to get straight on the net to order a blue NC-10.
My previous Samsung laptop experience had been a largely positive one, a nice Q1 that eventually just proved to be impractical because it was just too small and required an external keyboard. It still works and permforms surprisingly well given it's low spec, so I wasn't worried about buying another small Samsung laptop.
The Specs and features
Many small netbooks come bundled with a Linux operating system, usually Ubuntu. I'm no geek (alright, a little bit), but I'm more than comfortable with Linux as I have used it almost every day of my IT career. I always kind of liked Windows though, so wasn't disappointed that the NC-10 comes bundled with Windows XP. I wasn't going to leave it with XP installed anyway, but more of that later.
I'm going to shamelessly cut and paste the rest of the specs here, then discuss how they effect the performance.
Processor Intel® Atom™ processor N270 (1.6GHz, 533MHz, 512KB, 2.5W) System Memory 1GB (DDR2 / 1GB x 1) Display LCD 10.2" WSVGA (1024 x 600) LED Anti-Glare Display Graphic Graphic Memory Intel® 945GSE 128MB Integrated Graphics Graphic Processor Intel® 945GSE (Integrated Graphics) Multimedia Sound HD (High Definition) Audio Speaker 2W Stereo Speaker (1W x 2) Integrated Camera 1.3 Mega Pixel integrated digital motion camera Storage HDD 160GB (5400 rpm S-ATA) Wired Ethernet LAN 10/100 LAN Wireless LAN Atheros 802.11b.g Bluetooth Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR I/O Port VGA Yes Headphone-out Microphone-in Internal Mic Yes USB 3 x USB 2.0 Multi Card Slot 3-in-1 (SD, SDHC, MMC) Input Keyboard Type 84 Key with Silver Nano technology (Anti-Bacterial Keyboard) Standard Battery 6 Cell Physical Dimension (W x D x H mm) 261 x 185.5 x 30.3mm Weight, include Standard Battery (kg) 1.33kg
Much of this is standard stuff for a netbook, the processor is the same as you'll find in current models, the 1GB of memory is becoming more common now too.
The display is not the shiny type that I'm used to, but it doesn't really make much difference to my life other than smudges and marks aren't quite as visible and I get less reflection in bright light. The brightness of the display is quite remarkable, I rarely have it more than 50% of the available brightness, it's simply TOO bright to have it set to the maximum.
Being a tiny netbook the graphics are limited, not a problem for the kinds of games I play and not a problem for watching movies.
Another negative for many people is the lack of an optical drive. This is a sacrifice I'm willing to make, but if you're going to use this as your main machine you may have to invest in an external drive.
The speakers are a bit weak, but I expect that on a machine of this stature. Just plug in some headphones and things improve a lot. With the inbuilt microphone you can make all the Skype calls you want without any additional hardware, the built in webcam provides a good image too if you want to make video calls.
One thing I do miss is an HDMI output, but again I realise I'm spending small money on a small machine, so I can't have everything. The VGA output is there though, if you want to attach the computer to an external monitor.
Connectivity is provided via a standard LAN port, wireless internet and bluetooth. I never have much need for bluetooth so haven't tested it. I can report that the wireless is excellent though, not quite as good as my Dell XPS which benefits from a larger aerial, but still better than most laptops I've tried.
Other goodies include 3 USB ports, a good number to have and an SD/SDHC/MMC card reader. I only use SD/SDHC so that works great for me.
With a 160GB hard drive I have enough space to store some movies and also keep my photos on my travels.
The final feature I will mention here is the battery. 3 cell batteries are common for netbooks, but the NC-10 comes with a 6 cell that allows me to confidently roam without my charger for hours at a time. I've been able to squeeze over 5 hours from the battery whilst using a wireless connection, that still left some spare capacity. The power management options help this, the screen dims when left for a little while and the CPU is designed to be low voltage, but even so the battery life is very impressive.
Styling
I personally find most netbooks to be ugly little things, something always seems wrong. The Dell mini has a strange hole under the screen, the Acer's look dinstinctly cheap and the others just seem to waste space around the screen with needless plastic. The NC-10 may be a tiny bit bigger than most of these and I'm sure that gives the Samsung design team more scope.
The look and feel of the NC-10 is certainly impressive. The lid is shiny, a nice metal stripe flows around the edges, even the lights are a nice blue colour (green or orange for the power supply), lined up on the front left edge to tell you when things are switched on. The power button itself is located in the barrel of the hinge for the lid and is also lit a nice bright blue, this choice of location is my only concern with the design however, I have accidently hit the button whilst moving the machine off my lap and it's has shutdown. I've now changed the option that makes it do that :-)
Even the power supply is smaller, it has a nice long cable but the actual transformer is small, so it won't take up more room in your bag than the NC-10 itself.
The keyboard is a very comfortable size, I don't mistype much (if I do it's my own fault, not the keyboard's). A common complaint is that the touchpad is too small, it is a little on the short side and I stray into the scrollbar area sometimes, but you get used to it.
The build quality is also excellent, better than my Dell was. No creaking parts or misaligned hinges here, everything feels solid and I never feel scared to really bash on the keys or travel with it in my backpack.
Upgrades
When my NC-10 arrived I took the memory out and replaced it with the maximum 2GB. I also upgraded it to Vista, not something that currently comes as standard with netbooks.
The Vista upgrade was quite painless, a few drivers had to be reinstalled from manufacturers websites but it was finished quite quickly. I was expecting the performance to be quite bad with Vista running, but I'm happily typing away now writing this review with multiple browser windows, Skype, MSN, a movie playing and it also runs Vista Aero with the glass feature enabled. The Windows Experience Rating is a mere 2.6, but that's not so bad in my opinion, if I wanted a gaming machine I wouldn't be buying a netbook.
I'm sure lots of people would be horrified at the thought of 'upgrading' to Vista, but it works for me and I'm happy.
Summary
For me this has been a great purchase, I'm almost glad that my Dell broke. I now have a smaller laptop with which to travel with. It looks nice, performs well and runs Vista. I wouldn't ask for much more. The cheapest prices are a little over £300, a bargain.
Advantages: Good performance, Good connectivity options, Good webcam, 160GB HDD, Upgradeable Disadvantages: Not very good accessories, Picks up Fingerprints, Weird button under touchpad
...replace it with a black Samsung NC10. The Asus and this Samsung are what is known as a netbook. It?s sort of a small, low cost laptop to let you surf the net, while you?re out and about. I bought it off Dixons.co.uk for £322 in December 2009 (had a 5% off coupon) but it?s going for around £310 at the moment in most places. CHOICES The NC10 is Samsung's first stab at the netbook market and they?ve done a blinding job of it. I believe it even won ... ...leave it idle). The Samsung NC10 has a 10.2 inch screen with a native resolution of 1024 x 600, which was one of the deciding factors of buying it as any smaller might make viewing web pages more difficult, in particularly with a lower screen resolution. Any lower and I would most likely need to scroll horizontally as well as vertically across a lot websites. In terms of portability, the small size makes carrying it around easy. It does weigh around ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Lots of connectivity - Big keyboard - excellent screen - Good spec Disadvantages: bad sleeve to store netbook - battery life not that long - small touchpad
I managed to pick up this netbook for £299 which is oustanding value - from play.com.
The netbook is very light and can fit almost anywhere - it is very easy to carry around - you can set up anywhere and very easily connect to the internet where available. The netbook looks very stylish and everything is laid out well. The keyboard is the biggest i have ever seen on a netbook - its almost full size which is a bonus as I have a lot of typing to do. ... ...made very small which is a nuisance - you do get used to it but it is not ideal. The specs for this netbook are impressive I mean a massive 160GB hard drive, a 10.2 inch screen. 1 GB of RAM and a 1.6GHZ intel atom processor. This spec allows the netbook to operate very fastly - the whole 6 months I have had this netbook - it has never froze and I run a lot of demanding programs at once e.g Word and Paintshop.
The 160GB goes a very long way - its ...
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Advantages: Long battery life (untested), nice screen Disadvantages: Faulty touch pad on two of these
I bought one of these for my step-daughter from Argos. There was a problem with the touch pad - it kept freezing up. The pointer would not move on the screen. It seemed to be completely random. Some of the time it worked fine... then it would just freeze. Other times it was doing it every few minutes. I took it back and swapped it for another one. That was better... it only froze once. But this one had a different problem. The pointer jumped as I ... ...made it impossible to use. I gave up and had a refund. I presume from all the good review for this laptop that either I just hit a bad batch of these, or some people don't use the touch pad. It looked like quite a nice machine otherwise - the screen looked good, and it seemed reasonably fast. ...
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Advantages: sturdy, reliable, quite nippy for a netbook, relativley cheap Disadvantages: sound, no ssd option, still can't beat the aspire one
...joining the ranks. However the samsung NC10 has proven to be a great addition to the market, and managed to undercut nearly all of their major competitors, even if it can't beat the acer aspire one. The NC10 is the usual netbook affair with regards to specs, it is fitted with the defacto standard intel atom, 160GB HDD and 1GB memory, this provides decent performance for all your web application needs and some circa 1999 gaming (no-one buys one for ... ...of the netbook, and the samsung comes with quality to the hilt. The solid build of the netbook combined with it's spacious (by netbook standards) keyboard helps to make using such small devices less of a pain, and everything just feels right with it. the ports and connectivity are good too, with 3 USB ports, a VGA out port (for hooking up to an external monitor) and a 10/100 ethernet port.vBattery life is pretty standard, generally speaking the netbook ...
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Advantages: Good battery life, nice screen, near enough a full size keyboard Disadvantages: small-ish trackpad
...while on the move.
The Samsung NC10 is in my view one of the very best netbooks out there, the keyboard is just shy of being full size so no cramped typing (this review was written on it)
Combine this with the atom processor which is set at 1.6GHz and a 160Gb harddrive and i feel we're onto a winner here. Exceptional performane at a realativly small price, sure it may be slightly more than other competitors but you really are paying for what you ...
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Advantages: Great value for money; nice keyboard for the size. Disadvantages: Short battery life, no built-in 3G, unconventional mousepad layout.
...and including the sort of office, web browsing, media applications and games that'll make it a useful machine without any additions. However, unless you've got reasonably good hacker skills you won't easily be able to add much to those and run the risk of having to reinstall from scratch if you attempt anything too ambitious and mess the machine up in the process. The Windows version will set you back another £50 and is probably the one to go for if you do need to set up custom additional software. However that runs it into the same price bracket as some rather better netbooks such as the SamsungNC10 and Advent 4211. If Linux won't do, you should probably look at one of those.
The one final consideration is battery life and the Aspire One isn't particularly good here. You'll get two and a half hours from one at best which is OK for occasional use...
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Advantages: very fast Disadvantages: quite expensive
...The most important people are at the transition to a new keyboard, separately using the buttons, see on a Sony Vaio or MacBook. Asus calls its "chocolate" keyboard and is a solid improvement of older models. Eee PC, whose improvement is in place and the right Shift key is finally in the right position. It uses the same courses 1000h hinge design is important, but some components are easily bent
In total, the netBook feels like 1000. It is a little easier and the keyboard is improved, but it is not very different from what you expect. This is not a bad thing, because the success of the 1000 but lacks the other Pop 1002HA does not seem, from the sale of the game, as the SamsungNc10 charge. It is a beautiful updated incrementally, but the short time I talked with her, it seems not a game....
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Advantages: Good battery life, Good specifications, Wireless N and Bluetooth Disadvantages: Better netbooks available, Poor webcam
...Life (they quote 7 hrs)
- Comes with a slip case and cloth
- Can pick up finger prints quite easily but white version makes it less noticeable
- Multiple specifications available
- Relatively low cost
- Has built in webcam
CONS
- A bit ugly (especially compared to the Samsungnc10)
- Not the lightest 10" netbook on the market
- Touchpad lacks scrolling function
- SSD version slower than HDD version. HDD a bit noisy in HDD version.
- Lacks CD/DVD drive (but very normal with netbooks)
- Webcam picture quality not very good
VERDICT
The specification of the 1000H is good and it does the job but there are better looking and better performing ones out there now so my advice is to look at the other ones. I originally paid £303 for mine but you can get that for around £270 now. Even Asus have released some...
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Features: SuperBright, LED-backlit, Super Bright Gloss
Widescreen Display: Yes
Max Resolution: 1024 x 640 ( WSVGA ), 1024 x 600 ( WSVGA )
Display Type: 10.2" TFT
Manufacturer's product description
Even though it is one of the world's lightest netbook in its 10.2" class, weighing just 1.33kg with a powerful 6 cell battery, the NC10's innovative design is packed with the latest technology for maximum mobility and productivity. It also incorporates a range of practical features, like a normal-size, ergonomic notebook PC style keyboard, to simplify life on the move. So when you need to stay in touch, but want to make a good impression the NC10 makes complete sense.
This product has not yet been reviewed. 
05.07.2009
