Adventures with the Lenovo Ideapad S10-2 Netbook - Part 7

Lenovo Quick Start on the S10-2

It was only after I had the netbook for about 2 days before I became curious enough about the Quick Start button on my netbook. According to the User Guide and the various articles I found on the web, this allows the user to boot up quickly into an environment and start browsing the web, play music, play online games, view pictures, send IM, use Skype (VOIP) and do something called share ideas.

When I tried out the system, the original hard disk drive was in the netbook and every application on Quick Start works as promised (although I did not quite understand the purpose of the Share Your Ideas application). Only one application had a problem - Skype. The microphone is not sensitive enough and my voice was quite faint. I could not adjust the gain of the built-in microphone - there was no such control in the Quick Start environment. Anyway, as a method of quick starting the netbook and using it if you need it in a hurry, it fulfills that requirement. Personally, I would not use it - mainly because I will never be in that much of a hurry.

Another interesting to note about this Quick Start feature that is not mentioned in the User Guide (or anywhere else, as far as I know) is that the Lenovo Windows XP must be present on the hard disk drive. If a blank hard disk drive (or one that does not have the Lenovo Windows XP) is present in the netbook, then the Quick Start features are not available. When the button is pressed in such a situation, a message will appear saying that the Quick Start application is not installed. As described in my last blog, I had moved the Windows system to a larger hard disk drive and installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix Linux alongside Windows so I could dual-boot. The Quick Start button worked in this system since the Windows XP was restored from a backup of the original hard disk drive using the recovery disc.

I also noticed that settings were saved between usage - this indicate that the Quick Start system do access the hard disk in order to save the settings. It also indicate that the Quick Start applications resides on the hard disk drive - I had originally thought that Quick Start reside in the BIOS. Since I do not have confirmation from Lenovo, I cannot say for certain how the Quick Start system works.