Got Myself A Netbook ... finally!

(This a revised blog that was first posted on myspace on Tuesday, August 4, 2009)

After studying specs and playing around with demo machines, I finally bought a netbook - the Lenovo Ideapad S10-2. I had previously narrowed down my choices to 2 netbooks - the Asus eePC 1000HE and the Lenovo S10-2. The decision to finally purchase the Lenovo was mainly subjective. Really there was not much difference between the two but the clincher was that I had (and still have & use) a IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T22 notebook. I am familiar with Lenovo's notebook hardware but I decided to go for a netbook because of its extreme portability and long battery life (a claimed 6 hours versus 1 hour for the Thinkpad T22). I will describe my findings on this netbook a series of blogs to come.

Oh - before I forget, I upgraded the Lenovo RAM to 2GB and purchased two 320GB SATA hard disks, on one of which I plan to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix Linux alongside Windows XP Home so I can dual-boot the netbook. The other will be used as an external disk drive to store backups and other sensitive data. To house this disc drive a 2.5" USB-powered external casing was also purchased. A Logitech USB optical mouse was also purchased for use with the netbook - I prefer using this mouse instead of the touchpad on the Lenovo. A Samsung slim external DVD writer was also bought - I consider this an essential item to carry around. To overcome situation where I run out of USB ports on my netbook, a Logitech 4 port USB hub was also purchased. That's a lot of stuff to carry around!

Talking about carrying around - a carrying bag with a brand name of Dicota was purchased with the aim of carrying the netbook and slim DVD writer plus all the other stuff around safely. This bag is designed for carrying a notebook originally but with the available ample space the netbook, slim DVD writer, the external hard disc, blank CD/DVD's, various manuals plus my trusty Canon A550 digital camera can all fit in comfortably inside.

A photo of the netbook plus all the other stuff mentioned is shown above. Notice the reflection on the screen - that was me taking the photo using a flash!

Here is another shot of the netbook et all. The 4-port hub is on the left of the notebook and has a USB thumb drive in one of the ports while the Logitech mouse (shown on the right) is connected to the other port. The Samsung external DVD drive is show on the top right and this device requires the 2 USB ports on the right of the netbook. Note that I would not be able to use the mouse, the USB stick and the external DVD drive if I do not have the USB hub! The bronze colored box on the top of the Samsung DVD drive is the external USB hard disk drive. This would also require a 2 USB port connection to power it up. Hopefully, I would not run into a situation whereby I would require to use the external DVD drive as well as the external hard disk drive - this simply would not be possible since there are only 3 main USB ports on the Lenovo S10-2.