Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook - 6 Cell Battery Order Now

As an original eee 2G Surf owner, I found that the only people getting any use out of it were my daughter and her friends, mainly because my fingers were too big to type effectively. When she got her own laptop, I sold off the eee and did a LOT of research. Two netbooks seemed to be at the top of the heap for what I wanted: a machine I could type on effectively, a machine with a large, bright screen, and a machine as nicely designed as the eee. Those two were the HP Mini 1000 and the Samsung NC-10.

After some serious thought, I decided on the NC-10 due to the superior battery life, and what I felt to be slightly stronger reviews from a variety of sites.

I'm sure glad I did! The NC10 is a great little computer marred by only a couple flaws. First of all, I can actually touch-type on the keyboard. This alone justifies purchasing a slightly larger netbook. As with all small keyboards, there is some adjustment to be made; probably my biggest beef is the decision to make Home and End into function-enabled keystrokes. Additionally, the slightly smaller Enter key means that at first I ended up typing an apostrophe instead until my fingers got used to the placement.

Samsung has loaded the NC10 with a lot of software, some of which is not that useful or necessary. However, the Instant Recovery software is a great addition to the netbook. The eee can be restored instantly to factory default settings by hitting F2 as it boots. This is a very handy utility to have, and with the recovery software, Windows users have a built in ability to mimic that functionality. With a 160GB hard drive on a machine I don't plan to use as a data storage device, partitioning the drive into two means that I can use the backup software to set up restore points that are written as disk images on the second partition in case something bad happens.

So once I had the NC10 tweaked to my liking with all my custom software installs and uninstalls, I just made a complete backup of the C: drive. As we all know, the longer a Windows system runs, the slower it runs. Now, instead of having to reinstall Windows every so often, I can simply restore the computer to a nice clean setup and start again, all fresh and new.

PROS
- Clean design and sturdy feel
- Big keyboard
- Bright screen
- Included backup software

CONS
- Key placement takes a bit of getting used to
- Small touchpad will require some customization
- Included case is about as cheap as it gets

Okay, so the cons aren't really that bad. I'm telling you, I had to stretch to come up with that list because the NC10 is just that sweet of a machine.

Finally, the touchpad will require some customization in order to really be effective. I found that the biggest help was turning on Momentum, so that the pointer keeps sliding when you flick the touchpad, and setting the touchpad to a nice light touch.

Overall, the Samsung NC10 seems to set the current bar for which all other netbooks must reach.Get more detail about Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook - 6 Cell Battery.