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

This is a great netbook. I did a bunch of research before settling on the Samsung NC10. Unfortunately, it is difficult to test netbooks in the stores as most do not carry a wide selection. I had narrowed down my search to the Lenovo Ideapad S10 (tried at Circuit City), MSI Wind and the Samsung. The Lenovo got tossed out because it only came with a 3 cell battery. Other than that, it felt like a quality machine with good keyboard, screen and overall build quality. Decided to take a shot with the Samsung and have not been disappointed. This is a great computer. I upgraded the memory to 2 gigs of Crucial RAM. Very easy to do and added a little pep to the machine, which was already fast. The keyboard is great and feels as close to a full size keyboard as your going to get. The webcam works great using Skype. I was able to get used to the trackpad after a couple of days, so I would not let that stop you from buying. Also, the single mouse button rocker bar works fine. The battery is great averaging 6+ hours.Get more detail about Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook - 6 Cell Battery.

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

I was all set to get the Asus eeePC1000HA netbook until I heard about this new Samsung, spent a day reading up about it---nothing but rave reviews from both professional reviewers and owners. After a bit of hemming and hawing over the seventy dollar price increase over the Asus, I chose the Samsung due to the longer battery life and the keyboard having a proper right shift key (I touch type, so that's really important). I chose the white color just because I haven't owned a white computer since the late 1980s when I had a Macintosh Classic! Also while I liked the look of the blue and black models, I didn't want to bother with wiping fingerprints all the time, and the idea of the keys being more visible under low-light conditions was also appealing.

So, about a week later, am extremely happy with the NC10. Two things which the reviews I read made sound very bad on this thing, turned out to be really not bad at all: the speakers and the touchpad. I actually prefer the touchpad on the NC10 to that of most other laptops I've used, in fact! Enough for me to consider not using an external mouse most of the time like I've always done with every laptop I've ever had---I figure that the more stuff I plug into the USB slots, the more drain on the battery. The speakers were fine, I wasn't expecting high fidelity or anything, just functional enough for me to occasionally listen to newscasts or YouTube, perhaps a little background music while surfing or working once in a while.

Build quality is excellent. I ran a monitor test and couldn't find any "blotching" on the screen that some users complained of, it's a very pleasant screen to look at. The latch on the lid is not as stiff as I would prefer, but isn't totally flimsy either. And though I generally dislike bling, I have to say that the chrome accent running around the edge of the NC10 is quite attractive-looking. Oh, and contrary to what online photos might suggest, the "white" color is actually more ivory or off-white.

I love that you get to choose whether to partition the HDD when you first start up the NC10, and if yes you can choose the size of the two partitions. I set my primary partition to 30GB and the remainder will be used for docs and music and photos. Unlike many computers these days, Samsung does not load down this little baby with bloatware, other than McAfee which I immediately removed (first using Windows removal tool, then you download a specialized McAfee remover off Google to wipe away the last vestiges). I also took out most of the Samsung software, and using a wonderful list of tweaks to be found at the excellent sammynetbook dot com forum, leaned down Windows XP some more. Having installed a 2GB stick of memory from the get-go, I disabled virtual memory which not only increases speed but saves battery life because the HDD is used a lot less, and lastly I disabled Bluetooth which is another significant battery drain. Now my NC10's running faster than my Pentium 4 desktop and my Centrino full-sized laptop!

At the four fifty I paid for it, the NC10 is only a hundred or so bucks cheaper than a full size, dual-core laptop from Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. However for my needs (word proc, Internet, spreadsheets, photos, music, zero gaming) I simply don't need all the bulk which that extra processing power requires, and the battery life of this Samsung is currently unrivaled among all netbooks---the Asus is its closest competitor, but the other netbooks on the market, especially the otherwise very good MSI Wind and Lenovo S10, have only 1/2 to 1/3 as much battery life as this one. I tried out every netbook Best Buy carries, including the Acer Aspire One (which was deadly slow even after I switched XP over to "maximize performance" mode and turned off all the graphical bells and whistles), Asus 8.9" ones (cramped/weirdish keyboards, Linux only, SSDs only), HPs (nice screens, terrible flat-clicking keyboards), MSI Wind (fine except for the low battery life). The NC10 gives me about 6 hours of battery life without dimming the screen, an additional 1-1.5 hours if I turn off the WiFi (something I do when only using Word and Excel).

If Samsung would only get this thing distributed to the major retail stores like Best Buy, Target, etc. this thing would probably sell like hotcakes, because there's nothing else out there which offers the same feature set at this pricepoint.

Lightness, compactness, and hellacious battery life...thank you thank you thank you, Samsung!

PS. For those of you concerned by the lack of CD/DVD drive or burner, you can buy a USB external CD/DVD burner for fifty to a hundred bucks. I recommend newegg dot com, do a search there.

PPS. Another way to lean down your PC: remove Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader, particularly if you have version 9.0, because it is an outrageous resource hog, on par with McAfee and Norton. Download and install the freeware Foxit Reader 3.0 which is about 1/10th the size, for reading PDF files. If you need to create PDF files, there is the PrimoPDF freeware. I found that my NC10 as well as all my other computers sped up quite a bit with both Adobe softwares gone, especially Firefox!

UPDATE 2/12/09: from the aforementioned sammynetbook.com forum, a great tip for maximizing the speakers' performance: Control Panel -> Realtek Sound Manager, 1. uncheck the karaoke voice cancellation if it's on, 2. make sure the karaoke is at zero level, and 3. put all EQ frequencies on max. It baffles me that Samsung would allow this machine to arrive with such a lousy sound setting...now I understand why some people were complaining so much about the speakers!Get more detail about Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook - 6 Cell Battery.

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

When I began searching for a "laptop" for my high-school age daughter, I quickly turned to notebooks for their affordability. The Samsung caught my eye, as I have owned numerous Samsung products in the past, and they have always been dependable.

Now, I am hardly a "techie," and my opinion is generally going to be formed on whether the thing does what I need it to (rather than its architecture). This machine (on those occasions when I can pry it away from my daughter) does everything I expected and does it as well or better than I need it to. It's fast, the battery life is exceptional, and it is solid in every respect. It has been in the hands of a teenager for almost two months now with no ill effects. This can hardly be said of anything else in my daughter's room.

Oh, and the XP operating system was a real plus. Vista stinks.

Get more detail about Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook - 6 Cell Battery.