Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life
- 10.2″ Wide, 1024 x 600 WSVGA , 220 nits
- Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6 GHz, 533 MHz Front Side Bus, 512 KB Level 2 Cache
- 160 GB, 2.5″ SATA HD, 1 GB DDR2 800 MHz
- Intel 945GSE shared, 802.11 b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, 10/100 BaseTX LAN
- 6-Cell Lithium Ion, Genuine Microsoft XP® Home with Service Pack 3, 1.3 Mega Pixel webcam, Kensington Key Lock, 1 year standard parts and labor, 2.8 lbs
The NC10 Netbook by Samsung is ideal for users looking for a low-cost, highly mobile solution that is aimed at “consuming” data via the Internet versus “creating” data. Key System Benefits – Easy to take with you whether it’s around the house, the
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(out of 487 reviews)
List Price: $ 416.99
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Review by R. Hill for Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life
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USER BACKGROUND:
I’ve been involved with PC’s since PC’s came into existence. Through the years I’ve owned a wide range of notebooks from luggables, desktop replacements, to travel companions (currently I own a couple of 12″ touch screen tablets and two HP 20″ HDX media notebooks used as desktop replacements). I was ready for a new travel notebook and started to follow the evolving “Netbook” category. As in the past, I was faced with a substantial expenditure (several thousand dollars) to get one of the current higher end travel notebooks that would meet my general laptop requirements; a light, relatively powerful, good battery life and compact design. The evolving +/- $500 Netbook category piqued my curiosity and I started to read reviews and study the new product offerings including their upgradability potential, or lack thereof.
INTENDED USE:
In my experience, most air travelers use a laptop similar to myself, web browsing, email, and light office applications (word, excel, etc); or in other words the “Netbook” categories target market.
REQUIREMENTS:
On occasion I take long trips across the country (8 to 10 hour block to block) and I wanted my new purchase to provide a single charge that would last through that day’s journey; no spare batteries or AC adapter in tow. A typical trip for me begins at the departure gate and firing up the notebook for a little catch-up computing while waiting for departure. Once airborne and settled in, I pull my notebook out for some on-board work. Upon arriving at my connection stop I either head to a travel lounge or the departure gate and get on-line once again. On the last flight leg, I’ll generally pull out my notebook for some additional in-air use before getting to my destination.
My target requirements:
1. Light weight & Compact foot-print
2. Long battery life
3. 10″ – 12″ screen size, 1024×600 minimum resolution and bright
4. Reasonable processing power for intended use
5. Windows XP Pro
6. 2 GB of memory and a 320 GB 7200 rpm hard drive
MY NETBOOK SELECTION:
I purchased the “Samsung NC10” and I’M VERY IMPRESSED! I pre-ordered from Amazon.com and received the unit on 11/19/08. I settled on the white version since I’m not a fan of black keyboards which the NC10’s blue and black color options sport. With the modifications discussed below, this little machine exceeds my overall expectations and is everything the various reviewers have analyzed and discussed to date. Most reviewers consider the keyboard on the NC10 the best in category, but since I’m not a touch typist that wasn’t one of my hot buttons, however the key board is large, solid, and pleasant to use.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
The standard NC10 came closest to my purchase specs for light weight; it’s under 3 lbs, long battery life; it seems Samsung’s targeted 6 – 8 hours of battery life is doable (I’ve hit 6+ hours using disk, WiFi and toned down screen brightness). The 10.2″ screen is very bright and clear with 1024×600 resolutions; it helps to auto-hide the taskbar to buy a little more screen real estate. The unit is very compact and like most Netbooks its projected area is smaller then an 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper and the closed clamshell is 1″ thick. The standard unit arrives with XP Home, 1 GB memory and a 160 GB 5400 rpm drive. The NC10 feels solid, build quality (inside and out) are excellent and out of the box the unit was responsive and fairly snappy. I have two WiFi access points in my home and the NC10’s WiFi card picked both up with excellent reception and through-put; I also tried my Sprint USB broadband adapter with equally satisfactory results.
THE UPGRADES:
Like most engineering types; “If its not broke, take it apart and fix it anyway”. I’ve read the reviews and knew the memory and hard disk could be easily be upgraded (given a little bit of prior experience and some hardware finesse). I went to my preferred parts supplier, Newegg, and purchased a 2GB stick of RAM for $32 and a 7200 rpm 320 GB disk drive for $100. I also picked-up a nice Netbook carrying case by Caselogic for $12 with my Amazon order. I used Apricon’s EZ Upgrade Kit to image the units’ standard 160 GB disk and then put it on the shelf as the failsafe backup. It took me about 10 minutes to take the unit apart and upgrade the components. I then prepared a Windows XP Pro DVD slipstreamed with SP3, repartitioned the disk, reinstalled the operating system and all the Samsung drivers and application software. Samsung did an excellent job of putting all the NC10’s drivers and application software on their technical support web page. The overall result of these upgrades makes a noticeable improvement in overall performance. I’m very pleased with the final results for this tweaked, travel ready road machine (an example: standard boot time to WiFi connection is about 90 seconds, however I use hibernation on my notebooks and the machine will boot-up to WiFi connected status in 25 seconds).
NETBOOKS FUTURE:
I agree with many of the industry and media experts who have editorialized on the Netbook phenomena. Netbooks will continue to be a significant new growth segment in the overall notebook category. The manufactures have an interesting dilemma however; Netbooks will also continue to cut into sales of the higher margin, costlier tier of their notebook offerings. Feature creep is probably going to be the manufactures biggest marketing challenge; the temptation to seek product differentiation by adding larger screens, faster processors (central & graphics), more IO, etc., all tending to increase price, size, weight, and cut into battery life. If you examine your real world use and expectations you may have the same epiphany I have had; these little Netbooks are excellent solutions vs. the more expensive traditional notebook offerings. With a couple of easy inexpensive tweaks, the “Samsung NC10” is a home run!
Review by Thomas A. Puzio for Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life
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OVERVIEW
Let me start by saying I wanted the blue one because I felt like white would be too cheap looking. White isn’t my first choice for a laptop color, but i think this is passable. I decided to take the white one rather than wait around for whenever the blue one is released.
I love this machine. The day-to-day tasks are peppy and it behaves like a normal Windows XP machine. I have purchased a RAM upgrade and am waiting for my 2GB stick to arrive, but I have been using it with the 1GB installed and haven’t had any issues. The main uses for this machine I see are internet, office, and other such basic tasks. However, I also maintain a couple websites and was able to install Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 and noticed no difference in performance on this machine from my powerful desktop.
The fit and finish are excellent. Keyboard keys are sturdy and snappy. The USB ports are tight, in a good way, and provide a sense of quality when you plug things in. The screen is bright, bright enough that I often dim it a notch or two due to eye fatigue (which is normally not a problem for me).
CONS
Trying to find faults in this machine is like trying to find faults in a BMW 7 series, sure there are nit-picky things you can point out, but come on, it’s a 7 series! Having said that…
Screen size. This being my first netbook the size of the screen takes a little getting used to. My problem with the screen is that it is slightly too short in height. To combat this I simply made my taskbar autohide, what I normally do not do, but without this, the main window pane seemed pinched what with the menu bars, tool bars, and task bar taking up roughly 1 inch of screen real estate.
Touch pad. The touch pad is pretty short (up and down) so some adjustments needed to be made to the pointer speed and momentum to get it up and down without retreading over and over. Ultimately I find it much easier to just use a wireless mouse (I’d recommend the Logitech VX Nano). What I wish is that Samsung had used the extra space above and below the touchpad to simply increase its size. If it were 1/4″ taller the touchpad would be just fine.
Weight. It is light, but because it’s small it seems dense. This means for me that its weight/size ratio means that it feels heavy. By no means would I say it is heavy, but i think it is heavier than it may appear at first glance. It is still very light for a laptop, even lighter than the Macbook Air (albeit a smaller form factor).
PROS
Speed. Speedy laptop. It gets the job done.
Battery. I tested it out today. I teach high school and used this laptop to take attendance and record grades in each of my classes. I started it up around 7:50am and had it turned on most of the day. Periodically I would put it in sleep mode, or allow the power save mode to turn off the lcd. I also turned off the backlight when I got up to walk away from time-to-time. However, the NC10 made it from 8am all the way to 3pm without shutting down due to lack of power. And I had the backlight on 6 or 7 out of 8 the entire time and I had to connect to the internet on a regular basis so wifi was on the entire time. I am confident that if I took this on a plane with me I could play 2 or 3 movies before my battery dies. This was a huge selling point for me. Most other netbooks have similar features but many lack the 6-cell battery.
Hard drive. The response time is peppy. No noticible lag when accessing the hard drive or save large files. Having 160GB hard drive is important to me. I also plan on adding 32GB via a SD card for additional storage. With all the windows updates, office 2003, macromedia suite 8, and various other applications, along with 30 gb of music, I have about 100GB left over for data.
CUSTOMIZING IT
As with all laptops, this one comes preinstalled with a bunch of stuff you may or may not want. I like more control than some of these applications offer. Also, the computer starts out by partitioning the hard drive to split it in half. You can control how much you want to assign to each partition, and it says you can even set it to eliminate the partitioning, but I was unable to figure this out. When I went through the process I couldn’t get mine to leave it as one big drive. So it ended up splitting it in half. After I did this I decided I didn’t like it that way and wanted to fix it.
Here’s what I did:
1. With the help of an external DVD drive, I put the recovery disk in (while logged in to windows) and gave it the option to reinstall windows
2. It started the process and then rebooted and then I had the option to boot from a disk. I did that and the computer stopped at the typical Windows XP installation interface.
3. From there I was able to delete the D partition and the small, hidden recovery partition (about 6 gb) to allow the C partition to take over all 160gb of the hard drive
4. I deleted the C partition and then reformatted it as one drive
5. Then it installed windows to the new C drive
6. Followed setup process and voila! New clean Windows XP machine
7. Once i was back in windows I put in the software disk that has all the samsung programs and installed those which I wanted. It’s important to install the video and audio drivers so the function keys work with the speaker volume and backlight controls.
8. Finished by installing whatever applications I wanted and updating windows and office
enjoy.
Review by stephen Luff for Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life
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Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1EHRFQSTE9GKU Here is a 9 minute review of the NC10. I thought it would be a bit more exciting to see it in action and my first thoughts. I’ve put in a few size comparisons that helps get the feel of it.
I really love the whole experience of owning one of these. The battery life is amazing with 7 hours and more. The experience of daily surfing on the go in style is so helpful and enjoyable. If you are on the go and have time between appointments it can really change the way you do business online. You can display products to anyone, learn Tai Chi outside or just in your mind. Just brilliant.
Link to another product used in video. The Tai Chi DVD is only available in the PAL Format for now at Amazon UK. Next year 2nd quarter 2009 for AMAZON.COM.
Nintendo DS Lite Polar White
Review by Buyer88 for Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life
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I bought the blue one from Amazon after reading all the positive reviews. It’s been about 2 weeks now and I overall I like this little netbook book. All the positives that were pointed out by the other reviewers are true (great keyboard, battery life, and sharp, bright screen). However, as for the build quality, I was rather disappointed. The chassis creaks as you are handling normally (like picking it up) which means the chassis isn’t rigid. When you lift open the screen (with your thumb just above the webcam), it creaks and you can even feel the plastic frame move. Perhaps it may just be my unit, but I doubt that. If there is one, there are bound to be others. I am rather annoyed at this. Can you feel my annoyance??? Grrr… So, buyer beware.
Oh, one last thing, the touch pad is too small, but I am sure you all know that. I had to disable horizontal scrolling and re-map the vertical scrolling to an extra narrow width. Or else, the scrolling triggers a lot which causes the mouse to stop moving when you don’t want it to.
Update: Well, it has be a while since I first posted my review. Yes, the creaking is still there, but this little beauty does what it was designed to do which is surf the internet. And I do this alot. The battery is pretty robust. I haven’t timed myself, but I average a good five hours at least with the LCD set to 2 bars brightness. I only surf and watch the occasional Youtube videos. I don’t play games on it and I try not to install too many programs or plug-ins. Boot up is speedy. But I have noticed that shutting down is slower than before. Maybe it is due to one of the programs that I had installed. To sum up, I am happy with my purchase despite all the creaks.
Review by Daniel for Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life
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The Samsung NC10 is clearly the best netbook on the market right now. As a previous owner of the Asus 1000h I can say that this notebook beats the 1000h easily. While the specs for both laptops are very similar, where the NC10 excels is the keyboard. The NC10 probably has best keyboard of all the netbooks. Most of the keys are also naturally placed unlike how the 1000h is missing the right “shift” key which really bothered me. Another area where the NC10 beats the 1000h is the touchpad and the touchpad buttons itself. Even though the Samsung has a single button for both functions it presses really easily and is not ultra stiff like the 1000h I had and the touchpad sensitivity is alot better than the 1000h.
The NC10 also has great styling and feels very sturdy with 3 usb ports in addition to a sd card slot. It has virtually no noise and it barely gets warm. In fact as I am writing this review right now, the bottom of NC10 actually feels cool to the touch. The screen is very bright and the best selling point of the NC10 is the ridiculously long battery life. You can easily get more than 7 HOURS on this netbook. If you dim the bright screen down you can probably push 8 hours. The hard drive and processor feels quick and boot up time is around 20-30 seconds.
While I am extremely pleased with the NC10 there is one thing that was rather lacking for this netbook. The speakers seem to be situated at the bottom of the laptop and is very low. Even when I max out the volume, I can barely hear most of the audio that’s playing unless you are in a very quiet room.
All in all this is a great purchase and is alot better than the rival Asus 1000h. The weak speakers on the bottom and the small touchpad is worth the sacrifice for the better keyboard and ultra long battery life.