Netbook Reviews : Best Price : Best Buy

Product Description

Shop online, surf the web and chat with ease. The NC20 mini notebook gives you the freedom to accomplish more on the go. Enjoy images filled with bold, vibrant colors on a glossy LCD screen with 1280 x 800 resolution. The NC20 mini notebook is an affordable mobile solution ideal for all your online needs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #319 in Personal Computers
• Color: Black
• Brand: Samsung
• Model: NP-NC20-KA02US
• Dimensions: 11.10″ h x 5.60″ w x 13.80″ l, 3.30 pounds
• CPU: VIA-Cyrix C3 1.3 GHz
• Memory: 1000MB DDR2 SDRAM
• Hard Disk: 160GB
• Processors: 1
• Native resolution: 12.1
• Display size: 12.1

Features

• VIA Nano ULV U2250 1.3 GHz Processor, 800 MHz Front Bus speed
• 1024 MB DDR2 RAM
• 160 GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive
• Microsoft Windows XP Home, 6 Hour Battery (6 Cell Lithium Ion)
• 12.1 Diagonal WVGA (1280 x 800) SuperBright Display

Customer Reviews

Perfect Netbook
I wanted a netbook or laptop to replace an old laptop we used in our kitchen. I wanted something that was …

1) Light weight and portable.
2) Easy to carry and/or pack when I travel.
3) Quick accessing the internet for news and email.
4) Would run Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
5) Had an easy to read screen, and
6) Cost less than $800.

I strongly considered 10″ netbooks by several manufacturers (Samsung, HP, Asus, etc.) but decided I wanted a larger screen after I found myself “leaning in” to read the screen on the 10″ netbooks. Laptops had bigger screens, but were LOTS heavier (>5.5 lbs) and would be much less convenient both in my kitchen and to travel with. Getting a 12-14″ screen in a light weight laptop or a Mac was going to easily cost me more than $1000. The Samsung NC20 fit my criteria the best. I was a bit apprehensive to buy it though as I was unable to see one locally. In the end, I decided to take the plunge.

Boy am I glad I did. This computer is simply great. Perfect size, very portable and light weight. Screen is easy to read and very bright. One complaint I had heard about the NC20 was that the speakers weren’t very good, but I would disagree with this; they’re fine! The keyboard is easy to use, even with my big fingers. Battery life is excellent. In addition, the setup was a breeze. I’ve set up a lot of computers in my time (both PC and Mac), and honestly this was by far the easiest (even easier than my Mac’s)! Microsoft Office went on fine, easy setup of my wireless network and file sharing with my desktop. I also loaded Norton Internet Security on it, and it runs just fine (no noticeable reduction in speed). It has handled everything I’ve given it just great!

I added a USB-CD/DVD drive and a USB-mouse (although it has built-in Bluetooth), and these work great. When purchasing I thought about upgrading the memory to 2GB but decided to wait and see. Now that I have it, I see no need for this currently (but it’s nice to have the option for the future).

My NC20 is currently sitting on my kitchen table, running Microsoft Office just fine and accessing my emails and the internet like a champ! If you’re looking for a secondary computer, laptop or netbook for doing simple tasks and travel like I was, I would highly recommend the NC20.

Almost Good Enough
I’m a picky person when it comes to computers, as I spend pretty much all day on them – I’m a work-at-home programmer. I was in the market for a portable and light laptop that had enough battery power to last a good chunk of the day, while still having a decent monitor size and resolution. Since I was primarily interested in coding (which doesn’t require very much CPU), the Via processor met my needs. This was almost the perfect laptop for me, but there’s a few things that Samsung didn’t do a good job at.

Pros:
- 12″ screen with 1280×800 makes this comparable to a “real” laptop as far as screen real estate goes. Quite helpful if you work with programs that demand lots of space, and makes web browsing much easier. I use a lot of software that just cuts off dialog boxes half-way on my Eee, because of the tiny 1024×600 resolution. NC20 solves this problem, and many others.
- Very light, and while it’s indeed 12″, it still feels small enough to take anywhere you’d take a 10″ netbook.
- Battery really does last almost 6 hours.
- Doesn’t get very hot (compared to most laptops). Fan kicks in a bit more than I’d want it to even in an air-conditioned room, but it’s never felt uncomfortable placing on my lap while doing ordinary tasks. You’d still want to put it on a lapdesk/laptop cooler when watching movies though.
- Easy to upgrade RAM and hard drive from the bottom.
- Cheap. (can buy 3 of these for the price of one MacBook Pro)

Cons:
- Bad keyboard layout (no Windows key on the left side, Backtick/Tilde key directly left of the spacebar, half-sized left/right keys share space with PgUp/PgDn).
- Power cable plug is on the middle of the right side. If you use a wireless mouse next to the laptop, the cord will get in the way quite a bit.
- The hard drive that it comes with is pretty slow (benched at ~52MB/sec buffered reads, whereas my Eee’s drive benches almost 70MB/sec). I opted to try a OCZ Vertex 2 SSD instead, which made startups insanely fast – even faster than my C2Q Q9550/10k RPM Raptor desktop setup).
- Atheros AR5007EG card usually had bad performance with my D-Link DIR-655 router, even with the latest drivers. From a local SMB server, I get read speeds of 1.5-2MB/sec, with lots of packet loss – where my Vaio (Intel Wifi 5100) and Eee (also Atheros AR5007EG) don’t. Streaming H264 movies is pretty bad, even with a 3,000ms buffer.
- Hardware acceleration on video playback makes Xvid, MPEG4, etc. is decent; however, I have mixed reviews about how H264 fared. Generally, there would still be dropped frames (<10%) even when played off your hard drive. Of course, you typically don’t buy “netbooks” for these tasks, so I’m not complaining too much about it.
- Video sites using Flash are disastrous. YouTube only plays in SD (HQ usually drops to < 10FPS, HD is a slideshow). Sites using H264 codecs in their Flash movies just were miserable to try watching on. Given the prevalence of Flash and H264 in Web 2.0 sites, it’s my opinion that Flash performance is also a very important factor of “netbook” performance. After all, netbooks are supposed to be for browsing the web. Shouldn’t have to switch to a desktop just to watch some short clip on [...] without major lag.
- Sites with a lot of text and JavaScript (e.g., Slashdot) scroll a lot slower on Firefox than on my Eee 900HA, which uses the Atom N270 CPU and GMA950. I guess this is where the Via chipset just doesn’t excel at.
- Specific to the laptop I received from Amazon: Mine had 3 dead pixels (two very minor ones that can’t been seen very easily, near the edges, and one grey one right in the middle that shows quite a bit against a white background). Also, probably a defect, but about once every day, it will completely freeze up (mouse locks up, then a single PC speaker beep – hardware failure?).

While I almost loved it, it’s not something I can happily keep, and am exchanging it for a MacBook Pro 13″ since I guess I’m a bit pickier than the price bracket can afford.

However, if you mostly use computers for text-browsing and the sites you frequent are light on Flash animations, this “netbook” may be the one for you, especially if the 10″ netbooks with 1024×600 resolution are too small for your tastes.

A great option
A 10.1 inches monitor was definitely something too small for my eyes, now I am 53… and for a 12.1 monitors you had to choose one of those expensive notebooks. But this Samsung NC20 appeared and I simply went for it without waiting for other customer reviews. I read some reviews on other sites, all of them OK, and followed my daughter’s advice: she has a 10.1 NC10, the pink one (perfect for a young girl) and is always telling marvelous things about her tiny netbook
Well, now I can start doing the same. It’s a great computer, perfect for what it is meant to.
The chasis is solid, the system keeps cold, has long battery life (5 hours or so, I am not enough disciplined to measure it with minutes and seconds), a clear and comfortable keyboard and a silent processor/disk
Two small cons:
1. The monitor is too glossy for my taste.
2. The cover traps all your fingerprints, mercilessly.

Best regards
Rodarias

Product Description

The NC10 mini notebook 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 campus or wherever one might travel; provides significant performance capabilities to wander the Internet and take care of basic productivity applications; enables one to view the Internet in full screen without compromise in a clear and comfortable display; maximum storage capacity for everything you download from the web; provides maximum system performance for basic web browsing and limited system functionality; enhances system performance without adding unnecessary system overhead; provides a great balance of price and performance. Key System Features – Weighing in at just 2.8 pounds; the NC10 adopts the new Intel Atom CPU; 10.2-inch wide LCD display providing 1024 x 600 resolution with 250 nits of brightness and an anti-reflection gloss coating display; high capacity 6-cell Lithium Ion battery providing up to 8 hours of continuous run time; 160GB capacity hard disk drive (HDD); 1GB system memory (RAM); Windows XP Home Operating System; Silver-Nano Keyboard.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #732 in Personal Computers
• Color: Pink
• Brand: Samsung
• Model: NP-NC10-KA04US
• Dimensions: 4.65 pounds
• CPU: Intel Core Solo 1.6 GHz
• Memory: 1000MB DDR2 SDRAM
• Hard Disk: 160GB
• Processors: 1
• Native resolution: 10.2
• Display size: 10.2

Features

• Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6 GHz, 533 MHz Front Side Bus, 512 KB Level 2 Cache
• 1 GB DDR2 RAM 800 MHz
• 160 GB Hard Drive, 2.5-inch,
• Microsoft XP Home with Service Pack 3, 6-Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• 10.2-inch Wide, 1024 x 600 WSVGA , 220 nits, 1.3 Mega Pixel webcam

Customer Reviews

IT Pro’s Netbook Epiphany (the Samsung NC10)…..
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!