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

I tried the Acer Aspire One to fill my netbook needs. The Aspire One is a 5-star machine, but the keyboard is simply too small for my hands.

I next tried the Samsung NC10 - and am very pleased. The NC10 is an extremely competent machine in a very compact, lightweight package.

I won't go deeply into the specs: they are well known and readily available.

Thee are a number factors that please me so much about the Samsung NC10. The 10.2" is bright and sharp, though the oddball resolution of 1024 x 600 is a bit inconvient from time to time. The much criticized touchpad isn't all that bad, but it is far from ideal. It is barely usable, but it does work and you get better with it the more you use it.

Audio through the onboard speakers is fair. Don't try using it in a room with even a moderate amount of noise - the internal speakers will be swamped. Frequency coverage of the internal speakers is what you would expect:" mediocre. Headphone listening is more than adequate - and the built-in Bluetooth is a blessing with Bluetooth headphones.

The built-in webcam is surprisingly good, delivering an image that puts that of the built-in webcam on my Dell to shame - though, admittedly, that is not a major challenge.

Where this unit really shines and two of the factors that make it such a winner are the keyboard and the battery.

The keyboard is almost full-sized. The important keys like Enter and Shift feel full-sized. Even with my large fingers, I can type rapidly with few errors. On the Aspire One, I was tripping all over myself. The function keys are reduced size, but this doesn't cause a problem.

Samsung claims the battery is good for eight hours. Not unexpecteldy, I haven't acheived eight hours yet - but six hours running time is a snap. Add a spare battery or two to your pack and you're good for a very long day of portable computing. The six-cell batteries, by the way, are pretty light.

I haven't used the NC10 for any heavy duty applications yet, like photo editing or voice recognition, but for normal things like browsing and word processing, the 1.6Ghz Atom processor seems adequate. I did upgade my RAM to 2GB just because I prefer as much RAM as I can get. I didn't notice any performance improvment so far and, considering what I have been using the machine for, I wouldn't expect to.

Best of all, the NC10 is light. Even with my old shoulders and my old back, I can tote the NC10, an extra battery, mouse, headset and power adapter without problem.

I've only tried the Aspire One and the Samsung NC10 so I can't speak widely of netbooks. I can confidently say, though, that the NC10 is a well engineered and well built machine that will satisfy anyone's reasonable netbook requirments. It is a terrific little computer.

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