Since Christmas my laptop battery has gone from useless to silly. There was not enough left to unplug power, walk across the room, plug in printer, and print a 3 page document on the 'fast draft' setting. Yes, that happened.
As a not-quite-impoverished grad student, I decided to put up my portable desktop. I probably lost a couple pounds carrying the power strip back and forth to school on my bike. Not a big deal. Then the power strip started acting funny. Occasionally, I'd plug it in and the laptop would go dead anyway. A short! I was about 20 pages into my thesis paper at that point and I could see that at any moment the latest progress could be locked inside the harddrive with no easy way to turn it on. And, I'd be computer-less.
Enter the Samsung NC10
This was essentially an impulse buy. An appointment stood me up one day at SFSU a couple days after the power cord short started. So, I was loitering in the bookstore where I found four cute little white netbooks ON SALE. The netbook idea appealed to me in general: cheap, light, online oriented, and modestly powered. These models were interesting. Three were from manufactures I'd only heard of recently ==> alarm bells. I've since confirmed that avoiding them was a good choice. Samsung has been a small laptop producer for a while but only recently distributing in the US. I liked that one b/c 1) 7 hr battery life 2) same size keyboard as my old laptop 3)comparably 'high' powered 4) it ran XP. So, after an hour of thinking about it and checking prices/options in the library, I bought one for $420.
Now, I had heard some things that were incorrect so I'll let you in on what I learned:
>>>First, there are non-Windows options for netbooks but, for me, they were not a good solution. My friend Benjamin has one. Escaping the clutches of Microsoft appealed to me. But, B reports that the office software is not as good and there are some compatibility problems. That's a big problem with all the group work I do. So, XP was important.
>>>Second, though netbooks are have less processor power, they will run MS office. This was a major issue. I have used Google Docs a lot, online and with Gears offline. I've written papers and used their xls program extensively. So, when I say, "it's not there yet" it's not without giving it a real try. Having local software - and that means MS Office - was critical. I had heard that netbooks wouldn't run Office smoothly. Not true, the screen is small, so that's a problem if you're doing a lot of graphics or reading a wide sheet. But, it's been no problem to use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I made a sharp ppt with layered graphics, animations, and big .jpg files. And, I showed it off the netbook and it was flawless.
>>>Third, that little screen wont kill you, but it might try. Two laptops ago, I had this big gateway thing - 14 inch screen I think. When I moved to my 10 inch screen Dell, I started getting upper back pain and sore elbows. My kindly occupational therapist friend said it wasn't my old age, just my new computer. Yippie. So, I bought this iCurve laptop stand and a Logitech wireless keyboard. After proving to myself that my local Chiropracter is a quack and getting some legitimate exercise, presto, I was healed. With this netbook, I actually have the computer elevated and up over top of my hands as I type - and the natural mouse position is behind the computer. Yes, weird, but comfortable. I've typed a couple hundred pages like this.
So, overall, I really like this little thing. It's light, the battery basically lasts forever, keyboard is great, good price, enough processor power, and it's a nice pearly white. Their new version has a larger touch pad - which would be nice. The touchpad mine has is too small. I'd like to get a bluetooth presenter mouse, which are beginning to become available. Of course, if you like to have more than about 3 programs running, or use a lot of processor power with video editing or CAD drawing, this is not for you. The big question mark is, "How will Samsung customer service do?" The computer appears solid, but if there's anything I've learned it is to expect computers to break. Samsung is a new provider so I don't think anyone knows what to expect.
