Netbooks five: Lenovo's S10 brings the color wheel and instant-on Linux

Lenovo's IdeaPad S10 is described in the literature as an "affordable secondary PC," but the pitch quickly segues to addressing the "first-time PC user" and, finally and inexorably, "some mainstream consumers."

It's a telling transition between what netbooks were supposed to be—geek toys—to what they really are—main machines for nontechnical users. It sums up a computing zeitgeist that few seem comfortable with.

Among that few, however, is my 63 year-old mother-in-law, who is replacing a crappy old Dell laptop with a new 10.2" model. She doesn't even know that the new one is in a category that Intel insists she couldn't possibly want to use.

Lenovo's new model is a pretty one, with the increasingly-ubiquitous Splashtop Linux: awake within seconds of the power switch being flicked, it offers browser, music player, instant messaging and Skype. Other new features include a multitouch trackpad and facial recognition software. The specs are otherwise standard fare, with a 10.2 display, Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM, just like all the others.

It'll be available in March for a pleasantly modest $350.

[#1 posted by dacker , January 5, 2009 5:02 PM]

Hmm, two more colors or built-in Bluetooth like they do in Asian models (and publicly spec'ed on the US models but never delivered.) Which is more important...?