Today we saw the introduction of two new netbooks to the Samsung line. Samsung entered the netbook market in October of 2008 with the respectable NC10 [Portal page] which had a solid economy design, and impressed people with its battery life. Now Samsung updates the NC10 to the the N110, and introduces the NC310. Laptopmag.com already got their hands on the N110 and gives us a nice review (linked below).

You won’t be surprised at the insides of the N110; not only are they similar to almost every other netbook out there, but they are actually identical to the NC10:

• 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU
• 1GB of RAM
• 160GB HDD

The N110 is also still has the same 1024×600, 10.2” screen. However they did make some improvements. The exterior of the netbook is all new. The unit definitely looks more sleek than the original. The touch pad is bagger, and perhaps most importantly, the battery has had an increase in capacity. The battery has jumped up to a 5900mAh rating, over the original 6-cell’s 5200mah, yet the size remains the same which is great. It seems as though they have squeezed a bit more room out of the keyboard as well. It definitely looks a bit nicer than the original, though they are still using very standard laptop key style, while we see many other netbooks jumping over to the chicle style keys. Read the entire N110 review from Laptopmag.com.

Samsung also announced the NC310 today which is an interesting looking netbook. The NC310 seems to be a bit less worried about a slim design, and instead adds a bit of ruggedness to the netbook. Strangely, they went with the chicle style keyboard on the NC310, but not the NC110. The internal offerings are identical to the N10/110 except right off the bat Samsung tells us that the NC310 will have optional 3G or WiMAX. The NC310 seems to share a bit of styling from the HP Mini 1000 [Portal page] with a non-protruding bezel around the screen. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the giant, raised Samsung logo on the top of the lid, and I seems like consumers might have a hard time seeing the difference between the N110 and NC310.

[Netbooknews.de] and [Liliputing]

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting.

• Black Samsung NC10 now shipping, slightly cheaper — The slightly modified black Samsung NC10 [Portal page] with larger trackpad is now shipping and can be bought for less.

• Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Review — Laptop Mag reviews the Dell Mini 10 [Portal page]. “Dell’s first 10-inch netbook has a compact chassis, good keyboard, and a crisp 10-inch display, but we wish it offered better battery life for the price”.

• New Acer netbook hits the FCC web site — Looks like there might be a different new Aspire One 10″ netbook in the works. FCC docs give a few hints.

• HP Now Offers Extended Battery for the HP Mini 1000 — HP has released the extended battery for the HP Mini 1000 [Portal page][Review]. It will run you $119.

• First look at the Eee PC 1008HA’s Eee Dock app - Video — The upcoming Eee 1008HA has some Asus built software that gets demoed on video at CeBIT 09.

This is the first time I’ve seen the 3G version of the Samsung NC10 in any sort of official form. iPlus in Poland have already started selling them (Since November 26th) with 4 different 24-month contract options. Specs include Windows XP Home, the 160GB drive and the 6-cell battery. Tasty! Now what’s the Polish for ‘Review’?

More information and links for the Samsung NC10 here.

Via Notebookcheck.com (translation) Thanks Kornel, for the heads-up.

iPlus information page (Polish)

Christmas is approaching which means I’ll be heading to the UK for my Turkey dinner soon. It also means that I’ll be checking out mobile broadband and 3G netbook availability just in case I feel the need while I’m there. Here’s a few news items I found as I was checking out offers today.

Virgin Mobile is introducing a  pre and post-pay option to their mobile phone tariff which gives you a full day of web access (We assume that it’s a port-80 proxy service here) for just 30p. OK, it’s only 25MB and you can’t officially tether your phone to a PC but for using something like Opera Mini on the occasional day away from home, it’s more than enough. If you’re looking to use the service on a more permanent basis though, the per-week and per-month option from 3UK are probably going to work out better as they have less restrictive limits. More info here. Via Informatics Online

The ASUS 901 is now available with built-in 3G from Orange UK on a 24-month contract. This must be the same as the 901 GO that’s available in other countries. The device is free but the monthly charge is 25 pounds. I highly recommended this item a few months ago and I stick by it. If you want one of the more mobile netbook options, this is the one to go for. It comes with XP and 16GB SSD. More info at Orange. Note: The same device is available, contract free, in Germany for 449 Euros.

Clove Technology has the Blue Samsung NC10 marked up at 343 pounds and due on Dec 12th. I can’t find any info about a 3G-enabled one though. This is the product I’m hoping will launch soon but it looks like I may have to wait until after Christmas.

Update: There’s a Samsung NC10 HSPA available in Poland now.

The Advent 4213 (ECS G10L) is available for 322 pounds. It has the 3G module built in but comes with a relatively small battery. Its not the device i’m looking for.

Got any UK mobile internet product tips? If so, let everyone know in the comments below.

The Samsung NC10 [Portal page] is all the rage right now in the 10" netbook sector and it is starting to show up in more colors than just white. MobileComputerMag has some nice shots of the black variant, and they mention that they are starting to trickle out to consumers. A dark blue model should also become available eventually. Hit the MobileComputerMag link for a few more images.

[Electric Vagabond]

The Samsung NC10 is currently riding high. High in the UMPCPortal charts, the most searched-for laptop on a number European price comparison sites, number 2 on the Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de computer chart and rising quickly in many other countries. In my opinion, based on my hands-on and the numerous good reports out there, its one of the best consumer notebooks, yes, notebooks, there is and when I go to the UK in Dec, I’ll be keeping an eye out for a black NC10 with 160GB drive, BT and built-in 3G. If I find one (fingers crossed that this combination of specifications launches soon) then I’m swapping out my Gigabyte M912M and Medion Akoya. I’ll be sad to let the fast, touchscreen M912 go but battery life is more important for me and the NC10 has oodles of it.

Someone that has already bought one is Jez, a regular reader from the UK who I’ve been emailing with recently to find out about the status of the device in the UK. He bought it last week and immediately started to log his experiences on his ‘Unofficial Samsung NC10 blog.’ He’s also been kind enough to write an introduction just for us so before you pop over to the NC10 blog (and possibly never come back!) take a look at what Jez has to say about the NC10…

Read the full story

The Samsung NC10 [Portal page] which is being regarded as one of the best netbooks you can buy, is finally available in the US from Buy.com in white or blue for $499. The netbook has been available in other areas for the world for a short period of time, but is just now coming to the US, just in time for the holidays! For anyone considering this device, be sure to check out the very favorable review by LAPTOP.

[Liliputing]

I’ve already posted about this, twice. Samsung have some great engineers.

I had the chance to look at an NC10 (#1 device on the portal right now) at the netbook meeting in Cologne on Saturday and the first thing I did was to measure the minimum drain of the device. Within minutes, I was seeing a fantastic sub-5W minimum drain.

This is lower than on most UMPCs and is a good indication that the electronics on the motherboard, the power components and the screen are well engineered. There’s no point putting in a low-power CPU if you’re going to lose the advantage it with crappy engineering. Take the Kohjinsha SC3. It uses the latest, lower clock, lower power CPU and chipset and yet even after hours of optimising, the base drain on it is no less than 7.5W. That’s 50% more than the, much bigger NC10 that doesn’t even use the low power CPU and chipset.

Battery life outweighs most requirements for me so considering that everything else on the device is up to scratch, I’m seriously thinking of getting a black NC10 as my only laptop and selling the M912 and Medion Akoya. They’re both excelent devices but neither of them are as well engineered as the NC10

Samsung NC10 links and specs in the product pages.

Remember my in-tent Samsung Q1 Ultra test? 9hrs battery life on the Samsung Q1 with 25% backlight? An average drain of 6.9 watts. It was impressive and since I blew up the Q1 Ultra doing some solar-charging tests, I’ve been missing those 5, 6 and 7hr figures. I was just getting over the trauma until I read this article about another Samsung Mobile product with great battery life.

Notebook Magazine have just done a full set of battery life tests on the NC10 Netbook and it looks like Samsung have once again worked their magic. The tests included continuous Wifi-on web browsing in battery saving mode which is a very reasonable test to be doing. Far better than the misleading 2001 Jeita test and much more ‘real-life’ than the Battery Eater Pro ‘turn everything and and run it at full-steam’ approach. The NC10 returned…

• 12% screen brightness: 7hrs 34mins representing an average drain of about 7.6w which is just a little bit more than what I saw on the Q1 Ultra.
• 50% screen brightness, the duration dropped to 6hrs 30mins which is an average 8.7W.
• 100% screen brightness, the test result reduced to 4hrs 38 minutes which is 12.3 watts drain.

More after the break…

Read the full story

LAPTOP has gotten their hands on a Samsung NC10 [Portal page] that is fresh off the press (the ‘press’ being Korea). Not content to wait around for a US model, LAPTOP imported an NC10 and it sounds like they really like the machine. Just listen to the opening sentence of their review:

The Samsung NC10 has joined the ranks of 10-inch netbooks—including the Eee PC 1000H, MSI Wind, and Lenovo IdeaPad S10—and it beats them all.

You better believe the NC10 must be pretty good with a statement like that. The review is filled with a lot of positive comments about the NC10, specifically its keyboard and battery life. Back when we first saw the NC10, we had high hopes for the keyboard which appeared to be nice and big. The LAPTOP review says that the keyboard is 93% full sized, and the key placement is nearly perfect. This is great to know when several netbook alternatives have the extremely annoying tiny right shift key, to the right of the up arrow. Unless you are Raon and like to use optical mice to save space on your computers; a large keyboard means that you will have to sacrifice space for some other parts of the netbook, such as the trackpad. LAPTOP tells us that the trackpad is undersized.

In addition to a great keyboard, the NC10 also boasts an impressive battery. A 6-cell battery is standard on the NC10 and will provide you with 7+ hours of use LAPTOP tested the battery with continuous Wi-Fi web surfing and 50% battery life screen brightness; the NC10 responded with an impressive 7 hours and 34 minutes of run time!

Chippy’s Update: Laptopmag ran a second test with 100% screen brightness and got just under 5hrs of wifi-on surfing time. They will re-run the tests with 50% screen brightness to double-check that the screen backlight is having such a big effect. In my opinion, 50% screen brightness could easilty add 2W to the overall drain if it’s a big, bright screen and make a huge difference. Keep a watch on the Laptopmag NC10 review page 3 for updates.

Swing by LaptopMag.com for the full review.