Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook new items from around the web.

• Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 reviewed, deemed a mixed bag – Looks like the second version of the Lenovo netbook, the S10-2 [Portal page], has been reviewed by Laptop Magazine, and while Brad of Liliputing thinks that is scores pretty well in Laptop’s tests, it seems that the reviewers didn’t like the aesthetic appearance of the unit.
• BenQ Lanuches Joybook Lite U102, Rights Wrongs – From netbooknews.com, we see that BenQ releases the Joybook Lite U102, which brings some evolutionary upgrades to the table over the previous U101 model.
• NEC’s latest netbook boasts an 8.5 hour battery – NEC’s LaVie Light Lui netbook runs for nearly 8.5 hours on a single charge. Pretty good, specs are predictable netbook specs (Atom, 1GB of RAM, 1024×600, yadda yadda…)
• NVIDIA ION Netbooks from Computex – A video from netbooknews.com that shows three NVIDIA ION based netbooks.
• Asus Seashell Eee PCs to Come in Four New Colors – Looks like the Asus Eee 1005HA [Portal page] and 1008HA [Portal page] will be released in a total of 6 colors, 4 brand new ones including pink, blue, ruby red, and sapphire blue. Swing through the link to see images of the netbooks with their new colors on. I like the sapphire the best!
• Shadowy modder gives Eee PC a risky back alley trackball implant – Pretty interesting mod puts a trackball directly into the case of an Eee 901. More interesting yet: the trackball is from an Apple ‘Mighty Mouse’. It is just me or does that ball look to big to be from one of those mice? Maybe its just me… looks to be good for scrolling regardless.
• How-to: Internal 3G to Samsung NC10. The easy way – Jkk helps you understand how to get 3G in your Samsung NC10.

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Weekly Netbook Roundup. Lets see the interesting things that have gone on in the netbook space since we last spoke.

• Special edition Samsung NC10 with larger battery available for preorder — Looks like Amazon is selling a special version of the NC10 with a larger trackpad and battery (5900mAh 6-cell) which Samsung says will last for 9.4 hours. The screen on this version will be glossy unlike the original matte version. You can pick one up for $499.

• Sony Vaio P (VGN-P588E) performance and benchmarks — Jenn from Pocketables.net takes the VAIO P for a spin and shows us lots of good stats on how the computer performs. Some people don’t think the VAIO P is a netbook, but for some reason we included it here in the WNR. Controversy!

• Hands on with the Acer Aspire One D150 – Video — Sascha from netbooknews.de has a good hands on video of the Acer Aspire One D150. He doesn’t seem to be thrilled with the keyboard and says he is disappointed at the quality of the Aspire One D150 considering how successful the original Aspire One was, and that this is a second-gen netbook.

• Dell’s Mini 9 selling for just $249 — who needs a subsidy? — Looks like Dell has cut the price on its Inspiron Mini 9 [Portal page] netbook. You can pick up the lowest-speced Mini 9 which has 512MB of RAM, Ubuntu, and a 4GB SSD. Add $50 and you’ll get another 4GB of storage and Windows XP.

• Netbook growth leads to surge in Windows XP sales — Despite many netbook makers offering Linux flavors of their netbooks, XP is hugely popular, effecting OS sales charts on all PC sales, not just netbooks. “In December, 13.7% of all laptops sold, and 11.2% of all computers were running Windows XP.”.

• More rumored Dell Mini 10 details, colors surface — More information on Dells upcoming Mini 10 netbook. Apparently some leaked information (which isn’t confirmed to be true yet) has indicated that the Mini 10 will be available with two different display options, 1024 x 576 and 1366 x 768. Also contained in the leak is the option of 1.3GHz or 1.6GHz CPU, 3 or 6-cell battery, and something referred to as a “DVD slice” which sounds… interesting.

That’s all for this week. Tune in next time to the Weekly Netbook Roundup next monday!

The hard working guys over at UMPCFever in Hong Kong have completed a set of tests on the battery life of the Samsung NC10. The results range from 4hrs 42 mins right up to over 8hrs. Heavy web browsing returned over 6hrs which is an excelent result for any laptop.

Source:UMPCFever

More NC10 news here and here.

It’s simply amazing that netbooks have reached almost every sales channel possible in such a short time. This video clip from shopping channel QVC in the UK is actually pretty good and gives you a good overview of the device.

Click the image on the right for the specs and links.

Via EeePCNews.de

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)

I apologise for my possibly over-extended coverage of the Samsung NC10 battery life. This will be the last post on the matter I promise.

As we’ve seen in previous Laptop Magazine tests and my brief hands-on last Saturday, the NC10 turns in some impressive battery drain figures.

Laptop Magazine have taken the testing a step further and pushed the NC10 to the absolute limit by dropping in an SSD and disabling the BT radio on their web browsing tests. The result…nearly 8 hours of surfing at minimum brightness.

While this may not be the best of real-life tests, it shows that the underpinnings are efficient and that’s exactly what you need on a mobile device.

The NC10 shouldn’t just be crowned the best netbook out there, it should be crowned the best consumer laptop out there. 10" and an Atom 1.6Ghz is good enough for 9/10 consumers so expect it to eat well into 12 and even 15.4" low-end laptop sales.

All the NC10 details and links to reports in the NC10 reference page.

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