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After months of pining and researching, I finally bit the bullet and bought a netbook. During my research, I checked out the netbook offerings of Samsung, Dell, HP, Acer and Asus. In the end, I went with the Samsung NC10 (model code NP-NC10-KA05CA). In this nerdboys.com exclusive, I’ll review my new “Sammy” netbook.
I have never owned a netbook before but I had a pretty good idea of which features were important to me before I went shopping. My number one concern was battery life. If I’m truly going to go ultra-portable, I don’t want to be tethered to an electrical outlet. My goal was to have enough battery life so that I could charge the netbook on Sunday night and then use it every day at lunchtime without having to charge it again until Friday night. I figured that I would probably need a 6-cell battery to fulfill that criteria. Unfortunately, at least in Canada, most of the netbooks currently come with only a wimpy 3-cell battery. The Samsung NC10 is one of the few netbooks that comes standard with a 6-cell battery.
I also considered buying a 3-cell model and then upgrading to a 6-cell battery. For example, I could have bought the Dell Mini 10V and paid an extra CAD$40 to upgrade the battery. Similarly, I could have bought something like the Acer Aspire One AOD-250 with a standard 3-cell battery and then bought a 6-cell battery separately from a battery retailer; prices for that battery ranged from about CAD$50 for a 3rd party eBay battery to CAD$110 for a genuine Acer battery. Both the Dell and the Acer routes would have ended up costing me more than getting an NC10 with a standard 6-cell. If you truly want a 6-cell netbook, it just makes sense (to me, anyway) to buy one that comes with a standard 6-cell battery.
Some of the other important factors I considered were keyboard layout, build quality, touch pad ergonomics, memory upgradeability and price. In all of the reviews I read, the NC10 scored high for these factors.
With a model chosen, it was time to go shopping.
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