The Lenovo IdeaPad S-12 Netbook Review

My latest netbook discovery is the latest technological exquisiteness from Lenovo. They are blurring the line between netbook and notebook. Although you do get a larger sized screen and up to 320 Gb hard drive space, it is still considered a netbook. It is still small enough to be a netbook, has the Atom Processor, which is common for all netbooks, and does not have a DVD drive.

The price is still very competitive; however, the upper end S12 is closer to a notebook price. The thing I find great is the one year warranty not only on the netbook itself, but the battery as well. Some companies these days have limited warranties and have minimal coverage on the batteries. Some only up to 6 months! Another great plus on this netbook is the fact that on the upper end models you get a NVidia Ion 256mb graphics card. That means you have 256Mb of dedicated graphics for games, video, etc. To have a dedicated video card on a netbook is a huge plus.

There are the usual USB ports, and wireless card that are similar to all the others; however there are a few more differences. Lenovo on all the models have a 6 cell battery, which means longer battery life. Most common these days are the 3 cell batteries, which barely last 2 hours. Also, on the upper end models you get Windows 7 Premium, Bluetooth, and 3Gb of RAM.

All in all, if you like netbooks, and don't like the heavy look and feel of a regular laptop, the Lenovo S12 will be the perfect netbook for you. Here is the Lenovo S12 with both the upper end and lower end model specs:

Processor
VIA Nano ULV 2250 1.30GHz 800MHz 1MB
Intel ATOM Processor N270 Single Core1.60GHz 533MHz 512KB
Operating system
Genuine Windows XP Home Edition
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 32
Graphics
VIA Integrated graphics - Chrome9 HC3
NVIDIA ION 256MB
Memory
1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz
3 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz
Display
12.1 " WXGA TFT 1280x800
Pointing device
Industry Standard Touchpad
Hard Drive
160GB 5400
320GB 5400
Battery
6 Cell Lithium-Ion
Network Card
Broadcom 11b/g Wi-Fi wireless
Bluetooth
n/a
Bluetooth Version 2.1 + EDR
Warranty
One year parts and labor (system battery: one year)