Samsung NC10

Full specifications | 2 Comments

Review

If you’ve ever wondered why all netbooks are essentially the same, thank Microsoft. As part of the deal that allows OEMs to keep using the technically-obsolete Windows XP on their low-power portables, Microsoft stipulates that processors must stay single-core, and that screens and hard disks don’t exceed 10.2in and 80Gb, respectively (although it did recently relax those limits).

In fact the only areas where manufacturers can really add value is in design and battery life – Asus certainly scored here with its Eee PC S101, but its price was a bit too high for our liking. Not so the Samsung NC10 – it too is a long-lasting looker, but its price tag is far more in keeping with the original low-cost laptop idea.

We won’t dwell too much on the NC10’s specification, since it’s essentially the same as that of the MSI Wind U100, Asus Eee PC 901 and 1000, LG X110 and, well, just about all of the other Intel Atom-powered netbooks. Its 160Gb hard disk is the largest permitted by Microsoft’s current Windows XP T&Cs, but there’s no onboard 3G – one valuable feature that most netbook manufacturers are being slow to implement.

The Samsung NC10 is, however, one of the best-looking netbooks we’ve seen so far – not quite on a par with the Eee PC S101, but not far off. The matte case (available in black, white and blue) is rounded in all the right places and offset by a silver strip that runs around the netbooks sides. The overall effect is that the NC10 is a particularly compact (and suitably pricey) ultraportable rather than a netbook, and that’s an effect we like.

Samsung hasn’t done anything new with the NC10’s 10.2in, 1024 x 600 screen, other than make it extremely bright and vibrant – again, it’s one of the best we’ve seen on any netbook. It’s sits on a similar pair of hinges as the screens on the MSI Wind and LG X110, but they’re much stiffer and the NC10 doesn’t suffer from the same annoying screen wobble.

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Our automatic price checker has found 3 variants of the Samsung NP-NC10