Putting the S10 in LS10

One of the biggest challenges for me the last couple of years is lugging my laptop around.  My everyday machine is a Lenovo T400, which serves me well, but with a 9 Cell battery weighs in at 5lb 10oz, and takes up a fair amount of space in the back pack.

I mainly use my laptop at Lotusphere for blogging, and since I am using the Notes based BlogSphere template for this blog, my blogging client is Lotus notes. This year I will be leaving the T400 home and instead bringing the new Lenovo S10 Netbook that arrived a couple of days ago.

Weighing in at 2 lbs 4 oz, and small it will be a lot lighter and take up much less space in my backpack. I have been playing with it for a couple of days now, and it would appear to be more then adequate for my on the go computing needs, with 2 GB of RAM Notes 8.5.1 is running fine, and if squeezed for memory I can always revert to the standard configuration.

The biggest adjustment for me so far is getting used to the Trackpad, I have never been a fan of the Trackpad, but short of attaching an external mouse that is the only option on the S10, so I am slowly asjusting to being a Trackpad user.  One of the things about the Trackpad is that it is like a Bluetooth headset.  The headsets come with one or two buttons which if you can remember all the varieties of push sequences actually do quite a bit, but I can never remember the sequences so I don’t use them.

Here is a video I found showing a number of the possibilities with the Touchpad, but am I really going to remember them all, I don’t think so.

Another nice feature is the integrated webcam, which can also be used to optically log on to Windows, instead of typing a password.  On my T400 I use the Fingerprint reader which is a little faster then the optical scan, but it works. One of the more interesting features is the Quick Start mode, which is a stripped down Linux OS which boots almost instantaneously, and provides access to a Web Browser, Skype, Photos and Music (with access to the hard drive), and a Chat client , they appear to be using Splashtop to run this.  Here is their demo.

I don’t think this would ever become my primary machine, but it will be a real nice option for traveling, and especially for making Lotusphere a little easier for me to get around this year.