[bcab] Samsung NC 10 netbook

Hi all.

I have mentioned this netbook before and read quite a few reviews and comments 
here and there.  A google search for Samsung NC10 review will bring up plenty.  
Essentially the common view is generally that the Samsung NC10 is the top dog 
at the moment.  It was £299 though I believe that PC World sell it for £320 now.

I never got to really look at one in PC World but today I got chance to set one 
up from scratch and do some work on another to get them both up to the same 
spec.  Essentially they were well behaved machines that worked well with JAWS 
and should work well with other screenreaders.  They use the Intel GMA950 
chipset I think.

Reviews say they look more like a professional ultraportable than the MSI Wind, 
Advent 4211 etc. and I would agree with this.  They are certainly a bit less 
curvy.  The keyboard feels good to use and is generally well laid out but you 
gain a page up and a page down key to either side of the up arrow key but as a 
result the right shift key is rather small and feels too far over to the right. 
 The Control key is on the left however and the keyboard is perfectly 
comfortable to use.  You can turn off the mouse pad with FN key f10 which is 
good to know.

In some reports, it has been suggested that the hinge could be a little weak.  
It felt reasonable to me and not all reviewers say the hinge is week though if 
you move the display sharply during use the screen can flex causing a ripple 
effect to appear.  Ports stick out very slightly from the case as plastic 
moulding sticks out a fraction to hold them.  The battery sticks out a 
centimetre perhaps from the bottom of the machine.  It is a little more back 
heavy than the MSI Wind but not much.  

The basic building blocks and spec in terms of connectivity are the same as the 
MSI Wind and indeed many of the other netbooks using the Atom 270 chips.  You 
do get a considerably better built in mike in the Samsung NC10 though which 
could be useful if you need to make a quick skype call somewhere.

The NC10 does come with quite a lot of software including a recovery tool that 
keeps popping up until you run it.  It puts an image of your windows setup into 
the D drive which is a partition of the hard disk.  The hard disk is in fact 
split in half giving about 70 gig each I believe.  This recovery program 
reboots and asks a couple of questions before starting the recovery so if you 
want to do the recovery you will need sighted assistance.  Otherwise you could 
just uninstall it but things could be problematic if your hard disk dies.

I have now come across Mcafee Internet Security on 2 PCs running Vista and 3 
running Windows XP in the last couple of weeks.  On the NC10 you get the 
software half installed.  You need to install it fully if you really must use 
this software.  I have seen few programs that seem to slow even the fastest PCs 
down so much.  Removing Mcafee is best done by clicking the remind me later 
button that comes up in the Mcafee window.  This is spoken when you tab to it y 
Narator but not JAWS.  Go to add/remove programs and remove Mcafee security as 
soon as possible.  Use separate fire walls, spyware protection and antivirus 
programs or give the beta of Nod32 a go.

Over all, if I were buying a netbook today I would go for the NC10 at the 
moment.

Regards

Graham

Graham Page
Home Phone: 0207 265 9493
Mobile: 07753 607980
Fax:  0870 706 2773
Email: gpage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
MSN: gabriel_mcbird@xxxxxxxxxxx
Skype: gabriel_mcbird


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