Samsung NC10

They make less money on the XP for Ultra low cost PCs license. They'd rather sell full licenses.

I read the license is also limited to 1024*600.

I think it's a bad decision by Microsoft. Netbooks are taking over the market place, and MS and Intel are artifically limiting their growth.

 

So I can definately go ahead and get the NC10, safe in the knowledge that a USB CD/DVD drive will allow me to install XP Pro?

 

i agree about netbooks taking over.

i already see theres a gaming netbook out (asus n10j) and i really do foresee more of them getting released aswell.

i think people want small and compact + cheap + powerful.

i know netbooks arent designed for games, but you can run games on em and a lot of people (me included) are getting them as light gaming mini laptops.

i also dont understand intel limiting the atom dual core. i would have thought the atom was solely designed with these types of small machines in mind!?
no way id use an atom in a full size laptop when core2duo's work in them. (unless the atom was ultimately faster)

 

Hi,
Been lurking from the beggining of this thread.
googled to the point of obsession to find a proper notebook that has similar capabilities of a laptop.
I have to say that this notebook to my knowledge has had more positive reviews than any other notebooks.
Here are my questions.
Please bear with me, I am a certified ignorant so not tecchy at all.

I will solely use the NC10 as an extra PC at my house, since my wife has the monopoly of the PC.
So it would be incredibly handy being wireless and light weight.

The questions
Would it be ok to download movies on it? (divx format)
My PC at home has XP pro, any major difference with the XP home?
Thats all really.
Thanks in advance.

P.S I will purchase it before christmas.

 

You should definitely be ok to watch movies and interact with your other computer.

 

I installed Vista last night via a portable LG USB burner. Wasn't a problem.

I just watched a 3 hour long Bollywood AVI on my NC10 hooked up to a LCD at 1680x1050. It played without a hitch though Windows DreamScene kills the CPU at 95%.

 

Collected my NC10 a while ago. (Excellent service from Elara!) Only after taking it out of the box but I'm already impressed. Feels very sturdy and well put together.

 

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

my opinion is that home is perfectly fine for netbooks and professional is overkill on such small, closed systems.

 

My blue NC10 from Amazon US (preordered on October 19) shipped today. With two day shipping and the Thanksgiving holiday it's scheduled to arrive Monday.

FuelScience

 

Excellent! Thankyou very much good sir!

Rep added!

 

Captain Fail, I would say go for it. The Samsung TruDirect SE-T084 external dvd writer cost me $99 from Newegg and I have had no issues, fully functional. I will warn you that one person who recently purchased this item there has posted negative comments, but mine has been flawless in its operation. The little unit is compact and can travel, but it is a little heavier than I thought it would be. It is a pearly white, by the way, that matches Little Sammy. Different models by Samsung, and others, are larger, heavier, and cheaper.

thatsme1010, I think Windows XP Home is quite good. There were some early security flaws, etc., so it is up to Service Pack 3. Fortunately, Little Sammy came with SP3 installed. Maybe the biggest practical difference between XP Pro and Home are the backup and restore functions. Again, Samsung provides its own backup software (and recovery disks) to augument what Home lacks. Some of the more techno savvy folks may have the details, but that is what jumps out at me right now.

Prices are dropping each day. I wonder how the supply is with the growing demand? That is why I went ahead and ordered, sight unseen. All who have examined Little Sammy have been quite impressed. No brag, just fact.

 

LG makes very good USB powered external drives too like GSA-E50. I doubt it will be any heavier than the Samsung. I owned one, it was light and small.

 

Thanks for the reply, and to Focal for the link, I should have googled it my self.
Anyway I am looking forward to get it.

 

Thanks, so I read.
Then I wouldn"t need to think about to upgrade to pro.
I wonder if is better to buy it after Christmas.
the time it came out in the UK from Samsang was 275 quids total, if you of course collect it your self, now when I looked at their site lat time it went up.
is it going to go down? I wonder

 

Actually, the real difference between Windows XP Home and Professional is that networking features are better in Professional. The ability to connect one computer to another (e.g., Remote Desktop) is better, but you can always use some 3rd party program to do things like that as well.

By the way, the blue NC10 is now hitting the United States. I would like to get one, but would like to see one in person to see if I like the blue color. Also, I think the price of $500 is waay too much, especially if Samsung's competitor, the Asus Eee PC 1000H, will go on sale this weekend for $400

 

Re the slim optical drives, I've had both the Samsung SE-T084L and the LG GSA-E50L. The LG is slightly lighter (400g vs 420, without cables, etc).

Also, my SE-T084L would only run at half speed on USB power. It needed the supplied mains PSU connected to run at full power. The LG burner worked fine on USB power also with every notebook I tried (including the NC10).

The SE-T084L is the only slot loader I know of which claims to support 8cm discs. However, on one occasion it refused to eject the disc. Thereafter I have decided that tray loaders are less hassle.

John

 

Just asking a stupid question, but if i replace the original wifi card with the wifi 5300 card n, will there be any conflicts with the bluetooth, also is there a specific model of thw 5300 that i need, because online some say "only for HP IBM LENOVO" also where can i purchase the 3rd aerial? i've looked on ebay but all i saw were aerials for wireless routers.

 

I cant seem to find it, but is there a service manual for a nc10?
If i can find one and see how easy it is to change the wifi card, hdd and ram i'm going to pick it up as soon as i find a deal. I was debating between this and a dell mini 9 but ultimately i decided to go with the NC10. Its not that much more.

(i have a white one sitting in my cart on amazon)

 

Got my white NC10 that I ordered on ebay yesterday. I love it, but my wife is making fun of how girly it looks.

I have 2 usability complaints:
The track pad is way to small and awkwardly placed. They should have added that nipple controller that Lenovo laptops have.

The feet on the battery are small and sharp and dig into my legs when I have the netbook on my lap. If they made them just a little wider, I would have been happy.

Other than that, all the things your read about how great this netbook is are true. It's very solid, screen is great and very bright, it's fast for all internet activity, even the new HD youtube content, keyboard is great to type on and the battery lasts for ever. I'm still on my first charge.

I'm glad I bought it.

 

Does anyone know if the white one gets dirty?

I'm getting a black and a white one tomorrow, I'm going to sell one. Just not sure which.

I agree it would have been nice if it was bigger. But, if you set the sensitivity to max you'll get used to it. At least I did and now it no longer bothers me.

 

I placed my order on amazon for a white NC10...

now i wait patiently since its on backorder...

 

Does samsung's 1 yr warranty still apply if you buy it off ebay, since its not a authorized reseller?

 

Phil, I thought you already have the white?

 

True I did. But then someone offered me a bit more than I paid so I sold it.

Now I managed to buy a black and a white one for a better price. They're ariving today, the black is open box so I can check it out.

I'm just wondering how white the white will stay over time. Any idea?

 

No clue, though knowing Samsung quality, it should hold up OK. However, you go through your laptops faster than most people so I don't think you need to worry about it

 

good point. I probably won't keep it long enough to see it turn yellow.

 

All the reviews are very positive. I still don't know if I should buy it or not to replace my Dell X1. Dell X1 has a more professional look (silver, matte lid) and is lighter than NC10 although it has 12.1" screen. The battery life of NC10 is far better though. With the Cashback Live and Ebay coupon, I just can't resist buying it. Does 12.1" vs. 10.2" make a real difference?

 

Come on buy it. I know you want to

1280 x 768 vs. 1024*600 will not be a big difference.

The hard drive and CPU of the NC10 will be a lot faster and display quality will also be better.

 

I have not been able to load the Trudirect and the Nero software which came with the Samsung SE-T804 DVD player. I get an error message that says my screen resolution is too small. Did you run into the problem? Does anyone know how to get around this problem?

 

I would love to see some BIG pics of the NC10 - in black! before I jump the gun on Amazon

 

Hello, Philflow,

You are clearly the resident fountain of wisdom on this site ( ), so I hesitate to contradict you -- but I must say that I demur on your assessment of the aspect ratios.

I have a JVC 7310 with the 1024x600 graphics, and though it has been a great little machine in almost every way, I have found the aspect ratio quite irritating in prolonged use. It makes for a lot more scrolling than one would imagine.

Now I haven't minded it on my JVC because it's so tiny (8.8" x 7" x 1", 2.2 pounds) and I get sufficient value for the size, but when the machine starts getting as big as the NC10, I must say that I would demand a little more screen real estate...

Just my .02...

 

My NC10 came in today, and i'm very happy with the sleek features this device has! I'll have this device for a while so i'm going to do the standard upgrades.

is there a vid or tutorial on how to update the RAM? I know there's one for updating the HD.

 

Catcha please give us PICS

 

the ram is accessed the same way, its right there when you open it up.

 

Here's a back view and a front view, with my 14.1" E6400 for scale. (Note that the US keyboard will have a bigger right shift key).

John

 

I have owned a 12.1 1280x768 Samsung and i also used a 10.6 1280x768 for a while and the size difference was noticeable. I can work on a small notebook but if i was going to use it for extended periods the 12.1 would probably be my cut of point.
For some people a 12.1" is their cut of point.

John i was surprised to read that you bought this notebook as you always said that you did not like notebooks this small.

 

Okay, I'll do it that way Eork. And i've decided to get the "Crucial 2GB 667MHZ DDR2 Sodimm" RAM off ebay. Now, i'll get the Seagate Momentus 320gb off newegg.

I'm still not sure how to exactly use Acronis True Image to reinstall the OS though. I wish instructions were more clear. At the end of the tutorial video, they mention going into the bios and then state they are now ready to install the OS. Okay, but there are other steps you have to take!

For example, did they make the back up on an external HD that they will transfer the image to the new HD? Are they going to read this image from the USB enabled external HD? How will the bios detect this image? Why is the software simple to use?

The manual labor to me isn't the difficult part, but using this software.

Sorry for my rant...

 

It was too tempting (I see the price has now gone up). I thought it woulod be better to have some first hand experience on the usability. One aspect where the NC10 scores over the Tosh R500 is that the fan is almost inaudible.

The 600 pixel high display is OK for web browsing and email (which is the target market for netbooks) but less suited for working with documents.

BTW, for the people upgrading their RAM: I like the very fast hibernation / resume time that I get with 1GB.

John

 

Tyty!!!! Glossy case!

 

Yes, free mirror! But you quickly get used to a few finger-prints. Anyway, you don't see the shiny bit when it's in use.

John

 

Well I half agree, it's not ideal. But I said it's not a big difference between 768 and 600.

What I do for better scrolling is press F11 in Firefox, which makes the vertical space as big as a 768 screen would normally be.

In my opinion it works fine.

 

How do I delete the "My Bluetooth Places" icon from my desktop? I tried to put it in the Recycle Bin but it won't allow it. Little things like this annoys me...

Solution: If you just want the icon off the desktop then right click on the desktop, go to properties, choose desktop tab, customize desktop, clean desktop now, start the wizard, click the bluetooth checkbox tab and apply the changes. It'll put the icon in a folder on the desktop. Delete the folder and its gone.

 

Guys what network card do you have in your NC10?

I have Atheros and it's reception is ok but not very strong. I'm wondering if they all come with Atheros or not.

 

I have Atheros as well, and it's not picking up my verizon wireless too well. It is picking up my neighbors wireless EXTREMELY well. Thank goodness it's unsecure...

 

US Buyers: Newegg has BLUE in stock right now for $470 (marked as $500 but you get $30 instant off), and 320gb seagate and WD HDDS for $89. (I got the seagate because it has better specs including lower power usage).

I would also suggest the G.SKILL 2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) that is currently at $24.99

(oh I see the other forum already beat me to this)

 

Ah -- but the 768 would give you yet more screen space using the same mode...

Actually, I'm not arguing with you. As I said, I've been happy with my JVC 7310 with the same screen real estate as the NC. But since you were addressing a user who seemed to have some hesitancy about making the plunge, I thought he should have all available data to ponder...

 

Free shipping on the White one; no free shipping on the blue, boo hoo.

 

I just got my white NC10, pretty much adoring it. The atom has been impressing me so far. I do agree though that I would not plan on writing a long essays on it. My biggest problem is i find that the hinge is a little weak. Has anyone else felt that way? Should I sent it to Samsung about it?

 

Catchafire..
1. Install, run Acronis. 2. Make Bootable media (Recovery Disk) (usually CD) 3. use Acronis to make Image (on a USB Stick or external HDD).
4. Close down windows/computer and Replace the HDD - NOW restart - going into BIOS to set 1st Boot device to CD (that's why the BIOS bit)
5. with the Acronis Recovery disk in CD Drive; computer will boot into Acronis
6. select Recovery mode 7. select Image (on the USB Stick or external HDD) follow onscreen prompts to copy it to new HDD.
8. exit Acronis, restart computer (probably automatic)
9. dive into BIOS again and reset Boot choice to HDD (Or make sure CD is NOT in CD Drive)
10. Wallow in the glory of your fully working NC10 with upgraded HDD.
Not quite 1,2 3 but God willing, a guide for others too

Brian

 

If anyone is upgrading to Seagate 7200.3 I have a request. Please measure for the old HD and new HD how long it takes (for example) to boot, hibernate, load a big program, open up a 40 MB picture or document and copy a 500GB directory (on the same hd).