This is my second Lenovo notebook -- the other being an R61. Based on my excellent experience with the R61 (the best built, most reliable, sturdy laptop I have ever owned), I bypassed other netbooks available in the local stores to order the S10. The advantage with the one listed on Amazon is the expanded memory and larger hard drive. I wish manufacturers would package other computers the way Lenovo has done with the S10 -- straight forward without all the useless software I would end up taking off anyway. The machine is amazingly quick and does what it is designed for exceptionally well. The only real quirk as shipped was the use of a FAT32 file system on the primary partition of the hard drive that runs XP. That was easily changed to NTFS using the XP convert utility. When I was downloading files, I connect the S10 to an USB port that hosts various optical drives, a very old HP printer, and a variety of hard drives. It recognized all of them. It is hard to imagine that the S10 is probably half the weight of my first 40MB hard drive and cost less. Battery life on both this and the R61 are modest, but for me, the quality outweighs this 'minus'.

I love the size and design of this laptop but the damn 3 cell really was a deal breaker where i got the Samsung nc10 6 cell instead. I called Lenovo and they said they won't have a 6 cell version till end of dec or jan....bummer. This was really a bad mistake on Lenovo part.

Bought this little beauty and have had it about 3 days, and I have to say I absolutely love it. Compared to many of the other netbooks I've tried out (ASUS, Acer, etc), this one is so sturdy and has such a nice fit and finish. The screen is bright and vibrant. If you're thinking about this netbook versus another, pick this one! You will not be dissapointed.

I wanted a light, low cost mini notebook that would allow me to journal, do computations, and access limited internet.. in essence, a machine suited for jotting notes and to travel with on short business trips. As I intend to make short video messages for my children, the larger 160G HD was also appealing. And, I needed Windows to communicate (virtual tunnel) with my company's systems & MS Office formatted files. I also wanted a 10" machine as smaller ones (8.9") are harder to read (especially for those of us in the latter half of a career). I bought the Lenovo (3 days ago) on the basis of the company's reputation and some e-zine reviews. I selected it from the internet and did not view it in advance, contrary to my usual rule of 'don't buy unless the object has been seen in real time". I paid $463 for the 10", 1m memory, 160HD, XP system Ideapad, including 2 day shipment.

The keyboard is nice. I can type with relatively few errors. (My hands are not big). With only 1M memory, the XP system boots relatively quickly, something else that I am pleased with. The display is good. And, the webcam helps produced satisfactory 'talking head' movies. However, what takes away from the machine's attractiveness is that other than IE, there are few MS products, including the usual complementary MS Works. As a minimum, Works should have been installed. So, I will install Open Office or AbiWord, etc. The second shortfall is that of the 160 HD, only 100 G is available to the user. 30G is taken up with system and Lenovo's unique 'One touch' backup/restore system that makes a mirror image BU takes up another 30G of hidden HD space. Bottom line: I'm only getting 60% of the advertised HD space for my own use.

In short, I think I will be happy with the machine, but will have some lingering resentment over the lack of MS Works (cheap!), and the reduced HD space. I intend to buy an additional battery (relatively small & lightweight) to carry on flights longer than 3 hours. Should some improved version come out, I may let my children take over the machine and move onto a new & improved version.

I'm comparing this with my wife's Asus 901. The Lenovo build quality (and style/design) are really quite good, and it feels more solid than the Asus. Bigger keyboard, slightly better trackpad, bigger screen. I immediately installed Ubuntu Linux and its quite speedy, and suspend/hibernate are flawless. The biggest problem is the battery life: I haven't done a quantitative comparison, but the Asus battery lasts much longer - I plan to order a 6-cell battery if/when they're available. I've tweaked power performance with PowerTop, but its still not what I would want for a long trip. Its a shame to have to plug something so portable into the wall!

FWIW, I actually ordered the 512MB memory and 80GB hard drive, and they're plenty, at least for Linux. I can't imagine what I would want a 160GB hard drive on something like this, unless you were storing your DVD collection for travel (see battery life issue, above).