The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 is the first low-cost notebook or netbook from the PC vendor and this new laptop offers an Intel Atom processor along with a $399 starting price. The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 will compete against netbook offerings from HP, Asus and others.
Lenovo is joining the low-cost notebook parade with a $399 laptop.
On Aug. 4, Lenovo released its first low-cost notebook, or
"netbook," called the IdeaPad S10, which will have a 10.2-inch wide
display and use Intel's Atom processor. Lenovo, best known for its
business-class ThinkPad notebooks, first introduced
the
IdeaPad line in January as a way to make headway in the red-hot consumer laptop
market.
The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 will be available in October.
For now, Lenovo and other PC vendors, such as
Hewlett-Packard,
Panasonic and Asustek Computer, are targeting this new class of netbooks at
consumers and users in emerging markets that need an inexpensive way to
access the Internet. Some analysts believe that the
netbook
will also make inroads in the business market as a low-cost,
easier-to-handle traveling companion.
Dell is also planning to enter the netbook market and it could have its
low-cost laptop ready within the next month.
The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 also comes at a time when
Intel
is looking to build out an entirely new market based around its low-cost,
low-power Atom processors. While Intel and its executives have talked
glowingly about the netbook market, it's not clear whether netbooks will take
off in the volume that Intel and its OEM partners expect.
IDC
has predicted that the low-cost PC market will hit $3 billion in revenues
in 2012, just a small fraction of the overall PC market, which is expected to
reach $286 billion in 2008.
"At this point, you can expect all the major players to get into this
market," said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC.
"The question is, What is their level of commitment and what is their
target audience and how much do they expect it to grow? A lot of the companies
I talk to say, 'We're doing this as a defensive measure and we're concerned
about the success of some of the more aggressive players that have entered this
market.' The coals are also being stoked by Intel, which has a pretty heavy
investment in the Atom processor."
In addition to Intel,
Via
Technologies is also offering a chip, the VIA Nano, for this netbook market
and HP has tapped an older version of a Via processor for its Mini-Note PC.
Intel has also used a version of its Celeron microprocessor. The other major
x86 chip maker,
Advanced
Micro Devices, has signaled that it does not plan to enter the netbook market
just yet, but AMD has left the door open
to jumping in with its own processor at a later date.
The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 will use the Intel Atom N270 processor-1.6GHz, 512KB
of Level 2 cache, and 533MHz front side bus-and the Intel 945 GSE
chip set, along with the 10.2-inch screen and built-in Wi-Fi technology. The
$399 model will offer 512MB RAM and 80GB of
hard disk drive capacity, while the $499 model boosts the memory up to 1GB RAM
and 160GB capacity.
Unlike the HP Mini-Note laptop, which offers several versions of Linux as an
operating system, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 will come with only Microsoft Windows
XP Home Edition, which is not surprising, as Lenovo has not pushed Linux as
aggressively as Dell or some of the other major PC vendors. The 10-inch screen
of the IdeaPad S10 is also larger than the typical 7- or 8-inch screens that
other OEMs have offered so far.
While most of the first-generation netbook laptops have similar features, Shim
said, Lenovo has moved to differentiate the IdeaPad S10 from other notebooks.
"A lot of these products are the same," Shim
said. "The difference here is that the configurations from Lenovo are a
little more aggressive. They have a little larger screen than some of the
others, a bigger hard drive and a fairly aggressive price point."
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