Hands-On: Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 and S10-3t

I was really curious about all the raving about the new Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t and its S10-3 sibling so I headed out and checked it out myself in the nearest Lenovo shop.

I wasn’t disappointed. The demo unit was running Windows 7 and as mentioned by other testers, the screen is a bit slow when using touch and multitouch but it was very nice on the eyes. The swivel looked tough enough so you didn’t need to worry about switching from netbook form to tablet form often.

The device looks a bit longer due to the shortening of the palm rest space to accomodate the tablet form. This might be a problem with typists as you won’t have enough space to rest your palms for fast typing. On the other hand, the keyboard is really big and comfortable.

The power button is on the LCD bezel as well as some of the other access keys so that they can be used when the unit is swiveled. I didn’t like the lid design though and they said only one design is available. The battery also juts out at the back which while isn’t adding to the aesthetics, it can be used as sort of a handle when using the device as a tablet.

The bottom panel is easily removable with only a few screws to remove and you can swap out the drive and the RAM. The unit I held also had a SIM slot for 3G but the sales guy couldn’t clue me in if this particular model actually had a 3G module on-board. Other similar netbooks did have a similar slot but had their module removed to avoid delays due to regulation approvals.

I also was able to check out the S10-3 and it features the same excellent keyboard and a slightly thinner chassis. It also was a bit stingy on the palm rest space like the S10-3t. Check out the pics I shot below.