New netbook

I finally caved and bought myself a netbook, an Ideapad S10 (Lenovo lowered the price enough that the IBM EPP made it significantly cheaper than getting a Dell Mini 9). I immediately stripped off WinXP and installed Ubuntu with the netbook remix. So far I like the remix; it’s a nice way of laying out the UI to handle the reduced screen space.

I also decided to install the Windows 7 beta (making the netbook dual boot) to kick its tires.  I have to say, it’s not nearly as crappy as Vista; on the S10 it’s actually relatively peppy (granted I installed extra memory to bring it to 1.5 GB), so presumably it’ll be very nice on more powerful machines.  Not that I’d give up OS X anytime soon as my OS of choice, but 7 is definitely less of an embarrassment for Microsoft. I’d certainly replace XP with it, at least so far (something I wouldn’t say for Vista).

While I’ve only had it a week so far, my overall impression of the S10 is positive.  Small, light, and responsive. The 3 cell battery isn’t great, but I’m assuming at some point Lenovo will let me buy a 6 cell for longer trips.  My only real gripe is the right Shift key; it’s half size, so I keep hitting the up arrow when trying to capitalize.  I’ll have to train myself to use the left shift key more, or stretch more with my pinky.  But aside from that it’s been all good.