Time to blog about something a little different. I can’t explain how tedious it gets to always blog about the project and ignore my tendencies to wanna talk about things that interest me. Well anyway I was given a nice Christmas present this year of a Lenovo 100S by my most wonderful girlfriend. This is to replace my aging Emachines E350 which I have used over the years.
Its a very sleek looking little machine. Here is a breakdown of the specs.
Tech Spec
- CPU – Intel Atom Z3735F / 1.33 GHz.
- RAM – 2GB DDR3L
- Display – 11.6 inch 1366 x 768 resolution.
- Graphics -Intel HD Graphics.
- Storage – 32GB SSD.
- WiFi – 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0.
- Ports – USB 2.0, HDMI, Headphone/microphone combo jack, Micro SD card reader.
- Weight – 1KG (2.2 lbs)
First of all why the upgrade?
The processor in my E350 is very weak. Especially for the times we live in today. The web has moved on and nearly every website is a full blown webapp. I did upgrade the RAM from 1GB to 2GB and although performance improved it still wasn’t quite up to every day tasks. Also the screen being a very low 1024×768 resolution mean’t every website was going into responsive mode, as if I was using some sort of tablet.
First Impressions
I love the chassis of this machine. Very slender and shaped almost a bit like a Macbook Air or Dell XPS 13. The colours available are fun and something a bit different. I went with the vibrant red you see in the picture above. Its very much a lightweight machine too. In a carry bag you would barely notice carrying it around. The display is so much better. Bigger and better resolution is a win/win for me. The processor has about 3 times better performance. Combine that with a SSD, the performance is top notch. Despite only coming with 2GB of RAM its enough RAM for basic needs.
Battery life is another big win on this machine. At the moment I’m typing this up on my really great System 76 Galago Ultrapro. I can tell you my battery will last a maximum of about 3 hours. Now my old Emachines E350 would last around the 6 hour mark. This new Lenovo 100S will last close to 10 hours which is enough for just about any long journey.
Pros
- Quad core processor.
- Excellent screen size to resolution ratio.
- Nice chiclet keyboard with well spaced keys.
- Top notch battery life.
- Very lightweight.
- Ultra portable
Cons
- Storage is a little on the small side at 32GB but it is a solid state drive.
- Linux support may not be all that great. (untested)
- USB 2.0 is not a problem really but it would have been nice to see at least one USB 3.0 port on this.
- Keyboard spacebar seems a bit unresponsive
- Touchpad doesn’t support multi touch or gestures. Doesn’t bother me but it may trouble some people.
Overall
I would fully recommend this machine as a neat travel companion. It would be worthy for both leisure like movies/youtube/web browsing or I could see some coding possible on this too. Just don’t try to do heavy development on this machine. Its more suited to light web development.