Lenovo Announces IdeaPad S10

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So which companies haven't jumped aboard the UMPC bandwagon yet? Let's see, there's Sony, Apple, Lenovo—wait, scratch off the last one. The Lenovo IdeaPad S10, announced today, joins a growing list of sub-$500, under-3-pound, underpowered devices that is sure to pique the interests of mobile users who already own a laptop. These mini-laptops aren't meant to replace your primary one, and while Lenovo is fully aware of this, the S10 is offering a package of things that might make you reconsider its role.

Sitting back for a few months and seeing what other manufacturers were doing had its advantages—and Lenovo took note of what worked and what didn't. With the S10, a 10-inch screen looks to be the sweet spot, taking cues from the MSI Wind and the ASUS Eee PC 1000H. A 9-inch version of the S10 will be available overseas. The device can weigh as little as 2.4 pounds, depending on whether you use the 3-cell battery (3 hours) or a 6-cell one (6 hours). No one has figured out how to put a full-size keyboard on a UMPC, and the S10's 85-percent one is no exception.

Lenovo realized that the price-per-gigabyte ratio for solid state drives is not in its favor, so it eschewed them in favor of capacity. It will offer both 80GB and 160GB configurations, spinning at 5,400 rpm. You'll find the usual array of ports, including two USB ports, Ethernet, a webcam, headphone jack, and a 4-in-1 card reader. Until now, the HP 2133 Mini-Note was the only UMPC to have an ExpressCard slot for WWAN expansion—you can also find one on the S10. Unlike the HP Mini-Note, the Intel Atom is the S10's platform of choice. It runs a 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor, up to 2GB of memory, the Intel 945 GSE Express chipset, and the GMA 950 graphics.

There'll be two configurations, both running Windows XP, available in the United States for $399 and $449. The differences are in the hard drive capacities. A Linux flavor will be offered overseas. You also get a choice of three colors: black, white, and red. When it ships in October, it'll be the cheapest UMPC to run Windows XP in the United States. That is, if ASUS doesn't launch a tenth Eee PC, or Sony and Dell end their waiting game.