Lenovo crashes Eee PC party with IdeaPads

Better late than never, Lenovo has launched the IdeaPad S9 and S10 sub-notebooks, the company's answer to the embarrassing success of the Eee PC from rival Asus.

The S9 features an 8.9-inch screen, integrated 802.11g Wi-Fi, 512MB of memory, 80GB of hard disk space or a 4GB solid state drive (SSD), and is built around Intel's 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 chip. The more expensive S10 features a 10.2-inch screen, 1GB of RAM, and a larger 160GB hard disk. Users can choose from Linux or the supposedly extinct Windows XP.

[ For more on products in the hot mini-notebook category, check out our hands-on looks at Asus' Eee PC 901 and 1000, the Cloudbook Max netbook, Elitegroup's G10IL mini-laptop, MSI's Wind low-cost laptop, Giga-byte's M912X mini-laptop, and Acer's Aspire one. ]

"As rapidly as the technology changes, today's consumers are looking for mobile products that feature the best of basic computing functions in an extremely compact and affordable form, and Lenovo designed the IdeaPad netbooks for that purpose," said Lenovo's Liu Jun.

Other features include a webcam and OneKey rescue, a claimed one-button system for restoring the machine after an operating system problem or malware glitch.

In contrast to the recently-launched Asus Eee PC 1000 series -- based around pretty much the same hardware and software combinations -- the Lenovo S9 and S10 lack the innovative quick-boot system, ExpressGate, which can put the machine in a usable state inside a claimed 10 seconds. The Eee PC also has more up-to-date 802.11n Wi-Fi.

That suggests that the competition will now be on price, and the Lenovo machines are competitive at $399 for the S9 and $449 for the S10, slightly below the equivalent Asus machines. The new IdeaPads will be available in early October.

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