Shiny New Toys… Samsung NC10 Netbook

Thursday, December 4, 2008 – 10:58 AM

The Samsung NC10So my trusty old Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop finally really died the other night. After many many years of service the hinge snapped. It’s been limping along for a while; the battery no longer works, the disk drive has been replaced, the wireless card is cracked and the track pad barely works. Basically, it’s dead.

It’s amazing the difference seven years makes. At the time the Dell with it’s 1.2GHz Pentium III processor, 1Gb of memory and a 20Gb drive was pretty much a state of the art development machine. I wrote my first .NET applications on it while traveling to and from my Boston based startup. Now it barely handles running a tabbed web browser.

What to replace it with? Something smaller, lighter and generally shinier. After some due consideration I went with a Samsung NC10 10.2-Inch Netbook.

The inexorable advance of technology means that the NC10 is actually a significantly better spec’ed machine than the Dell it replaces at a fraction of the price. I’m upgrading the memory to 2Gb and figure it’ll be small and light enough to take on road trips in place of my existing work laptop which weighs in at over 6lbs.

I’ll be writing more about this later as I load it up with some software and put it through it’s paces.

So what’s green about all this?

Why is this post tagged Green IT? Well you’ll notice that I ran that Dell into the ground. Why? Well apart from cost;

“More than 80 percent of the lifetime energy consumption of a PC occurs before you buy it”

So in general, the longer you can extend the lifetime of your existing hardware the better. The Dell isn’t done yet. The disk drive might find it’s way into some other use before it’s done. Either way it’s environmental impact has been amortized over seven years now it’s time to get it recycled.

Find out more interesting facts about your PC’s environmental impact by taking the Sierra Club’s Green PC quiz.

  1. 7 Responses to “Shiny New Toys… Samsung NC10 Netbook”

  2. hi, Dave,

    something else: The NC10 uses an LED screen – one of the few types of panels that doesn’t include any mercury. Even greener!

    Plus, the atom processor uses less power. The 6-hour battery life is great for the charge you need to give it. The fact that it’s a netbook means it used less materials and – if you’re ever going to take it on a plane – the 2lb you save cuts the weeniest edge off the fuel consumption!!

    ok, perhaps going overboard, but it’s about as green as a laptop comes. Congrats!

    By samsung nc10 fan! on Dec 4, 2008

  3. I need an external dvd rw drive. Have you read where the nc10 is able to handle any brand/type of externaldrive?
    Thanks,
    DEb

    By Debbi on Dec 27, 2008

  4. Deb,

    Any external USB DVD drive should work OK with the NC10. Something like this should work but I’ve not tried it.

    Dekcell USB Slim External DVD/CD-RW Drive

    Ade

    By Ade Miller on Dec 27, 2008

  5. I’m guessing that’s what you use?
    Thanks so much.

    By Debbi on Dec 27, 2008

  6. Debbi,

    I don’t own an external DVD but this is the sort of thing you want. Samsung do recommend one on their site.

    Q1 Ultra External RW +/- Dual Layer DVD Drive

    It’s about four times the price!

    Someone here is recommending the following from NewEgg

    SAMSUNG 2-Tone 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW

    For their NC-10. This is blukier but cheaper. It depends a little bit what you want it for I guess.

    Provided it’s plug and play Windows XP compatible then you should be OK.

    Ade

    By Ade Miller on Dec 28, 2008

  7. Thanks, Ade. :-)

    By Debbi on Dec 29, 2008

  8. I’ve also heard about some new Asus netbooks being made of bamboo, which as we know is one of the most sustainable materials out there.

    By Samsung NC10 guru on Mar 5, 2009

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