5 Comments to “Samsung N150 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – Up to 7 Hours of Battery Life”

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1. Tsogtsaikhan Gendenpel
   June 11, 2010 at 3:48 am | Permalink

   This netbook is the best I could find for the price. It’s very light, small, and thin. I like the overall design. Highly recommended for people on the go, especially because of the great battery life.
   Rating: 5 / 5

2. goresorearedore
   June 11, 2010 at 3:56 am | Permalink

   I’m sitting in an internet cafe near the Bridge station in London, UK and this is connected to a LAN cable. I bought this netbook specifically for my 30-day Eurotrip for purposes such as: using Skype, storing pics, recharging gadgets, booking hotels, Google mapping, writing journal, etc. This morning, this machine failed to connect wirelessly at three different hotspots near Waterloo, Southwark, and London Bridge Tube stations. To my dismay, I noticed this was a problem only I had. I ended up borrowing some Russian guy’s ancient Dell at a coffee/breakfast place because my new, shiny netbook again refused to connect (the owner couldn’t figure out what the problem was, he tried restarting the machine several times but didn’t work).

   Since wireless is such crap, the value of this NETbook naturally comes into question. Adding to the problem is its dismal performance. Everything is slow, like starting Skype, opening Excel, starting Wi-Fi… Fancy new CPU, yes, but why is it slower than my 5-year old IBM. What annoys me the most is how letters get omitted very frequently when the keyboard is in use because the netbook apparently can’t handle my pathetic (90~100) type speed. You can see the individual lag spurts right on the screen as they happen. God this is slow.

   I don’t like the touchpad, either. It likes to left-click by itself all the time so you are essentially clicking on stuff you never intended to (I noticed this problem in previous Samsung netbooks). It feels sentient when it loads up applications, moves folders, switches windows, and scrolls around wildly all by itself. Additionally, it occasionally locks up in “left click mode” and you have to wait a few seconds for it to unfreeze before you can get it to snap out of it. Keyboard is also very unresponsive physically and you have to press down REALLY hard. Layout is pretty, though.

   It comes with Windows 7 Starter, a total crippleware that doesn’t even let you change the desktop background. Not Samsung’s fault, but still sucks. Also on initial startup the netbook spends two busy hours installing bloatware. It also comes with a puny 160GB hard drive and you have to partition it right away for “backup purposes” which I will never use because I’m not storing anything here anyway.

   Also I should mention the battery life is definitely variable. After my second recharge this netbook lasted less than 5 hours, shutting down with 6% power left (20 minutes). Why does it need that 6% if it’s going to shut down and not do anything?

   I usually like Samsung. I’ve owned their cameras, mp3 players, LCD TVs, and now a netbook I guess. But this one is a disaster. I’m not asking it to run Diablo 3. I’m not asking it to run Photoshop either (I have Picasa instead). But I expect a certain level of performance when it comes to connecting to the web!! And typing!

   UPDATE

   After London, this netbook actually did better with Wi-Fi. Now as I near the end of my trip (now in Paris) I felt bad about leaving a negative review and thought about revising it, thereby appearing more like an Neanderthal than I already am. Just then I ended up in a hostel room where a girl was Facebooking on her IBM for hours on end while my Samsung repeatedly “could not connect.” That kind of pissed me off. One may be an accident but two sets a trend and I think the connectivity issue here is real.
   Rating: 2 / 5

3. Chicago Mom
   June 11, 2010 at 6:52 am | Permalink

   Really no complaints. I knew going in that the computer would be a little slow, and it is when i’m on the internet. but since i mostly use it for word processing it doesn’t bother me. Despite the slower internet speeds, I love my netbook! It is small enough for me to carry with me every day on the train and not feel like I’m lugging rocks in my bag. Battery life is great, i can use it all week without having to recharge it. Overall – I am very happy. (Even the webcam works really well when talking over skype).
   Rating: 4 / 5

4. R. Goyal
   June 11, 2010 at 8:06 am | Permalink

   I already own a Samsung N120. It is pearl white, with chrome hinges, solid, very durable plastic, Samsung embossed outside in chrome letters, speakers on the sides of the screen as well as below, an AMAZING keyboard with beveled keys, full size… so I recommended the N150 to a friend seeing that it was newer and seemed to have replaced the glossy screen with a matte screen which was a much wanted upgrade. To my absolute shock, Samsung has decided to rip off it’s customers by going cheap and removing every single one of the features I listed above. This computer is half the N120 or less! They were so cheap to not even print the model name of the computer as they did with the N120. The plastic is cheap, the keys on the keyboard are flat chiclet toyish looking, the speakers are gone, the outside shell is a cheap glossy fingerprint showing gimmick… anyone giving this computer anything more than 1 star has simply not seen what they put out before in order to compare and realize Samsung has downgraded what they were selling for the same price to half the value. They even took the blue-lit power button on the right hinge off and put a conventional one under the front edge that is as mediocre as possible.
   Rating: 1 / 5

5. Budding Buddhist
   June 11, 2010 at 8:50 am | Permalink

   I bought an N150 after Consumers Reports gave it high reviews. A week after I received it, it wouldn’t come back on after Windows updated Windows 7 Starter. I sent it to factory service which replaced the hard drive. When it came back the touch pad didn’t work so I returned it to service. After receiving it from service a second time, the touch pad works but is erratic and jumpy. I tried reducing the sensitivity but, regardless of sensitivity setting, it still is unpredictable. It’s sometimes hard to get the cursor to move, and when it does move, and it comes near a link or button, it tends to stop and open a bidirectional arrow instead of smoothly moving past or to the link. It works fine with an external mouse but I don’t want to have to carry a mouse with me on a trip. I must say that Samsung service is very convenient. They only require carrying it unpackaged to a UPS store where it is packaged and shipped at no charge.
   Rating: 2 / 5

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