Send a Tip
RSS Feed
Follow us on Twitter
The folks over at PC Pro had some time with one of Lenovo’s new IdeaPad S12 netbooks, specifically one of the models powered with NVIDIA’s Ion platform. As a refresher, the Ion platform features a GeForce 9400M GPU that has pretty low power consumption to keep things mobile, but offers leaps and bounds performance over Intel’s integrated solutions.
Just how much better performance, you ask? How about full HD decoding and encoding? PC Pro reports that watching Blu-ray discs is a breeze and you can even encode a 1080p video almost 4 times faster than the standard Atom/GMA combo. They also report that the overall quality and performance of the machine was most satisfactory. Hit the link for their hands-on impressions.
From this blogger’s perspective, HD handling capabilities are very important for today’s laptops, of any type. Video playback, whether locally off a disc or over the network, is becoming an increasingly common use of computers as being glued to the TV becomes less and less advantageous. Free, high quality video of popular content, like TV showes and full movies, is becoming more and more common, as are HD streams of that content, and computers, especially laptops, need to be able to handle that. I know that if a laptop can’t stream Hulu HD full screen for me, it goes in the circular file.
Lenovo direct store is offering the Lenovo Essential G455 14-inch LED-backlit display, Laptop (model: 070834U) starting at $769 - $120 off - 
Lenovo is offering its IdeaPad S10-3t (065186U) - 
Lenovo is offering its 15.6-inch IdeaPad Y560 Laptop (Quad Core i7 model - 06462AU) starting at $1,399 - $100 off -
320GB ThinkPad USB Portable Secure Hard Drive (model no. 
Lenovo direct store is offering the 13.3-inch Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 (AMD powered) Laptop starting at $774 - $225 instant savings - 
Loading ...
Well I believe there have been numerous reports on other Ion netbooks – none of them can handle HD flash video. Flash video is NOT optimized to offload processing to a GPU, so you’ll have to do with regular notebooks for now I suppose
hi guys i wanna now does this 12 inch laptop[lenovo] has built in dvd or not. when does it come for sell?
Hi mostafa – the S12 netbook does not have a DVD drive, and it is for sale on Lenovo.com in the U.S. right now. It should be available in other countries too.
Very good point Antioch – there is a big difference between hardware accelerated Blu-ray/HD and high res Flash.
Leaving aside this video stuff that I don’t care about, how would you say the S12 compares with the X40/60/61 as a general purpose, lightweight travel notebook? I guess what I’m really asking here is your subjective impression of the keyboard, screen, weight, etc. I can compare the cpu specs on paper.
Antioch, I think you may be misinformed. Adobe and NVIDIA seem to think that HD Flash Video can in fact be GPU accellerated.
Please see the release from June 2nd. This seems to address the Flash consideration pretty well, and beyond that, I and millions of others get around on iPhones awfully well without Flash support, so the Flash issue isn’t a big deal breaker for many.
From Computex – Computex – Taipei – June 2, 2009 – NVIDIA (Nasdaq:NVDA), the inventor of the GPU, and Adobe Systems
Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced that they are collaborating as part of the Open Screen Project to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform, to leverage GPU video and graphics
acceleration on a wide range of mobile Internet devices, including netbooks, tablets, mobile phones and other on-the-go media devices.
(The rest of the release is available on various sites.)
hi thanks for responding but when i search for 12 inch laptop plus dvdrom google find it ?
There are 12-inch laptops with DVD drives, but the IdeaPad S12 is not one of them.
hi could u tell me the model of that laptop plus dvd drive ,any mark doesnt matter only i dont like bussiness shape .