Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959

Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 (Ion) (Atom N270 1.6GHz, 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Windows 7 Home Premium)

Long, long ago in the year 2009, we first heard news about the forthcoming Nvidia Ion GPU for Netbooks and got excited. At long last, Netbooks would be more capable of graphics processing and handling HD video. One of the first frontrunners claiming an Ion Netbook was Lenovo, and the IdeaPad S12 seemed like the perfect mini-notebook to contain it--especially since early reports claimed the S12 with Ion would cost "under $499." Instead of getting a chance to review the Ion version of the S12, we received an IdeaPad S12 with a straight-up Atom N270 processor, GMA 950 graphics, and normal Windows XP Netbook specs back in July and reviewed it with mixed results. At a cost then of $499, it was more expensive than most Netbooks, but it did provide an excellent keyboard, a bright screen, and a solid feel that almost made up for the baseline Netbook-level performance. At long last we have received the Nvidia Ion-packing version, far, far later than the original target date. It does have 256MB of discrete graphics, an expanded 3GB of RAM, and a large 320GB hard drive, plus 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, plus Bluetooth. On the other hand, it also costs $650. That's a bit of a problem. Back in September, this might have been compelling.