Lenovo's MeeGo Netbook: Hands On

It hasn't been exactly smooth sailing for MeeGo, Intel's Linux-based operating system that was developed to go up against offerings from Google and Apple. But there have been signs of life here at Computex 2011, beginning with Asus's launch of the EeePC X101. And now there's the Lenovo Ideapad S100, which was spotted in the wild running a version of MeeGo that's actually usable. Let's take a closer look.

The Ideapad S100 looks like your average netbook from the outside: Its black plastic construction is topped off with a bit of texture that does an exceptional job warding off finger prints and smudge marks. Obviously, black doesn't grab the attention quite as well as the multiple color offerings available on the EeePC X101, but it's a well-designed netbook nonetheless.

The tiled keyboard is full size and arguably the S100's best asset, as the keys are slightly scalloped and elevated to an ideal height. The clickpad, with its mouse buttons integrated into the touchpad, is roomy and clicks with ease. I didn't experience any weird cursor movements or miltitouch gestures kicking in when they shouldn't.

The MeeGo experience is the main attraction here, and this particular skin is very similar to the one found in the EeePC X101. Everything is laid out in "Panels". For instance, a "People" panel gives you access to social networks and chat-clients like Facebook, AIM, Twitter, and Flickr. There's a "Status" panel that all these social networks feed into. The "Internet" panel makes use of the Chromium browser to surf the internet, and there's a "Media" panel that handles all your photos and videos. For the most part, working with all these panels was smooth and very pleasant. None of them crashed or took a tremendously long time to load or respond. The Wi-Fi signal was very spotty in the convention center, so I couldn't get the browser to load any of my favorite websites.

What I did get to work (but couldn't on the EeePC X101) is Intel's AppUP store, which is intended to go up against Google's Marketplace and Apple's App store. The selection of paid and free apps isn't worth writing home about, but it's a start.

The S100 comes with the usual netbook features that include three USB ports, Ethernet, and VGA (the X101 doesn't have VGA and Ethernet). It runs on an Intel Atom N455 processor and 1GB of memory.

Lenovo hasn't officially announced that a MeeGo-running Ideapad S100 is U.S. bound, but if the pricing in mind is anywhere near Asus's ballpark (less than $200), there might be some potential here.