The Samsung NC20 is a

subnotebook Subnotebook, also called ultraportable, superportable, handtop, mini notebook or mini laptop, is a type of laptop computer that is smaller and lighter than a typical notebook-sized laptop. Types and sizes As typical laptop sizes have decreas ...

Netbook A netbook is a small-sized laptop computer; they were primarily sold from 2007 until around 2013, designed mostly as a means of accessing the Internet and being significantly less expensive than regular-sized laptops. At their inception in l ...

computer designed by

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

. At the time of its introduction, (February 2009, while in the U.S.A. was in March 2009), it was the first mainstream netbook to use the

VIA Nano The VIA Nano (formerly Code name#Commercial code names in the computer industry, code-named VIA Isaiah) is a 64-bit CPU for personal computers. The VIA Nano was released by VIA Technologies in 2008 after five years of development by its CPU di ...

processor and the first to support the

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

instruction set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, s ...

. The 12.1" screen size is larger than typical for this class of ultra portable PC. Its most direct competitors are the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 and the MSI Wind U210.

Technical overview

Processor and memory

The Samsung NC20 uses a

ULV Processor U2250 (running from 800 MHz - 1,6 GHz) and comes with 1 GB RAM. Internally, the NC20 has one slot for RAM accepting memory modules up to 2 GB. The hardware is powerful enough to run Windows 7 in everyday situations (web-browsing, email, office applications). However, CPU-demanding tasks (e.g. Flash videos) tend to put the system at its limit.

Display

The screen is a

glossy display A glossy display is an electronic display with a glossy surface. In certain light environments, glossy displays provide better color intensity and contrast ratios than matte displays. The primary disadvantage of these displays is their tenden ...

and measures 12.1

inch The inch (symbol: in or prime (symbol), ) is a Units of measurement, unit of length in the imperial units, British Imperial and the United States customary units, United States customary System of measurement, systems of measurement. It is eq ...

es (307 mm) diagonally. It has a native resolution of 1280 × 800

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

s. The screen is LED-backlit. An external display can be used through the standard

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...

connector.

Keyboard and touchpad

The 84-key keyboard is a full-size keyboard, with standard 18.5mm key pitch between keys. The keyboard has also been coated with anti-bacterial

Silver Nano Silver Nano (''Silver Nano Health System'') is a trademark name of an antibacterial technology which uses silver nanoparticles in washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, air purifiers and vacuum cleaners introduced by Samsung in April ...

ions. The touchpad supports multi-touch gestures.

Storage

The standard internal hard drive is a

SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard ...

160 GB. It also includes a

SD card Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of portable consumer electronics, including dig ...

slot, supporting MMC, SD and SDHC cards for additional storage.

Connectivity

The NC20 has built-in LAN (10/100 MBit) via a standard-sized RJ45-jack, 802.11b/g Wifi as well as Bluetooth. It also comes with 3 USB 2.0 ports.

Audio and video

A webcam (Namuga 1.3 megapixel) is built into the display frame, as well as a microphone. Together with the built-in stereo speakers, the NC20 can be used for audio/video conferences (e.g. using

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

), albeit only with moderate call-quality. The webcam picture becomes relatively noisy under low-light conditions and the microphone produces audible noise and picks up vibrations from the harddisk or when typing. The NC20 also has standard 3,5mm jacks for audio output (headphones / line-out) and input (external microphone / line-in), allowing for far better audio quality than the built-in speakers and microphone.

Criticism

Not all of the features of this notebook are supported under Linux. Playing video and microphone are partially supported. External monitor support under Linux is not possible. WLAN under Ubuntu is reported to have frequent freezeups.

References

External links

Samsung Specifications

Samsung NC20 Community Site

Samsung NC20 Blog

Samsung Netbook Tips (applies to NC10)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Samsung Nc20 Netbooks NC20 Computer-related introductions in 2009