Lenovo S10 netbook available for pre-order? Yawn.

So it looks like Lenovo’s dive into the netbook market with the Lenovo S10 netbook is almost ready to go despite prior reports that it wouldn’t hit stateside until October. So what separates Lenovo’s offering from everyone else’s, aside from the Chinese government thing?

Well, not much. Maybe it’s that the Lenovo S10 netbook is available in red. That’s something to be proud of and pay extra for, right? The specs otherwise look similar to what was posted yesterday about the Dell Mininote (Dell Inspiron 910?): 1.6 ghz Atom, half a gig of ram, and an 80 gig HDD all for $399 (or more for paint). Not sure at this point if there’s going to be an option for a SSD, but I would imagine there will be, or at least some way of installing one.

Of note, the battery that comes with the Lenovo S10 netbook looks to be even more pathetic than Dell’s. With the Dell Mininote (Dell Inspiron 910?), they’re shipping a 4 cell battery and then offering a slightly larger (WTF?) 4 cell battery later. With the Lenovo S10 netbook, you get a 3 cell. Previous reports had Lenovo claiming three hours out of the battery, but I somehow doubt that’ll be the case. The Acer Aspire One comes close to three hours with a 3 cell battery, but only if everything is turned off or really low, and it doesn’t have a hard drive constantly drawing power.

We’ll wait and see if anything comes of this early release or not, but I think netbook saturation has reached a critical point. Between Asus and the 20+ models and everyone else with one or two, it’s time something new and interesting, don’t you think? Is the Lenovo S10 netbook that new thing? You decide.

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