A while back I posted HD Camcorders and Silly Formats in which I mentioned the HVR-DR60 & HVR-MRC1K HDD / CF recorders for HDV camcorders. Unfortunately these are very expensive units and are far out of the budget range for the average consumer. However after posting about the Lenovo S10E it suddenly occurred to me that this netbook would make an ideal direct to disk recorder with a couple upgrades and the addition of a Firewire Expresscard. Though I have not personally tried it, this netbook should be more then capable of capturing a single HDV feed.
Lenovo IdeaPad S10E £279.99
Crucial 2GB, DDR2 PC2-5300 Memory Module £19.54
Seagate ST9320421AS 320GB Momentus 7200RPM 16MB 2.5″ HDD £63.23
Belkin USB 2.0 and FireWire ExpressCard £56.33
So for a total of £419.09 you’ve got a hard disk recorder, with the bonus of a decent size preview monitor. Obviously the recording time is limited by the battery life of the netbook, though you can get additional batteries or power it externally. Also not to forget, you’ve also got a fully functional netbook out of it too.

When Asus introduced the 7″ netbook back in 2007, there was much doubt from competing notebook manufacturers that there was a market for such a “toy” of a notebook. Well how wrong they were, ever since, the popularity of netbooks has been on a constant increase and now everybody’s at it. The netbook market has had huge impacts on sales of  notebook computers, especially expensive ultra portables.

Though it’s now old news I have just discovered that Lenovo has a netbook, Which i’m really pleased with since ive been a big fan of IBM & Lenovo Thinkpads. They’ve called it the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e, I’m really impressed with its features especially considering its price, at the time of writing its £279.99 from Dabs.

It main features:
Intel Atom N270
1GB of RAM (512MB + 512MB) 1.5GB Max since one is soldered.
160GB 5400rpm SATA HDD
10.1″ TFT 1024×576 Display & 1.3MP Webcam
100mb NIC
Wireless B/G
Bluetooth
ExpressCard/34 Slot
4 in 1 Card Reader (SD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard)
Windows XP Home

My favoroute feature has to be the ExpressCard/34 expansion slot, as far as im aware the only other netbook to feature one is the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Mini. I have a bad history of snapping USB accessories off from notebook computers so prefer to go with a much stronger expresscard if possible.