Lenovo Updates S10 Netbook With Instant On, Facial Recognition

In addition to releasing some new mainstream IdeaPads, Lenovo is announcing some updates to its popular S10 netbook. The revised S10 will now come with Lenovo Quick Start, something which sounds like it may be an instant-on operating system.  Lenovo’s press relesae says of Quick Start:

With this functionality, users will have the ability to access a number of frequently used applications including a web browser, music player, photo viewer, instant messaging tools and Skype.

That sounds a lot like Splashtop, which we’ve already tested on other systems. Indeed, back in October, we reported that Splashtop was coming to the S10, but we hadn’t seen it yet. So we’ll have to see if indeed Quick Start is a form of Splashtop and how it compares to the implementations of Splashtop we’ve tested on ASUS systems and on the Voodoo Envy 133.

In addition to Quick Start, Lenovo is adding a couple of other features to the S10: Veriface facial recognition which we ‘ve seen on many other IdeaPads, and a new tool called Lenovo Social, which is described as a preloaded tool that allows users to “easily connect to a resource portal that will help them navigate the vast options for participating in social networking. ”

The resource portal is already online at LenovoSocial.com and, in its present state, incorporates a set of links to Lenovo content on various sites: YouTube, Flickr, etc, along with a huge directory of different social-powered sites, ranging from 43Things to Zoomin . At first glance, we were ready to dimiss the portal as just a “social networking for dummies” site until we paged through the detailed entries, each complete with screen shots and user comments and found tons of interesting sites we had never heard of. Of course, this information is open to anyone with a Web browser so we’re not sure if there’s any particular benefit in what this does for S10 users.

The starting MSRP for the updated S10 will be $349. We look forward to going hands-on with the new IdeaPad S10 at CES this week and seeing how its Quick Start and Lenovo Social features work.