Review: Samsung NC215 sun-lovin’ netbook

Save the planet, have infinite battery life, and look good while you’re at it. Samsung has produced a 10” netbook with a big ol’ solar panel on the back to let you work and work and work and work. It’s got “green” written all over the promotional flyers, and “green” written into every line of code of the Eco Mode app that lets you be really rather green. Getting back down to earth, it’s a US$400 netbook with a really, really long battery life that looks quite good.

It’s a bit of an odd product – it’s been out in the market for a couple of months, but there is no mention of it anywhere on Samsung’s websites, anywhere. So getting detailed specs is tricky, what with various sub-models with slightly different codes kicking around, but this is what we can tell you: it’s got a dual core Intel Atom N570 CPU running at 1.66GHz, 2GB of RAM, 1024×600 display and comes loaded with Windows 7 Starter edition. It has a 300GB hard drive, and the basic ports: VGA, Ethernet, SD card slot, audio and a trio of USB ports, one of which stays powered even when it’s off so you can charge another device from the solar panel.