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There are times when tech gets so exciting, the very mention of a model or a concept is enough to make a tech head jizz his pants. Lenovo’s first attempt at a netbook tablet, the S10-3t, unfortunately isn’t one of them. In fact, the very idea of turning a netbook into a tablet had me on a one way trip to WTFville.

Full story continues after the jump.

Overview

Before we get into any more details, let’s get the basics out of the way. The Lenovo S10-3t is powered by an Intel Atom N450 (1.66GHz, 667MHz FSB, 512kb L2 Cache), 1GB of DDR2 SD RAM, and an Intel GMA 3150. Topped off with a 250GB SATA HDD and a 10.1 multi-touch screen, the specs on the S10-3t make up for a pretty standard netbook.

However, as you can see, the S10-3t isn’t a standard netbook at all.

For starters, the power button is oddly placed on the side of the screen. I suppose it will come in handy if you plan to turn it on and off (and probably stow it away) in tablet form for prolonged periods of time, but then what’s going to protect your delicate touch screen if you do? A novel idea nonetheless though.

Unlike conventionally placed webcams, the one on the S10-3t isn’t located on the top of the bezel, and is instead located on the top right of the bezel. A pretty awkward position, but again, if for some odd reason you plan to hold up your tablet in portrait mode and do a video chat, then it’ll probably be in the right position for you.

On the opposite side of the screen’s bezel, you’ll find a couple more buttons for switching your screen orientation and for muting the volume. The screen orientation button is very handy for tablet use, since the S10-3t doesn’t have any automatic screen reorientation features.

The S10-3t also comes with the regular lot of ports such as a LAN port, audio jacks, a SD card reader, an ominous TV jack, a pair of USB ports and a VGA port.

Aesthetics

One thing the engineers behind the S10-3t did spend a lot of time on was definitely the finishing of the product. Instead of the plain black notebooks we’re so used to seeing from Lenovo’s ThinkPad line up, the IdeaPad marque is known for being a little more flamboyant when it comes to styling, and the S10-3t is no exception.

When closed, the first thing you’ll see on the S10-3t is a god awful splash of ridiculous decals. Definitely head turning – that’s heads turning away, if you’re lucky enough to catch a glimpse of how awful they look – the gaudy graphics don’t help raise the profile of this hybrid tablet/netbook monstrosity a single bit.

Open it up (if you dare) and you’ll be treated to an even crazier mishmash of awkward concepts. There are grill like indents at the bottom of the screen and equally queer spot-UV like patterns on the palm rest. The touch pad isn’t spared either, and comes dotted with, well, dots.

If that wasn’t bad enough, then the dust/fingerprint magnet of a bezel will send you into a bad design induced epilepsy. In my defence, we did thoroughly wipe down the S10-3t before we shot all of these photos, but as you can see, wiping it down only cleans up that much dust.

Concept

So what gives with the concept of a tablet/netbook hybrid such as the S10-3t?

For starters, it retails at RM1899, which makes it a rather premium netbook. Ok, in its defence, you’re essentially paying for a 10-inch tablet, but are an Intel Atom N450 and 1GB of RAM enough to run tablet-y functions on it? I didn’t think so.

Photoshop can barely load on a netbook, so forget about finger sketching on the S10-3t unless your weapon of choice is MS Paint. Photographers may want to use it as a digital portfolio of sorts, since the Lenovo NaturalTouch suite does add some iPhone-like flavour to it, but does spending almost RM2k on a 10-inch screen that lets you pinch and rotate photos sound like a good investment? I doubt it.

If Lenovo produced this model to fight with other upcoming tablet devices such as the Apple iPad, HP Slate or whatnot, then Lenovo are seriously out of their league in terms of design and most importantly, applications. Heck, the HP Slate isn’t even confirmed yet.

Conclusion

You must have noticed that we’ve totally omitted a section on performance, but the S10-3t is in essence a run of the mill netbook that’s probably identical in internal hardware with the S10-3 (non-tablet version).  It could have been a different story if it was powered by NVIDIA ION, but alas, it isn’t.

Having said that, the S10-3t left me more confused after turning it on that I was before. Until now, I’m still wrestling with myself to find a practical use for a netbook/tablet, but I simply can’t think of one.

If portability is a concern, then a fully-fledged PDA sounds like a better option. If computing power on a notebook/tablet platform is a concern, then there are tons of better equipped notebook/tablet hybrids on the market already. If it’s an issue of new tech, then here’s news for you – Fujitsu has been doing this since 2003. So what gives?

Thank you Lenovo, but I’ll be keeping my RM1899 for something else!