Packard Bell dot S2

Outperforms the Acer it's based on?

The screen – a standard 10.1in, 1,024 x 600 affair with an LED backlight – performs well. It even copes admirably outdoors, just as long as you can shield its glossy coating from reflections. There’s no built-in Bluetooth with the dot S2, but you do get 802.11n wireless along with the standard 10/100 Ethernet port for wired connections.

A nice, responsive touchpad

As with almost all recently-released netbooks, the dot S2 is driven by Intel’s Pinetrail platform, which comprises the new Intel N450 Atom processor and integrated GMA 3150 graphics. Meanwhile, the 1GB of DDR2 memory is just about enough to keep Windows 7 Starter ticking along nicely.

As with the Acer 532h, just a few small screws need to be removed in order to access the hard drive, wireless card and memory slot. Given Acer had informed me the 532h wouldn’t accept more than 1GB of memory, I expected the same limitation with the dot S2.

Easy-to-access internals

However, it appears some hardened Reg readers have managed to successfully perform a 2GB upgrade on the 532h, and Packard Bell also confirmed that a 2GB upgrade is indeed possible on the dot S2 – all of which is good to hear.