I have been using my MBP in the field for offloading cards but I have been looking around for something smaller and lighter for dumping cards to and I found this:

A Levono S10 for $314.10

The S10 has a ExpressCard slot and a 160gb HD

I am sure it will not playback the HD footage smoothly but it should give you an idea of what you have and act as a good storage device.

Has anyone tried it in this regard?

To get the deal go to: http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/index.html and order one of the S10 that are on sale for $349 then use the code: USPTS10SAVE to bring it down to $314.10

Doing a bit of research looks like OS X can run on it too. Has anyone tried to do this and View SXS cards in OS X? I am ordering one and will test/post if there is any interest.

Got an s10 to do precisely this, but then ran into the problem of having everything else mac-based and not being able to get the media onto a pc drive and then onto mac drives. MacDrive software was not completely reliable.

Thanks for the feedback. Did you have OS X running on it?

Ordered one for $279 from tiger direct. I will leave feedback on how it works, I am thinking to try the OSX route as I got confirmation that the Expresscard slot is working in OSX. In fact the only thing not working is the onboard mic.

Adam--how are you running osx on this pc?

I must have missed something--are you talking about running OS X on this Levono? I didn't know one could do that.

Got an s10 to do precisely this, but then ran into the problem of having everything else mac-based and not being able to get the media onto a pc drive and then onto mac drives. MacDrive software was not completely reliable.

I was wondering about that too. Can you not transfer the BPAV folder by some sort of network connection?

I have a S10 with OS X installed. Unless things have changed, there are no drivers for the PCI ExpressCard bus, only USB. So, the SxS cards won't show up, but the MxR cards do. I loaded up Clip Browser and was able to play a clip from the card. As you can imagine, it was very jerky. But, that won't prevent you from transferring clips to the HD.

Fascinating, Sean--did you install OSX yourself? Can you just install from a Leopard disk or does it need to be pre-configured at factory? The lack of expresscard support is too bad, but you could still load with USB.

Bob--how were you thinking the network would work? Wouldn't it be hard with such large files?

how were you thinking the network would work? Wouldn't it be hard with such large files?

Probably. I don't know much about how you can connect a Mac and PC other than ethernet or wifi. Can you do USB to transfer files?

I installed OS X myself. if you go to Lenovo IdeaPad S Series Forum • Index page (http://s10lenovo.com/) there's a mac section which should get you started. Also, let me clarify about the expresscard slot - it has two interfaces, PCI and USB. A SxS card, which is a PCI card, isn't recognized (because of no driver support). But, a MxR adapter and SDHC card is recognized in the Expresscard slot (since the MxR card uses the USB interface).

I can also address networking. You can get the wireless card to work, but the built-in ethernet doesn't (no drivers). I bought the apple usb to ethernet adapter and that happens to work just fine.

Thanks for the Info Sean. That sucks about the PCI drivers in OSX not working.

I think I will make mine a dual boot. The ExpressCard slot should work fine in XP right?

So I can use the XP version for offloading and viewing material (sort of). Then I can simply transfer the files to my Editing system Via a large USB Flash Drive.

Does anyone know if I can run the PC version of SXS transfer/viewer in Windows 7. I have heard that is runs great on the S10 (faster than XP)

By the way Sean I am in SD for the next month if you ever need a second EX1 :-)

When I got my S10, it had two partitions already, one with XP and a second one with backup/restore files. So, I kept the XP installation intact and installed OS X on the second partition. I haven't installed any XD-CAM software on the XP side, but I would assume it would work just fine - for both SxS and MxR cards. Good luck!

Thanks Sean... I will try that too.

With the OSX software on this PC, what formatting are you using for the external hard drives? Mac, NTSF, Fat32?

The tutorials say to use mac

See here: YouTube - Installing OS X Leopard on Lenovo S10 via USB Flash Drive (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNSW88uXKh4)

But I am going to have to see about that for dual boot

Here's a link to an article pointing out that the S10 will no longer have the ExpressCard slot.

Lenovo S10-2 3G gets updated but loses ExpressCard slot (http://www.cheaplaptops.org.uk/20090506/lenovo-s10-2-3g-gets-updated-but-loses-expresscard-slot/)