As with a lot of gadgets and electronics it is often useful to have a spare charger for your device. Despite the long battery life of the NC10, it can be a frustrating experience to be caught short with no charge left in your battery. People who use their NC10 for work may find it useful to have one charger at work and one charger at home so that you don't have to always carry the charger with you, netbooks are supposed to be portable! Unfortunately chargers do also sometimes fail or become damaged and if this happens to you its important to find a replacement.

There is a range of chargers available including car chargers, travel chargers and adaptable chargers that can be changed to fit several different devices. There are also deals available where you can get a spare charger bundled with a neoprene sleeve or case. (see this post)

Below is a priced list of suitable chargers and adpaters for your Samsung NC10 that are available on amazon.com & amazon.co.uk.

US Buyer (amazon.com)

40w AC Adapter for Samsung NC10/NC20 Series

Tifa BlackGem Car Charger for Samsung NC10

Combo - Samsung NC10 Grey Neoprene Sleeve and 12v Car Charger

UK Buyer (amazon.co.uk)

Qubz Samsung NC10 In-Car Charger

PARA Samsung NC10 Netbook Car Charger

Qubz Replacement Samsung NC10 Mains Charger

Keeping the NC10 protected with a decent case or sleeve is important. Scratches or blemishes on the finish not only affect the appearance of your NC10 but also its value if you ever need to sell your netbook on. A good case can also make taking your NC10 out with you a lot easier. There are a large number of different styles and colour of case and sleeve available that are made specifically for the NC10 and other similar sized netbooks.

There's a massive range of options for both cases and sleeves available and they protect your NC10 in different ways. Cases provide an excellent level of protection but add some bulk to your NC10. Sleeves provide plenty of protection without all the bulk and are perfect if you already keep your netbook inside a normal bag. Personally I use a neoprene sleeve and then carry my netbook around in my normal bag with the sleeve on to protect it from scratches and knocks.

I've produced a priced list of suitable cases and sleeves for your NC10 that are available on amazon.com & amazon.co.uk.

US Buyer (amazon.com)

Cases

Samsung NC10 Hard Carrying Brief Case (Black)

CaseCrown Premium Double Memory Foam Netbook Pouch Case - (Check Style)

CaseCrown 10-Inch Netbook Premium Memory Foam Pouch Case (Black)

Samsung NC10 Laptop CaseCrown Vertical Messenger Bag (Black)

Sleeves

10 Inch Reversable 2 Side Soft Sleeve for Samsung NC10 (Black / Red)

Durable Neorpene Sleeve Case with Extra Pocket (Many Colours)

Caselogic Black Ultra Portable Laptop Sleeve (Black)

Leather Carrying Sleeve & Screen Protector / Guard for Samsung NC10 (Black)

UK Buyer (amazon.co.uk)

Cases

Ultimateaddons Samsung NC10 Breifcase Style Carry Bag Case (Black)

Cool Bananas Neoprene Case w/ Front Pocket for Samsung NC10 (Black)

Ultimateaddons Samsung NC10 Green Messenger Bag (Green)

Sleeves

Duragadget NC10 Waterproof Sleeve (Black)

iGadgitz Neoprene Sleeve for Samsung NC10 (Black)

Cool Bananas Neoprene Sleeve Zipit for Samsung NC10 (Black/Red)

In order to keep Windows running smoothly on the NC10 it is important to remove temporary files and unused files that build up, keep the registry clean and tidy and make sure your NC10 boots quickly by only letting aplications that you need run at startup.

CCleaner is an excellent free tool that covers all of these bases. All of the file cleaning options can be toggled on and off so you can tell it to leave your cookies and settings alone if you wish, you can do this in the menu shown to the left of this article. For the security concious or paranoid amongst you CCleaner features secure file deletion with up to 35 overwrite passes should you wish to enable it.

Important Note: There is some debate as to effectiveness and safety of registry cleaners, personally I've found the registry cleaner function in CCleaner to be excellent and it has never caused me any problems, however you should always click yes when prompted to back up the registry before each fix just in case something goes wrong.

Spybot Search and Destroy

When it comes to protecting your NC10, spyware and adware protection are becoming just as important as virus protection. The problem being that it is often the case that spyware and adware come bundled with software that the user has consensually installed meaning that anti-virus software will often ignore these nasties.

Spybot Search and Destroy is excellent free software that not only provides a regularly updated scanner but also an excellent 'immunization' feature that closes loopholes in your system and browsers to ensure that malicious software can't install itself in the first place. Spybot also provides the option to install it's 'Resident Tea Timer' software that monitors software that installs on your system and flags up any potentially unwanted programs before they are allowed to install. If your using Internet Explorer (you should be using Firefox) then there is also the option to install 'Resident SDHelper' that provides IE with even more protection against malicious software installers on the web.

The interface for Spybot can appear plain at times but this shouldn't shake your confidence in its abilities as protection software. The software is widely recommend and there is a big user and support base.

Spybot Search and Destroy can be downloaded for free here.

Don't like Spybot? Try Ad-Aware Free another free anti ad/spyware alternative.

Keeping your NC10 hard drive defragmented is essential in maintaining performance on this excellent netbook. Assuming that you are using the pre installed Windows XP as your primary operating system you will find that the XP disk defragmenter is more than adequate when used in combination with the sysinternals Page File Defrag tool available for free from Microsoft. This tool is neccessary as the XP defragmenter will not touch the system page file. Run them both regularly and you should prevent slow downs, particularly during file access and startup.

To run the XP defragmenter go to:
Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter

Click analyse and the defrag software should tell you if it is neccesary to defragment the disk. You can run this for both disks but most significant fragmentation will take place on the C drive.

To use the Sysinternals Page File Defrag Tool:
Run the downloaded .exe file after extracting it from the .zip file. I suggest keeping this file on the desktop as it does not require installation and runs as a standalone program. The tool presents a short list of system files and states how many fragments they are in. You are aiming for the whole list to state 1 fragment. If it does not select defragment at next boot and when you next boot the NC10 the defrag should happen automatically (it's fairly quick.)

More Info:
For more info on the exact nature of disk fragmentation check out this webopedia definition.

If you are unhappy with the xp defragmenter or are using Vista I personally recommend the free Auslogic Disk Defrag software which has a very user friendly interface.

The Samsung NC10 is not fitted with a built in CD/DVD drive and this can make installing applications, games and playing movies more than a bit awkward. Fortunately it's possible to purchase an external CD/DVD drive that connects to your NC10 using it's USB ports. Some of these drives are also capable of burning DVDs & CDs. They often require two USB ports to give them the power needed, in a similar fashion to external hard drives. Make sure you've installed the drivers that come with your drive before youve connected it. It pays to follow the instructions on these as drivers can make things very awkward if they go wrong.

Below I've compiled a list of suitable external CD/DVD drives available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. The drives are categorised as some only support the creation of CDs. I've only listed slimline external drives as they are most practical for netbook users.

Prices last updated 10/01/10

US Buyer (amazon.com)

CD/DVD Drives with CD/DVD Burning

Samsung External Slim USB DVD-Writer

LG Slim DVDRW External Drive w/LightScribe (Black/White)

CD/DVD Drives with CD Burning only

USB 2.0 External Slim CDRW/8x DVD-ROM Drive (Black)

UK Buyer (amazon.co.uk)

CD/DVD Drives with CD/DVD Burning

MY-Link USB External DVD-RW CD-RW DVD/CD Drive

Qubz Slimline USB External Dual Layer DVD RW (Black /White)

Liteon 8x Slim Ext USB2 DVDRW (Black)

International Buyer (amazon .ca .de .fr)

(More Countries Coming Soon..)

The Samsung NC10 ships with an excellent 6 cell battery that can get you about 4 - 6 hours proper usage at a reasonable brightness. This is great, but for people who use the NC10 on the go when chargers aren't around a bigger longer lasting battery could be the solution. 9 cell batteries offer this opportunity. The 9 cell batteries are rated in mAh (milliampere-hour) with some at 7200 mAh and others claiming up to 7800 mAh.

The 7 cell battery that ships as standard allows up to 4-6 hours of normal usage.

The 9 cell batteries allow for around 7 - 9 hours of normal usage.

Note: It has come to my attention that Samsung are shipping some NC10's with weaker 3 cell batteries. Even more reason to upgrade!

Below I've put together a quick list of 9 cell batteries available on Amazon. Make sure you buy one that matches the colour of your NC10.

UK Buyer (amazon.co.uk)

(White)
Extended High Capacity 7800mAh White Battery
(Black)
Extended High Capacity 7800mAh Black Battery

(Blue)
Extended High Capacity 7800Ah Blue Battery

US Buyer (amazon.com)
(White)
High Capacity High Quality Li-ion Battery [9 Cells]
(Blue)
High Capacity High Quality Li-ion Battery [9 Cells]

(Black)High Capacity High Quality Li-ion Battery [9 Cells]

LaptopMag.com have produced an excellent guide on how to upgrade your NC10 to a better hard drive. The guide is, like all the guides on LaptopMag, illustrated and step by step. Make sure you have the correct screwdriver before you start. You should decide between a 5400rpm drive, a 7200rpm drive or a Solid State Drive. There is a definate measurable and noticable performance different between the speeds of drive so I highly recommend moving up to 7200rpm even if you are just looking for increased hard drive capacity.

Remember that the NC10 uses SATA drives and only slim (2.5 inch) laptop size ones. Don't make the mistake of buying an IDE drive or a full size (3.5 inch) one. It's also important to note that there is no room inside to use an IDE to SATA convertor so don't bother trying. As standard the NC10 comes with a 160GB 5400rpm drive, from varying manufacturers.

Heres a quick outline of the pros and cons of each type of drive before you buy:

5400rpm
[Advantages] - Low Cost, Low Noise, Lower Power
[Disadvantages] - Lower Speed

7200rpm
[Advantages] - Faster Speed
[Disadvantages] - Higher Cost, Slightly Noisier, More Power Drain

SSD
[Advantages] - Very Fast, Silent, Low Power
[Disadvantages] - Very Expensive, Less Storage

Need to buy your Hard Drive? I've produced a list of brand name hard drives that will work in your NC10 that are available on amazon.com & amazon.co.uk.

Prices Updated Hourly - Where no price is shown, the drive may be out of stock.

US Buyer (amazon.com)

5400rpm Drives

7200rpm Drives

SSD Drives

UK Buyer (amazon.co.uk)

5400rpm Drives

7200rpm Drives

SSD Drives

It is important to note that the screws used in the NC10 are not Philips head. The NC10 is assembled using pozidriv screws and while attempting to open it with a small Philips head or flathead screwdriver may work the first time you can cause damage to the screwheads eventually rendering the screws iremovable. You need to use a Pozidriv 0 size screwdriver. This is especially true of the screws that hold the case together as they are sunk and hard to access with a larger screwdriver.

Below is a list of suitable screwdrivers for the NC10 and screwdriver sets for use with pozidrive screws generally. You should consider buying a set as a lot of factory assembled goods, particularly electronics, use various size pozidriv screws.

Note: Pozidriv screwdrivers are also listed as 'posidrive' and 'posidriv' the short code is pz0.

Prices last updated 10/01/10
- Suppliers seem to keep a limited stock of these screwdrivers, check regularly for new stock.

US Buyer (amazon.com)

Individual Screwdriver
$5.88 - Out of Stock
PB Swiss Screwdriver for 0 Pozidriv Screws

$5.94 - Positive Feedback from NC10 Owners
Wera Pozidriv 0 Screwdriver

$7.25
PB Swiss Insulated Screwdriver for Pozidriv 0

Screwdriver Sets
$19.57
GearWrench Four-Piece Pozi Screwdriver Set

$38.26
PB Swiss 4 Piece Pozidrive Driver Set

$42.83
PB Swiss 4-Piece Pozidrive Set with Swiss Grip

$61.33
Wera 6pc Pozidrive Slipstop Wera Rocko Ergo Set

UK Buyer (amazon.co.uk)

Individual Screwdrivers

£2.80
Wera Kraftform Micro Screwdriver - Pozidriv Tip 0

£4.48
Irazola Techno Pozidriv rnd 0.pt x 75mm

£4.72
Wera Kraftform Vde Screwdriver Pozidriv Tip 0

International Buyer (amazon .ca .de .fr)

See the pozidriv screw drivers available at your local Amazon. Just click your flag!

(More Countries Coming Soon..)