The touchpad, while a good size, could be bigger--I'm still a fan of what the was able to cram in. The single-bar mouse button works well enough. In short, it's there and I don't hate it. Glowing recommendation, I know.

Specs-wise, you'll find nothing particularly shocking here: Intel's 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM (upgradable to 2GB), and a 160GB hard drive lurk under the hood. Samsung spokespeople promise in the neighborhood of 10 hours of battery life from the six-cell battery. (That battery is the big difference between the U.S. model and the lower-octane foreign version.) We'll see how close the Go comes to those claims when we get results from the PC World Test Center.

Otherwise, examine the rest of the Go, and you'll get a sense of netbook déjà vu. Lining the rig are three USB ports (two of which are powered), a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, mic and headphone jacks, a flash card reader, Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g, in addition to the aforementioned ethernet and VGA-out jacks.

Good news: Samsung continues its generosity with software, providing a full easy-to-use suite. Samsung Recovery Solution III is a handy backup and system-restore program that even throws in a few suggestions regarding the possible causes of your machine's problems, giving you a recommended course of backup action to resolve the matter. Easy Network Manager lets you quickly and effortlessly connect to networks; it's a superfluous bit of software for anyone remotely savvy enough, but it puts a pretty face on the standard Windows XP option. And as its name suggests, the Battery Life Extender and Easy Battery Manager makes it simple to toggle the battery-saving modes.

The other bit of software baked onto the machine that I didn't get to try out fully is Phoenix FailSafe, a tool meant to keep your data secure if your netbook gets lost or stolen. It can give you the option for IP-tracking your missing gear (and configure the netbook to snap pictures with the Webcam upon boot), as well as remotely encrypt or erase data or disable access.