As an audiophile and amateur sound engineer/music producer, these settings are very familiar–human hearing initially perceives boosted bass and treble (with notched midrange) as better sounding. Therefore, many times cheap systems will hike these qualities in their hardware and include preset EQs that more or less achieve this effect (e.g. Samsung EDS). However, it is poorly balanced and usually results in ear fatigue during an extended listening session. It is also not faithful to the original audio source.
The goal of audio production (or what is used to be before the loudness wars started) is to create the purest, most natural reproduction of the original source possible. However, even the best-produced recording will be colored by a low-grade amp or audio circuit. Equalizers are intended to compensate for the shortfalls of either the circuitry or the speakers used to reproduce the signal, but in order to use EQ effectively, one needs to know where the frequency response of the hardware deviates from a flat line. Therefore, until somebody empirically measures the frequency response of the NC10’s audio circuitry, I would take any “correcting” EQ with a grain of salt–particularly those that hike bass and treble and notch midrange.
And, though I hope it’s implied, the above doesn’t even apply with built-in notebook speakers because they’re simply far too small to ever produce good sound quality, no matter what you do with them. My comments are directed at the audio chip itself.