P7230 any other owners?

So i bought this notebook very recently for someone else (and am not due to give it to them till the end of the month) and i was less than impressed with the fan noise. It is not so bad when you set it on silent mode in the bios but to me the fan is still a bit much. On battery power the fan noise is not a problem the fan noise occurs when you plug the AC in. I have been reading all over the net about the fan issue with this laptop.

Also, i discovered that the laptop has got a battery discharge problem i can charge the battery to 100% and then leave it and come back to it the next day or the day after and the battery would have discharged and gone down to like 70 odd percent.

With these two problems i sent the laptop in to the European division in Germany it was bought in the US. I was told that with the battery discharge problem that they might likely to replace some board (i cannot remember what they said the part would be). They also said that they would look into the fan noise as well.

There are plenty of ultraportables and netbooks that run cool and don't have any issues with the fan. Fujitsu could still do a better job with the fans.

So does anybody else have this notebook how is it going and do you have any tips or anything else for it?

I think that it is a very nice built notebook it is not cheap looking like some netbooks are. Speakers are not great but you expect that really with ultraportables. The laptop runs fast enough with 2GB of ram. Battery life is very good also. The screen is very nice as well. The fingerprint reader with TPM is a nice touch as well. I was given a list of what someone wanted in a laptop and this laptop seemed to tick all the boxes. They wanted a dvd drive, pink laptop, webcam and fingerprint reader. I got it for a very decent price as well.

I upgraded the HD to a 1.8" 120GB 5400 rpm and then changed my mind and sold the drive the just stuck with the standard drive. The standard drive is a bit small but for every day tasks it works fine in terms of performance.

I wish that i could replace the white US keyboard with a UK one but that is just not possible as the standard black model was just released in the UK i think.

I'll let you know if the laptop comes back with these problems fixed if they don't i will either ask for a replacement of another laptop or a refund.

 

You may get more response at Leog.net (or is that you there under another name?).

I've owned a couple of S series and they could both get quite noisy under load (but not as bad as the Toshiba R500). Little notebooks usually get little fans and the only fix is to reduce the heat being produced.

Regarding the keyboard I suggest you contact ServiceSource Europe. They respond quickly to email enquiries.

John

 

Thanks John

I am registered to that other forum under a not to dissimilar name I don't post there very much though. I was unsure about the traffic flow of each forum but looking at this again you probably are correct in saying that other board gets more traffic than this particular forum.

These fans in this laptop kick of if the laptop is not even under load. I am sure that Fujitsu could write a better bios for it if they wanted to. The fans on the MSI Wind and some LG ultraportable laptops are so quiet i have also read these laptops run pretty cool as well.

It is a shame that the R500 appears to have a bit of a fan noise issue as well.

I will definitely contact that company about the keyboard.

If the laptop does happen to come back to me fixed of these problems i will be sure to update.

Thanks


Edited to add:
Well at least i know that it is going to come back to me with some work being done on it. I was told that they have got the notebook with them now and all the parts that are needed for this job have been ordered.

 

the p7230 is quieter than most of my coworker's laptops at work. i thought it was loud but it really isnt.

as for battery life, with the modular bay battery i can run an entire work day constantly on a single charge. i think the battery life indicator is inaccurate as it will keep charging a long time after it reads "100%".

 

Well i got this laptop back just in time to give it to my niece to go on her holiday today. I have the laptop with me now just from trying it out for a while it looks like the fan control is better than it was before. I don't know what they have done to it but whatever it was there has been an improvement.

The repair sheet that they sent had this
Fan getauscht burn in difs-Test i.0. lol i haven't looked at what that exactly means yet but i will look at that later.

I don't know if they have solved the battery problem as i don't have time to test it right now.

bani i did leave this laptop to charge overnight more than once and then unplugged it and put it away but when i came back to it like i said the battery charge was like at 70 odd percent which does indicate a problem. No way should it have to take more than 12 hours to charge. I hope that this is resolved now.


I wish that they were more careful with the laptop though as the laptop came back with a slight dent in the lid. I will bring this to there attention and see if they can maybe replace the lid at a later date.

Anyway i am glad that i sent it in.

Edited to add:
My niece has just picked her laptop up and she is over the moon with it. I thought that it might be to small for her but she is very happy with the size. We also bought her some earphones as well so she can listen to music a bit louder as well when she wants to with the headphones plugged into the headphone jack.
She has gone away until the 1st of September so when she comes back i will ask her about the battery to see if the discharging problem has been taken care of.

 

I think that i may have spoken to soon on this because i got the laptop back today as it is due to be collected soon to have the lid replaced.

Anyway 3 weeks after i checked it the fan noise does not seem really any better than it was before now.

I am now going to ask for a replacement laptop.

 

Bad news. What is wrong with the lid?

As for fan noise, I suspect that the fundamental problem is a very small fan which is strugging to get rid of the heat. I once has the S2010 with an AMD CPU and that got a little noisy. I then changed to an S6120 which was the same chassis but Intel CPU and it was much quieter.

Undervolting the CPU may help. Which CPU is it?

John

 

Hi John the lid came back from the repair centre with two small dents in it. I didn't send it of like i doubt that it was done in transit so i think it must have happened in their repair centre.
I emailed them a couple of pictures and they offered to replace it anyway.

The fan the latest netbooks most of them don't seem to have issues with the fan. Also some LG ultraportables with dedicated GPU's seem not to have this issue as well. I was timing it today and the fan seemed to be coming on every few minutes and at times it can be distracting and quite annoying.
I didn't tell my niece about the fan problems before and for what exactly it went in for repair for.

She however when i told of her this today told me that she was having problems with it as well.

The CPU is a Core Solo 1.2 processor i tried undervolting it a little while back but that didn't seem to make a difference.

Also, before they found a problem with the fan and replaced it i think going on the service note that they left in the return box.

I am hoping that they can replace it with something else now or even give me my money back.

 

I noticed something about this laptop today. I noticed that in the BIOS as default the laptop was set up as for Intel speed step to be enabled during battery operation. Under AC power though the intel speed step was disabled.
I have enabled Intel speed step to be on when it used on the AC now.

It is very strange though that with this laptop on battery power the fan does not appear to be an issue at all.

Besides the fan issue this laptop would be pretty perfect. With wlan disabled and with level 3 brightness i can see like up to 9 hours 30 minutes battery life on the clock with the standard 6 cell battery.

 

Speedstep not enabled. Weird. That might have meant the CPU was running full speed all the time and might not be dropping into the lower power states when idle.

Have you noticed any difference in the fan activity? One way or another, there should be a way to make the notebook as quiet on the mains power as it is on the battery.

John

 

I didn't really test it long enough after i found out to make a fair comparsion i think.
I had to pack it up to get it ready for it to be picked up today. It has now been returned to Germany to have them look at it again and for them to replace the lid.

John do you have any suggestions that could make this notebook run as quiet as is it on battery?
I quickly tried it with mid brightness to try and make the situation the same but that didn't really affect things.

 

We need to understand what the power settings are when it is on battery. RMClock's monitoring page might provide some clues such as whether the CPU is being throttled. Another possibility is that the temperatures to operate the fan are higher in order to reduce the power used by the fan.

John

 

i'm using vista ultimate on mine. i tweaked the settings a bit for running on battery and on power and haven't had any issues with noise.

i did notice third party monitoring software and fan controllers seem to do a much worse job running the fan on the p7230 than the stock fujitsu software.

 

On the other page bani you said that you thought it used to be loud until you saw your co-workers laptops. Now you are saying that you have no issues at all has anything changed? Did you alter your settings if so what settings are you now using? Is your laptop the core solo version? Just wondering what led to you downloading the 3rd party software?

Maybe you got a laptop that maybe does not have the same problems to the same extent and if that it is the case that is good to read.

It will come down to different tolerances as well. One person might be able to tolerate a pretty constant quite loud fan whilst somebody else might not be able to.

I have also used quite a number of laptops over the past 7 years and this one for me has been the most annoying fan wise yet. My niece and her family even picked up on the fan issue before i even told her about the problem.

It clearly had a problem before because it even failed in their testing.

Also a number of reviews have mentioned about the fan noise and this laptop.

I am planning to change some of the settings again when i get the laptop back. I do hope that i can resolve these issues.

Some people might be wondering why i bought this laptop well I didn't read to many reviews before i purchased this laptop and the reviews that i read were ok. It was not until after i purchased the laptop that i read some more critical reviews.
At that point i was hoping that when i got the laptop that i could download something that could take care of any possible fan issues.
Maybe i didn't research as much as i normally would of i think that i was so impressed with the price and looks. It seemed to be all that my niece wanted at a very decent price.


EDITED TO ADD 1st October:
This issue has now been settled i sent the laptop back to the US and they tested it and agreed with me about the noise. They said i could have got a lemon or something could be loose in the laptop. They gave us a new replacement which they tested to make sure that it was not like the other one and they gave me their assurance on the phone that this one was better so i decided to give it a go again.

Things do appear to be better i have been using it since this morning because i am borrowing it till the weekend as my laptop is in service and the fans issue is better than it was.

They also gave my niece a nice Codi laptop bag for her troubles and for having to go without a laptop for so long. She has hardly had it since it was bought. Hopefully all these problems are over now for good.