Coming soon - Y470P!

Mine also shipped today, with the original shipping estimate as 3/21, so I'm very pleased.

 

Very nice! I ordered mine on the 24th, so I'll be on the lookout toward the end of the week!

 

Great news for both of you!

Suggestion: One of the first things you should do is get the trackpad acting rational. See my review: Random Gorp: Lenovo Y470p Initial Impressions

That will make everything else a bit easier.

(And let us know if that's not necessary any more!)

 

Thanks GregPF I will have to check out the trackpad, although I have a wireless mouse I will probably end up using most of the time (at home anyways).

Lenovo finally charged my account after releasing the hold on my account 4 days ago, so I'm officially getting my y470p soon.

 

I looked up Acronis, it appears they have multiple programs available and I couldn't suss out which one it is that can move everything over. Is it True Image or Disk Director?

NM I found Acronis Migrate Easy and I believe that is the program you are referring to.

 

Thanks GregPf. I've already the blog and will make it a a priority. Also, just got my shipment notice today!! Pretty excited about that.

 

I just got my shipping confirmation as well. ETA 3/05, can't wait for it.

 

I'm thinking of either buying and running a crucial m4 256 gb ssd by itself or getting a 128 gb msata ssd and using the 750 gb HDD that comes with it for storage. Which do you think would be the better choice?

 

I have a Y470p on order and am planning a couple of upgrades as soon as I receive it but have some questions.

1) I will be adding an mSata SSD. Does anyone know whether the mSata interface is Sata II or Sata III?

2) I'm considering swapping out the stock optical drive with a Panasonic UJ240 Bluray burner. Has anyone tried swapping the drive? Is it relatively easy to access and remove?

 

What day did you place the order?

 

Having everything on the SSD will be faster; no wait for loading data. Also, non-mSATA SSDs are cheaper. Check Newegg, of course - a friend of mine found a 150GB there for $155; don't know about 256GB.

But it does depend on how much cra... excuse me, how much valuable data you anticipate keeping on the system. I'm over 300GB myself, so a 256GB SSD wouldn't be enough.

Also, several of these come with utilities for moving everything to your new SSD to create a new system disk, which I, for one, would really like. I don't know if there's anything similar for moving just bootables & progs to mSATA.

 

I placed my order on 2/18. Wish they would have had a better estimate on their shipping date. The automated gave me an estimated ship date of 3/26.

Greg, I won't have too many things on my drive outside of games, music, and movies. I'm worried though, as I've heard that having an SSD drive and no storage drive is not so great for the drives health and life?

Thanks for the replies.

 

I just ordered my Y470P, ETA ship is 4/2.. ouch!

 

Following the trend I've seen on here, a more realistic ship date is 3/10 give or take a couple days.

 

Decided on buying a msata 128 gb from mydigitalssd.

 

I just ordered one of those last night, after placing the order for the laptop. Definitely seemed to be the best deal for an msata that large. I'm just going to cringe a little when my $180 ssd arrives in a bubble wrap envelope.

 

BTW, thanks for the good info on this thread, especially GregPF's review. It helped me decide on this over the Envy 15. I'll save some money, and the screen might not be amazing, but from your comments, it appears it can at least display the color red.

 

to all those ordering and waiting: hang in there, the wait times are usually much shorter and it is well worth the wait.
Mine just came in earlier in the week and I am loving it! (mind you it is a big step up from my 8-year old Asus).

Just wondering two things from current users:
1. what are you finding to be the best setting for the switchable graphics:
the powerplay mode, manual mode or switchable
I can't quite seem to tweak it just right
2. Battery life: does anyone use the lenovo power management or just the windows...any ideas on best configuration? Mine is mostly plugged in..at work during the day and often unplugged at home...as I move it around.

Thanks in advance.

 

Just having SSD not good for drive's life -- I've not heard that.

I don't think it is an issue. If it were, a whole lot of Macbook Air users would be really unhappy. Those have only SSD drives. I've heard of no mass outcries.

There used to be issues with lifetime with SSDs, but I've not heard those recently. I can see where the worry comes from, since SSD lifetime = number of writes; reads don't matter. Since you write data more than programs, it would follow if write lifetime were still an issue.

But no matter what the reasoning, there are too many vendors selling great big piles of SSD-only systems for it to be a big issue nowadays. Intel's Ultrabook form factor for PCs is the same way - just SSD -- but hasn't been out for long yet.

Of course, no matter what you should have some form of backup; it's like basic computing hygiene. Spinning drives crash, too.

(For backup, I happen to use Carbonite. Set it up, and after the initial copy it's invisible & automatic. Not meant to be an endorsement, just an example. There are others, probably just as good. Or you could use an outboard drive. Or whatever. YMMV.)

 

My plan is when my laptop arrives, I'm going to order this from Amazon.com

Amazon.com: Samsung 830 - Series MZ-7PC064D/AM 64 GB 2.5 Inch SATA III MLC Internal SSD Desktop Kit with Norton Ghost 15: Computers & Accessories

I know it has a mSATA I can use as well, will hold off on that just yet, will eventually get another SSD to put on the mSATA to have more capacity.
And I also work 100% off Dropbox.com, so not worried about backups just in case it dies (that would NEVER happen.. lol), everything on my hard drive can be reinstalled.

I know I can use the HDD for the space, but realistically, I wouldn't really need that much space, as this laptop would be 90% programming, and I do a lot of programming at work and I'm not even at 60GB yet.

 

1. No clue what the "best" settings are for the graphics. I have powerplay enabled & switch graphics based on app, telling it to ask me when it first runs an app. All I can say is that it works fine. I do occasionally get popups asking whether I want an application to be high performance or power-saving; those are the ones I asked for. The choice is never difficult to make: only things that obviously need performance (or I want performance on) get high performance; everything else is power-saving. Games, Photoshop, and browser are so far the only high performance choices I've made, as far as I remember.

2. I use "energy star". It's almost always plugged in, so far, except by accident and when in sleep mode carrying it somewhere. For that plan, I looked at the "advanced settings" that actually tell you what it's doing, and they all seemed reasonable to me. In "advanced settings" there's a tab letting you "enable Lenovo Energy Management" which I have not used, on the grounds that nothing tells me what it does beyond vague statements that amount to "does good stuff." So I don't trust it.

I do wish there were some setting somewhere saying it shouldn't always charge the battery to 100%; staying no higher than about 80% apparently extends battery life. Had that on a Vaio, and may have had it on a ThinkPad, but haven't found it here.

 

GregPf, thanks for the graphics input. I pretty much keep it the same, guess I will stick with it, change if need be.
I actually did find the charging feature you mention. It is under Lenovo's energy management program. You can choose between long battery time or best battery health (where it will only charge the battery 45-50%). I choose the best health option, but only time will tell how useful that is.

 

has anyone taken off that sticker to the left of the trackpad...if so, does it come off easily and without leaving a mark?

 

how's battery life treating everyone?

thanks!

 

Aha! Thanks! You're right, it's in there. I set it to health, too, even though 45-50% is really pretty low.

I think it does work. Back when I was working & got a new laptop every year or so, I would regularly notice battery life was falling off within the year. That was when nobody heard of health options like this; everything always charged to 100%. The Vaio I drop-kicked for the Y470, on the other hand, I used for 4 miserable years, with the battery still good, under a "health" plan like this.

So, there's one data point, with lots of variance -- different batteries, different companies, different use profiles -- but a data point non-the-less. Enough for me to use it, anyway.

 

Yes. And yes, and yes. Came off fairly easily, no mark.

The ones on the right of the trackpad seem welded on, though.

 

Warm it up a little bit. A hairdryer on low for just a few seconds should do the trick.

 

Does the Y470P support SATAIII in either mSATA or 2.5" HDD/SDD bay?

Is the I5/I7 cpu soldered or socketed to the mobo?

 

No, as I answered in your other thread; the Y740P only has SATA II.

As for the CPU, I would presumably think that it is socketed, as I've never heard of a CPU on a regular laptop being embedded into the motherboard.

 

So SATAII speeds at the 2.5" port and the mSATA port, correct?

I wanted to install and use a Samsung 830 SSD and take advantage of its SATAIII performance, if possible.


Presuming that you think its socketed is a lot different than actually knowing for a fact that its socketed or soldered. Plenty of laptops have soldered-onto-the-motherboard cpus, Lenovo x220 and Asus U36 being two. On the otherhand, my Asus U24E has a socketed cpu.

I want owner experiences or responses preferably.

 

So the 7690M in this Y470P is nerfed with DDR3?

 

Could someone please test any kind of game in Battlefield 3 under ALL LOW settings at 1366x768 and tell me what kind of fps you are getting. I can't decide between this and hp pav dv6. If u dont have BF3 then torrent it and play the SP just for me (A)...

Thanx a lot!

 

Can anyone post their Windows Experience Index on their Y470P? Curious what they are ranking at

 

Mine is 5.6, determined by getting that lowest subscore on Aero. Details, totally vanilla, untweaked system:

Processor - 7.4
RAM - 7.6
Graphics (Aero) - 5.6
Gaming graphics 6.5
HDD 5.9

Note, Aero works just fine for me; maybe a little slow dimming rest of screen for one of those "do you want this program to install stuff" messages.

 

Real world battery trial: Used mine on battery for an extended period for the first time today.

Changed battery saver to charge up to 100% first (not battery life saver, which leaves it at 50%).

Used small (not big extended life) battery, "energy star" power plan.

1 hr sleep, then 1 hr on taking notes & tweeting, then ~2 hrs sleep

This left 67% of battery charge, which it said would be good for another 2.6 hrs or so - I forget the exact time, do remember the 67%.

I did dim the display while using it, to 2 "bars" total, which was surprisingly usable.

My net: Roughly adequate, but not wonderful. If I go to a conference and need to use it at 4-5 1-hr talks in a row, I'll be looking for outlets. I'll also be trying the "Super Energy Saver" power plan. (Which has an incorrect description; it does throttle the processors down as much as possible.)

 

Is that with GMA 3000 on or 7690m?

 

Damfino. No clue when it switches, or how to nail it into one mode or the other. Except that specific apps are nailed to the 7690m, manually.

 

I've just set mine to run on 7690 on AC and intel graphics on battery. seems to be the most consistent that way.

 

Can you guys help me ? I just got this laptop and I can't switch to dedicated graphics. All I get is only the intel integrated graphics. Should I install Catalyst drivers manually or something ?

 

right click on the desktop and choose switchable graphics.

 

Can't, this is what it shows...

 

I just found that. For others' convenience:

1. Right-click on desktop, select"graphics properties" (not "switchable graphics"); this opens "catalyst control center".
   
2. Click "Power" in menu on left.
   
3. Under "Power" click switchable graphics method".

​

Now you have the choice to switch based on app needs, or based on power source.

Still haven't put it in "based on power source" mode. I figure it'll run fan less when plugged in if it's not using the GPU on most apps. I have run into problems on other laptops due to fan-based issues -- fan died, cooling fins clogged with dust -- so I like to keep it as slow as I can.

Also, I'm just a little afraid that doing so will trash the list of apps it now remembers to put in GPU mode.

 

I have definitely noticed my fan running more since switching to "based on power mode"; however, I found it inconsistent based on app needs. For example, Skyrim would run on intel graphics and of course, I want to take full advantage of the laptop for gaming!
Other apps I thought I had chosen would be gone from the list. Maybe I just didn't stick with that method long enough. dunno.

 

Is there way to see a master list of programs that I have selected and not just recent ones? My switchable graphics based on application needs seems to work perfectly based on benchmarks but I would sometimes like to switch what is being used. Chrome, for example, I would like to run on the Intel chip almost always but there will be times I want to switch for a short period to the dedicated.

 

Is the y470p running cooler than the y470 does during gaming etc?

 

what's up all. just ordered my Y470P today with the i7 in it for about $850 w/ sales tax (Texas). excited to get it (estimated ship is 3/21/2012) and put in a 60-80gb mSATA drive.

anyone have any experience yet with some reliable models that are compatible with the Y470P?

also, what are your thoughts on this sucker being able to play Diablo III on some nice settings? i'm way behind in the graphics card department.

 

Tech specs for D3 are minimum NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT or ATI Radeon X1950 Pro. The 7690M handily beats both of those in terms of performance, so you shouldn't have any trouble with D3 at normal settings. To be fair, the Diablo games have never required insane graphics, and it looks like this one doesn't stray far from the fold in that regard.

 

excellent! i am also curious of how long everyone plans on keeping their Y470P/how many years it will be "relevant" for above average gaming performance?

 

Alright guys, I have a new problem now...

All of a damn sudden the GPU downclocked itself from 725/900 to 100/150 ??

I noticed that the gaming performance is greatly undermined.



Is there a way to make back to normal ? Overclock perhaps ?

 

Guys, I recently ordered a Y470p a few days back based of the feedback I got from the forum and I'm loving it so far except for one minor irritant. Heard its pretty common for this model but is EVERYONE facing this issue with the humming noise when headphones are plugged in and nothing's being played? If not, I'm thinking of sending this one back for replacement as I'm almost all the time using headphones on it. My old HP Pavilion dv4-1114nr never made noise like this. Please chip in with your advice/responses.Thanks!!!