Lenovo ThinkPad X120e review (via Engadget)

thnks for clearing the battery thing i guess its cheaper to get it with 6 cell. also if i get a machine configured with NO bluetooth can i just add the thing in?

 

the x120e keyboard is fantastic thus far. BUT, it's missing the "menu key"! i use this key a lot because i don't like using a mouse/trackpad. without it, it's more annoying to get the right-click-menu. i found a solution, we can press Shift+F10 for the menu key but it's less intuitive. other than that, the keyboard is absolutely perfect.

BTW, i did a fresh install of win7. i installed the amd fusion & wifi driver. there is still one unknown hardware left. does anyone know what it is? it's not the webcam or the media card reader. please report back if you know what is the unknown device. every hardware seems to be functional for me. thanks.

 

i did a fresh win7 install. the laptop does not get hot at all! i have only used it normally for web browsing, youtubing in hd. haven't done any intensive cpu crunching or gaming but i doubt it will get remotely hot.

the fan noise is quite low. you can definitely hear it a quiet room. it would sound better if it wasn't as high pitch.

i got a 6-cell battery and it last 5+ hr easily with normal use. i am sure one can get close to 6 hrs if used more lightly.

i am actually glad that the 3-cell battery are only 32 wh because i thought i made a mistake paying $50 extra for the 6-cell. now i know it's definitely worth the price. lenovo needs to fix the website immediately to reflect the correct watt hours.

 

I ordered the 6-cell battery (57Y4559) through Lenovo's student discount site for $84.00 but it's $99.00 on regular site!

 

So.... Ive been thinking...
Has anyone fooled around with the Lenovo Power Management Tools? I have been debating, should i leave it installed, or remove it and use the default windows 7 power management options

 

Even though the driver matrix claims there isn't support yet...

System Update successfully installs all correct drivers. I verified these are the same versions from the driver matrix. A single driver you have to download manually and install was the webcam - but this was due to a download error and may be fixed at this point.

This will not install any of the thinkvantage tools - which at least one of them you will probably want to download (the airbag software), so there is still at least a bit of manual downloading/installing to do.

 

I got an email recently from Lenovo and I just found out about this laptop. I think I'm in love with this laptop. I am considering getting this and "replacing" my current Acer AS1410. Is the 40% + student discount + 10% off coupon the best deal right now? I kept the base $399 model, upgraded the the CPU, and stuck on a 3 year warranty and after california tax is around ~$500.

 

I leave the power management on because I want to use the "optimization for battery lifespan" feature on the laptop.

 

Does anyone know where the Lenovo oem files like device manager ini, gifs, custom W7 Lenovo logon files, wallpaper, etc. are located? I plan to do a clean install with SP1 after upgrading to SSD, and would like that "Lenovo Thinkpad" feel.

 

Where did you guys find the driver for the fusion & wifi. Also it would be great help to point me to the direction of the oem files. Thanks so much!

 

Lenovo Support - ThinkPad X120e 0611-2BU support

 

Thanks!!! Greatly appreciated

 

Are you looking to play games on the x120e? The processor is a practical tie between the two (SU2300 vs E-350)

 

Is the driver for the fusion called AMD Graphic and USB Filter Device Software for Windows Vista (32-bit) and Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) - ThinkPad X120e? thanks

 

Did SP1 come with the x120e? If it did then maybe I won't go through all the trouble of doing a fresh install on my Vertex. And for the guy that was interested, yes it's available but I will need 20 posts before I can post on Marketplace.

 

Yes that is the driver for AMD fusion graphic. I suggested you download Lenovo power management driver. It will get rid of the unrecognized device on the device manager.

 

The easiest way to get all the proper drivers is just to use Lenovo's System Update tool - run that, and it'll suggest a bunch of drivers and ThinkVantage software for your machine. Simply uncheck the ones you don't need.

 

Cool - that was me - I set my user profile to allow emails from other users so you should be able to email me I think (if that does not work, let me know). I plan on installing linux on this thing so no OS is fine by me. I usually run fedora but may try this: Fuduntu due to its very low power usage focus (its based on fedora 14 so I am not venturing out that far). Anyone know what the default wifi card is (make/model)? Sometimes wifi cards are a pain in linux. Likewise, anyone know what the upgrade card is - the a/b/g/n one?

 

Unable to message you, but may not matter if you're not in NYC. Got a few e-mails from NYC folks already. As for the default card, it's supposed to be a Realtek. The upgrade card is supposedly a Broadcom.

 

Ok - thanks anyways.

 

Good question about SP-1 on the newer systems coming out. Though its easy to install SP-1 later, I would love to have it already on the partition with any newer Lenovos systems. Saves time.

 

Here are few pics with the 3-cell battery in case anyone is interested in how it looks on the Thinkpad. Definitely no "battery bulge!" But also ordered a 6-cell battery for a longer lasting charge. My 3-cell battery is now completely charged and is showing a lil over 3.5-hours of charge/use.
It definitely booted up/powered on right-away, setup was pretty quick ad has great size keyboard. One note is that you do hear the fan occassionally and hard drive spinning when in a quiet space but could be because of 7200rpm hdd.

Will post unboxing!!

 

If you have a wireless dongle you can use, then install system update and let it take care of ALL the drivers. Contrary to 'no support' the driver matrix currently says, system update IS installing ALL the required drivers (no applications though)

 

Can you do some test for the 3 cell battery and see if you can squeeze over 4 hours by having 50-70% brightness and with wifi on and just surfing, no hd or video playing. Thanks

 

Yes, will do! Although while posting pics to this sight using another computer, the amount of time for battery on the thinkpad went up to 4 hours then fluctuated between 3 And 4.5 hours within minutes while sitting on desk with no activity...well maybe an open webpage!
Will post much clearer results in later post!

 

Has anyone here used Battery Bar? It is a great history based battery life meter. My x120 just shipped from China a couple days ago, hope to get it by Monday (I really hoped it would show up this week, got the 'shipped' email from Lenovo on the 7th). I wasn't able to get the great no-os deal . I got the 3 cell and a 6 cell so I can compare lifespan on the two.

 

I didn't use mine that extensively, but I think it'll be hard to get real life 3 hour use on the 3 cell. At brightness 4 of 15, I'm seeing about 8 Watt power use. It shows 3:10 with 87% battery right now. If I start using the browser a little more frequently, it goes up to 16 Watt. You can do the calculation at this point. Using intel g2 SSD shaved about 0.5 Watt. Having 8GB RAM could be a reason for using more power.

I think it's safe to assume 2 hours of harder use on 3 cell battery. I didn't upgrade the battery because I wanted to keep the price cheap like how a netbook should be. $305 compared to $350 is a big difference in percentage, so I went with 3 cell. I wanted a flush battery, but who would have guessed that the 3 cell was actually 32 WH, and not the promised 40 WH. After seeing how expensive they sell the geniune batteries for, I'm thinking maybe I should have shelled out that extra $45.

 

Is there a fan setting/power setting that enables a noiseless mode? What is the fan sound like when doing light wireless websurfing in a quiet room?

 

The noise is not noticeable, a lot quieter than I expected.
P.S. The fan is always on.

 

Hes right. Even after watching a movie... the machine heats up but the fan is very quite

 

how much difference is there with the bgn and abgn wireless beides the obvious a mode?
also if i get x120e without it. will it be locke din the bios to only use bgn like they like the bluetooth?

 

The b/g/n card is a Realtek card, I believe, whereas the a/b/g/n card is a Broadcom one. The latter is rumored to have better driver support and signal reception, although it's not really clear.

I don't really know what you mean by locked in the BIOS--I believe you can add a Bluethooth card with little issue. Lenovo does whitelist WiFi cards, though, so you would have to go through eBay and purchase a compatible Lenovo-whitelisted card. Otherwise, it will not work.

 

ok thanks. should i go for a model with agbn, bluetooth, e350 of course lol with win premium 64 with just 250gb and 3 cell battery for $500 or should i hold out for the other model with 320gb @7200rpm and 6 cell battery with win pro 64 and NO a/b/g/n although i do not kn ow for how much?
i can get the $500 literraly now. but id have to wait for the 05962pu model whenever i can without the shipper using fedex or ups?

 

From my experience, 100% true. The realtek card that came with my old x100e was simply unusable and would constantly drop the wireless signal. The Broadcom card that my u160 has worked perfectly and they continually update the drivers for. Well worth the upgrade IMO.

 

There was also discussion that the a/b/g/n card was also 300mbps rather than 150mbps on the b/g/n card. I can't say for sure if it's true or not, but it's something else to consider.

 

Lenovo uses UPS Ground unless you specify faster shipping methods.

Hmm, I'll see if I have those issues as well. I opted to stick with the base Thinkpad b/g/n card. Strange, I haven't heard of too many issues with the Thinkpad b/g/n card in the larger Thinkpads (I'd assume it's the same card?).

 

they wont ship to the uk tho. so i have to look for resellers but atm the best model for me is the 05962pu but i have seena custom model which i mentioned up above.

 

Oh man, I got my x120e today and have been playing with it. I just have to say I totally love it. This is my first Thinkpad and while it is a bit of a TPJR it just has a great feel and build quality.
Much faster than I thought and just a pleasure to type on.

Just checking to see if I can stream TV via my HDHomerun to it. I hadn't thought about that until I saw the green dot.

Still a lot to play with, but I am stoked.

 

Everybody's getting theirs and mine still say's "In Process".
I've invested a total of $803.38 in this thing and still got nothing to show for.

 

Don't feel bad. It's totally awesome. I am licking it right now....

 

Mine arrived today, back at home. Unfortunately, I am at college several hundred miles away, preparing for winter quarter finals. I'll write up a full review with pictures once I get back, though

 

Just wondering how many of you ordered your X120e with Bluetooth?

I'm amongst a bunch of those who ordered an X120e in Canada, but our orders have been stalled and constantly being pushed back, here:
[Comp] Lenovo ThinkPad X120e, AMD E-350, 2GB memory, 250G hd, 3cell, $364 after code. - RedFlagDeals.com Forums

I called in today since they said my machine was supposed to ship today. They told me the plant gave them two shipping dates, March 21 and April 12 for mine, citing some issues getting the Bluetooth module. Another one did the same thing and also got April 12 as the date, but they actually told them it was a "technical issue" with the module.

Anyone have Bluetooth on theirs and/or having problems?

 

I configured mine with Bluetooth and for me it states 15/03/11 for the estimated ship date.

 

When did you order? I ordered mine on the 2nd. Originally the estimated date on the status was March 14, got moved up to 10th. I'm still seeing nothing though in status updates...

 

I ordered mine on the 5th of March. My original shipment date was the 14th, but it got changed to the 15th. I haven't even received a tracking number yet, so I'm guessing they probably haven't even shipped it.

 

Anyone know how I might be able to disable a single Fn+F key combination, rather than all of them? I want to make it so Fn+F12 does nothing, as I accidentally got myself stuck in some sort of hibernation loop earlier, and seeing as I never even hibernate, I'd rather just make the combination do nothing.

 

I ordered mine's with Bluetooth. No problems yet! Received my thinkpad two days ago.

 

Finally got a chance to upgrade it with a Vertex2 and it's running very spiffy. I took some screen shots of the configs in Device Manager before my Vertex2 went in and don't remember seeing SP1 on the Lenovo install.

It looks smaller and thinner in person than how some of the screenshots on the web are showing. The keyboard is great, though the left FN and CTRL keys were a little confusing at first (prefer not to pop my keys out). With the SSD, the fan only kicked up once during multitasking of Windows update, copying files over the network, and browsing the web; all while antivirus was running in the background. The fan was fairly quiet at night even when there wasn't any ambient noise. The only caveat I had is that the screen colors seemed slightly washed out when compared to an Acer 1830T. Although, I do prefer the matte screen and there are color profiles on Lenovo's website for the x120e, which I haven't tried yet.

Question for the people who did a clean install -and- used the Lenovo Update Manager to download all the drivers: Did the Update Manager have problems updating the wifi, cam, and sound drivers? It would either start to download them and say 'can't be downloaded' or say 'not installed'. All the other drivers installed fine through the Update Manager. It's possible that it's SP1 related.

For people with an SSD and more than 4GB of memory, a ramdisk improved multitasking and helped reduce writes to the SSD. A question I have is, is it safe to have the windows temp dirs moved to the ramdisk as well and not auto-write back to the image on shutdown or reboot? If it really should write back to the ramdisk image, that's GBs (depending on your ramdisk size) of data written back to the SSD on every reboot/shutdown, isn't it? Sort of defeating the purpose of trying to reduce writes?

 

Funny, thats the only thing I haven't tested on mine yet. So I tried and although I see bluetooth in my startup programs I can't find it anywhere else. Downloaded the lastest driver and it says it doesn't see any adapter installed.

Great.

Following the guide here: Lenovo Support - Bluetooth daughter card removal and installation - Thinkpad X100e and X120e

Nope, no adapter was installed but it sure as hell was in my order.

Code:

0596CTO 	 THINKPAD X120E -1Y DEPOTWARR  	  	  	 
  	0A71928 	 VBB AMD FUSION PRCS E-350  	  	  	 
  	45M3090 	 VBB GENUWIN7PROFES.64  	  	  	 
  	0A59572 	 SBB GEN WIN7 PRF 64 US ENGLISH  	  	  	 
  	0A59514 	 SBB 11.6HD ANTGLR-MIDNIGHTBLCK  	  	  	 
  	0A59521 	 SBB AMD RDNHD6310GRPFSNPRE-350  	  	  	 
  	45M4569 	 VBB 2GBPC3-10600DDR3 1333SODMM  	  	  	 
  	60Y6217 	 SBB KEYBOARD US ENGLISH  	  	  	 
  	0A59527 	 SBB 250GB HRDDSK DRVE,5400RPM  	  	  	 
  	60Y6210 	 SBB 6 CELL LI-ION BAT2.6 AH  	  	  	 
  	41W1787 	 SBB CPK NORTH AMERICA  	  	  	 
  	0A68261 	 SBB BLUETOOTH 3.0  	  	  	 
  	75Y1724 	 SBB THINKPADB/G/N  	  	  	 
  	44C7950 	 SBB INT WRLSSWDAREANTWRK UPGR  	  	  	 
  	0A59534 	 SBB LANGUAGE PACK US ENGLISH  	  	  	 
  	0A59523 	 SBB 2GB PC3-10600 1333MHZ MEM  	  	  	 
  	0A71678 	 SBB MS LABEL (W7ST/EE 2.0)  	  	  	 
  	0A59567 	 SBB PACKAG MOW EXCEPTCN,HK,JP  	  	  	 
  	75Y2138 	 SBB BLUETOOTH MISC PARTS  	  	  	 
  	75Y2139 	 SBB MECH MISC PARTS  	  	  	 
  	0A59679 	 SBB SYSLBL WTCOMPL ID TP00012A  	  	  	 
  	44C8401 	 SBB ENERGYSTAR 4.0 TIER 2 PACK  	  	  	 
  	75Y2131 	 SBB WWAN MISC-WWAN READY FULL  	  	  	 
  	0A59433 	 SBB WLANMISCPARTS-1X1HALF(H1)  	  	  	 
  	75Y2143 	 SBB FCC LABEL  	  	  	 
  	0A59682 	 SBB GEO LABEL US, WLAN, BT 

Anyone know a good number to call to have them fix this? I bumped up the base warranty to the following when I ordered.

Code:

45K5968   	1YR Onsite for Mobile 1YR Depot base

Guess if you ordered Bluetooth and received your laptops you best check to make sure it's actually there.

 

I ordered bluetooth, but never use it. So if mine is not actually installed, I'll just use that to get money refunded on my order.