Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga

Because its such a simple thing, i would recommend calling up Lenovo and seeing if you can take it to an authorised repair center to get them to sort out just the headphone jacks. Its might be quicker and easier then sending the laptop back for a replacement, depending on where you bought it?

 

Dammit! I ordered mine end of December to get the 10% discount but I am sure it hasn't been built yet, calling them up tomorrow to see if they can add this to my laptop before it ships! Its on the UK site too!

Because its a free option I am pretty sure they will have no issue changing my existing order to include the NFC trackpad, as it won't involve any extra costs or transactions Its being built custom to order how hard would it be to put a different touchpad in! Fingers crossed they have the same view tomorrow when I call them up!

 

Personally NFC is no big deal to me. I've only ever used to automatically connect to a speaker via blue tooth so it saves me like 2 clicks on my phone. YMMV though.

 

Is this the place to ask for help?
I bought my wife a new yoga 13 pro and she is having trouble operating it.

First she is having trouble with screen brightness- I noticed the screen was pretty dim but I didn't try to change it. She tried hitting F11 because that is what her older laptop used to adjust brightness and the screen immediately went black and she couldn't get it back. Somehow she managed to get back to the login screen. The screen is still dim but at least she was able to log back in.

Second we have not been able to determine what the power button does. I used the power button to turn the ocmputer on when I first unboxed it but since then the button doesn't do anything. When the screen goes blank the power button doesn't turn it off or turn it back on.

 

Its one of them things that can be useful. Especially as in table mode the touchpad is on the back so if you do want to touch and NFC tag its possible. Not to mention the ability to send something from your phone to your laptop by just placing it on the touchpad (assuming your phone has NFC)

I am in the same boat as you, already ordered without NFC and I am going to call up tomorrow to see if it can be changed, but NFC is definitely NOT worth cancelling an order and re-ordering. Especially if its going to add another few days to a week for a relatively unimportant feature for a laptop/tablet hybrid. So if they say I cannot change my order without cancelling and reordering I will express my dissatisfaction but will just leave it as I don't see it as necessary on a laptop. Its obviously my own opinion though.

 

Not really the right place BUT for brightness check windows power options OR look at the top row of buttons on the keyboard, they should have symbols next to the F function of each key. Pressing and holding the FN key at the bottom left should allow those functions to work. Such as increasing/decreasing volume/brightness.

As for the power button I don't have a clue, also its better to not just press F11 because another laptop does it, you won't cause damage but you probably pressed the "disable backlight" button and it can be nerve wrecking if you can't get the backlight back on

Try a hard reboot. Hold the power button down till the laptop turns fully off. Then turn it back on

 

Can you recommend a better place for such questions?

My wife doesn't ask me before she punches buttons.


I was apprehensive about buying a laptop with 3000x1800 display, and in the store when we went to IE to look up something on the net I could not read the tiny text. I was afraid my wife would reject the machine because of that. I realize that some apps will compensate but not all of them so out of desperation I just changed the screen resolution to 1920x1080 and it worked great. Maybe that is a waste of a good screen but many people will want to run these machines just like they run their Windows7 machines and ignore the metro apps.

I downloaded Windows LIve Essentials mail and installed it so she could access her POP3 mailbox.

 

Ain't that just the way of women

Well I'd recommend just creating your own thread in the Lenovo section this thread is specifically for the Thinkpad Yoga

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Personally NFC is irrelevant to me! The UK site still doesn't offer the 4600! Getting rather annoying now.

The UK site does offer NFC though now it seems

 

On the phone to the Lenovo UK Store now, according to the website ordering without NFC the time is roughly 17 days, but with NFC it goes to MORE THEN 4 WEEKS!!! :/

Gonna confirm that on the phone but I think I might skip the NFC now if that's the waiting time! Might just ask for a estimated delivery date while I have them on the phone

Update: Yeah can't change orders once they have been made but at least I found out that it works on Chinese holidays and not ours so me ordering on the 28th means it would literally have no bank holiday interruptions as their new year isn't the same as ours

Also the NFC touchpad will take 4-6 weeks according to the operator on the phone so that will be a big issue for me and probably many others when ordering.

 

Same with the German shop. I'm also waiting....

 

Im just wondering how many of you are experiencing issues with the screen quality. I have had an x60t, x61t, x201t, and a x230t. I have never had this problem on any other laptop, but I am getting nauseous/headache within a half hour. The text seems blurry, especially when scrolling. My screen was poorly placed and i have a replacement coming in a few weeks, and i'm hoping that will be better. Using this thing is like reading in the back seat of a car. I have a nexus 5 phone which is also 1080x1920 and i have had no issues even though I spend a lot of time on it reading articles. I have turned off the adaptive brightness, have the brightness at 100%. I have tried messing with clear type.

I have read that this typo of screen is different and some people have issues, but I have never been one to have issues with screens or lcd displays. I have only seen one or two complaints about this, and i really hoping that mine is just bad. I know some people have taken the anti-glare off, and i wonder if that would help. I love the machine, but don't know if I could live with this

Thanks in advance,
kevin

 

Let me list my frustrations with this device and then never darken this thread again with negative vibes... Keep in mind I installed only Microsoft Office and Chrome on the machine, no other apps/games/whatever. I installed drivers / settings updates / Bios flashes etc exclusively from Lenovo's own 20CD0033US (specific to my model) support page. My experience:

1. Out of the box, the computer required lots (and lots) of updating. This is par for the course but it took 2+ hours. This is at the high end time-wise of any computer I've ever had. Also, the version of Lenovo Support that shipped with was inoperable, it crashed on start up every time, forcing me to get a new version from Lenovo's support website. Even after updating, the app consistantly missed critical driver updates on Lenovo's own support page. I ended up managing the system manually.

2. Two days after I bought it, the computer started repeatedly failing to wake from sleep. Black screen when I opened the lid, no way to get it started except to hold down the power button and force a restart. This is an irritating bug that many other people have as well. For me it kicked off yet another hour long round of driver / BIOS / settings refreshes from Lenovo's site. The computer stopped doing this but then this past weekend started doing it agian. The reoccurance of this bug is what ultimately forced me to return the computer.

3. BSOD three times in the two weeks I had it. Nothing in the event log any time, no explanation. I consider this to be unacceptably unstable.

4. Wifi dropped repeatedly for no reason after updating the wifi driver to the latest version on Lenovo's page. I guess I could have rolled back the driver but it's strange they would release something with such obvious stability issues.

5. ALL of the Metro/Modern/Bing apps crashed regularly on start up (News, Sports, IE, Skype, Mail, etc). Splash screen ---> hang........--> crash back to Start. Again, this is a common problem many people have with seemingly no solution. I actually really liked these apps but never felt confident using them.

6. Chrome gave me an error message every time I launched it: "Chrome didn't shut down properly...". Minor problem but again fairly common based on an internet search.

IMO, these are not hardware faults, these are software / driver issues. Please keep in mind that I like Win 8.1 as a UI a great deal and loved the functionality of the computer (when it worked). I have two other brand new Windows machines in my house (this was a three laptop Christmas): a Dell XPS 12 and a cheap Acer. Both are running 8.0 and both have been much more stable than my Yoga, the XPS in particular is a very nice little machine indeed. I chalk the problems I had up to 8.1 being fairly new, the Yoga itself being fairly new and the various drivers not being fully up-to-snuff.

Of course I have my doubts about the cause of my issues and the role I myself played in the issues. Perhaps the fact that I was using the latest drivers in all cases had something to do with it. Maybe I was too neurotic about keeping everything updated. I can only say that I used what was on Lenovo's site and only updated when I was having problems...

I'm also relatively confident that if I had kept it, after a few months I would have had it working perfectly. I just didn't want to deal with it any more. I have gone to the dark side and purchased a Macbook Pro w/ Retina... but don't hold that against me

 

You need to turn of scaling at the app level. Google "Chrome blurry on windows 8.1" and you'll see how to do this. It's a quick fix.

 

Notebookcheck.com released the german review version of the Thinkpad Yoga and they added the core-i7 version in their benchmarks: Test Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga Convertible - Notebookcheck.com Tests

Processor: The core-i7 version accomplishes 10% more performance in average.

Noise level: +/- 5% difference between i7 and i5 Yogas. This is in the realm of measuring inaccuracy, so don't take it too serious.

Temperature: the i7 is 1-5 °C warmer, which is significant, but not dramatic.

Battery Runtime - WLAN: 455 min (i5) vs 372 min (i7) is very significant. I honestly can't believe, that these values are valid. Do you think it's plausible that the i7 version is so much more power hungry in a normal useage scenario?

 

Just got my Yoga. it's awsome!

I bought one with digitalizer pen and it's working great. I have installed the Wacom Feel driver. I thought my old Wacom Bamboo pen would work but alas it's not. I'll need to buy something better that the one that came with the laptop...

The rest is perfect. no deffect. I have nothing to say !

 

I would have gone with an i5 with 8gb but only i7 was available with 8gb of ram, so that's what I went with.

Oh well, that increase in horsepower might help in compiling when I'm programming in school.

 

Fair enough mate.

Although problem 2 happens on 8.1 on various machines even my old Samsung SmartPC, also 3, 5 and 6 really sound like a hardware (HDD, RAM or SSD) fault. The wifi was bad drivers are you said, although there's some software issues I do reckon you have a dodgy HDD/SSD or even a bad piece of RAM mate, RAM is one of the biggest the causes for BSOD and I haven't seen your issues mentioned through this thread often and I have followed this since the beginning (sad but I really love researching ALOT before putting any money down but especially over a grand!)

 

So glad you've said that, I CANT WAIT for mine!! Won't be shipping from China till at least next Monday :'( Hopefully I will have it by the 17th (next friday)!

Enjoy it

 

forgot to write that I tried Passmark PerformanceTest 8.0 on my yoga with a i7-4600U.

Scored between 4590 and 4650 (CPU Mark) in laptop mode, tent mode and tablet mode.

 

I had the same problem and went with the i7 ^^

Maybe it's not that bad with battery life. Lets hope it turns out to be like here: AnandTech | The 2013 MacBook Air: Core i5-4250U vs. Core i7-4650U

Light workload: Very similar battery life
Middle-high workload: 10-20% less battery life but 10-20% more performance. A fair and logical tradeoff...


And IF it's really bad: Just throttle the CPU 10-20% (windows energy options: "maximum load" set to ~80-90%) in battery mode and get more useage out of your laptop when you don't need the performance...

 

Thank you for your response, i will look into this some more. I am running Windows 7, thinking it might be better. I do use Chrome a lot, so maybe the headache/nausea starts there and then makes it hard to tell if other apps are the same. I can say video is no issue. Watched the last three episodes of Homeland in a row with no ill effects.

My reaction has been so extreme, I tend to think the screen does have an issue. I only recall one or two people talking about screen flicker. I'm pretty immune to these types of things, so i would tend to think more people would be complaining. I actually had to stop working today, my head was spinning. I don't know if i can make it two weeks until the replacement shows up. Still thinking about removing the anti glare film.

Thanks

 

Hi. I received my Thinkpad yoga and a OneLink dock. I am returning the OneLink dock and ordered a OneLink Pro instead. I have mixed the power cables of the OneLink power adapter and the one that came with the Thinkpad. I know that the 45w adapter came with the Thinkpad but I am not sure about the other cable which connects from the wall socket to the adapter. Can someone please help me identify the cable?

One is specified as 3A 125V and the other is specified as 7A 125V. Could someone please check their cable and let me know?

 

Is there a case or sleeve you guys recommend for a convertible like this?

 

Very similar dimensions to the 13" macbook pro. Any 13" sleeve will work mate

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

I wouldn't remove the film on the laptop your sending back to be replaced! It probably doesn't void the warranty but they could say that you damaged the screen by removing the glare film or something.. On the new replacement feel free to remove it

As for the text issue, try going through Intel's GPU settings and try to disable any power saving display stuff which was mentioned awhile back in this thread.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

I got the Incase 13inch MacBook cover - fits very nicely.

 

What's the difference between the OneLink and the OneLink Pro docks? I'm heavily considering to get the dock if I finally get to exchange my non-digitizer TPY with one that has the digitizer.

 

Pro has more USB3 ports and dual display out (DVI + DisplayPort on Pro vs HDMI on non-Pro).

 

I just called Lenovo (UK)

They now told me that they have been told about the new processor options, but it may take "some time" to process them citing sometime between now and the end of Feb (or even up to 6-8 weeks) before it's even possible to ORDER a Thinkpad Yoga with a 4600 in the UK, meaning it could be up to the end of March or April by the time they are delivered.

I first ordered this laptop mid-November. It has so far been 2 months of waiting (the original having been sent back) due to the fact that following that return it sounded like it would only be a couple more weeks for the 4600.

This feels beyond a joke that it is taking so long to get this processor to England! (Or possibly even just Europe)

I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board I think and reconsider other options, possibly even back to reconsidering a Mac if they have managed to get the multi-head issue fixed!

 

It's strange how they are offering different configurations in different regions. the 4600 i7 processor is available in Canada/U.S. for example, but we don't have any HDD options or i5 with 8gb of RAM options, while the regions without the 4600 i7 have these options. The release of this product has been very strange indeed.

 

Anyone try the OneLink Pro dock yet?

 

I'm waiting for mine to arrive, should be here in a couple of days

 

After reading Microsoft Upgrades Surface Pro 2 CPU to Intel Core i5-4300U 1.9 GHz | Digital Trends I am yet again very tempted to instead get a Surface Pro 2 now having waited so long for a vPro TPYoga. The 256GB version even comes in about 2/3rds the price!

 

Is vPro that big a deal?? I didn't realise it made a difference except for business scenarios with running vm's

Also the Surface Pro 2 with a type cover is not really comparable to the Yoga as they have different use cases.

If you want the convenience of a laptop as in solid base with hinge and multiple positions then the surface fails hard, not to mention the keyboard albeit impressive in terms of design doesn't even compare to a proper laptop especially a thinkpad.



Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

It isn't a massive performance difference, but I will be using it with VMs and without VT-D they don't run quite so well. In this instance the use case overlaps, in that primarily the systems will be docked to a seperate keyboard/mouse/monitors while acting alone for note-taking etc.

I prefer the Thinkpad Yoga definitely, but considering the estimate I was given earlier as to availability of the 4600 is between the end of Jan and April, I can't really sit waiting for it to maybe appear, and I am guessing I can't be the only person in the UK looking for an Ultrabook with a vPro processor + digitizer, however there seems to be nothing but the Surface 2 Pro catering to that at present!

 

I see, the Surface Pro 2 with the 256Gb is out of stock though, and will be for awhile I am guessing due to high demand and no supply. Also the i5-4300U is ONLY in the models built after the date they changed their chip choice which was mainly due to chip shortages of some sort for the i5-4200U :s

Microsoft also doesn't mention the change of CPU and I am 100% sure that only from them will get you the latest i5-4300U for at least the next couple of months. I think your going to be waiting either way mate

 

Finally my Yoga arrived, just five and a half weeks after I ordered it. The only quality issue I've seen so far is a small scratch on the anti-glare film. No other major issues so far. The fan is a bit whiney but absolutely OK, even though I hoped it would be more wooshing than whining.

Specs:

i7 4500u
256gb SSD
Digitizer
7260AC
8gb ram


So far, pleased.

 

It is out of stock from MS however I would bet money that it will be in stock before the TPY is available to order by at least a month at this rate, and the 512GB is always an option. Regarding the CPU change, in retail stores (PC World / John Lewis / Misco etc) they still have stocks of the 4200, however when I called MS and requested info they stated that it comes with a 4300. At the end of the day if I receive one with a 4200, then I can always return it.

It's a shame either way, becuase it's gone from just me waiting, to 3 of us waiting for one of these machines to become available and show itself as suitable. At the rate this is going, by the time any is available I'll be ordering 10 of the things!

If the TPY 4600 was available to order tomorrow, even with the lead times being offered so far, then I would order that. It's the uncertainty as to when I can place the orders followed by the uncertainty over how long a wait will be faced following ordering that is killing me here!

 

Thats awesome news, the film can always be removed so no biggie mine should be built around Monday next week and should with a bit of luck get here by next Friday I'm so excited its slyly sad

 

Hi,
I am trying to buy a TP Yoga myself here in Canada, the Lenovo website is giving me a pretty hefty price for the i7 with 256 gb SSD; the Microsoft Store site gives me a way lower price but says it's out of stock... Can someone give me more ideas for where to look to get a reasonable deal on this thing?

thanks in advance!

 

Is it possible that you are confusing VT-x with VT-d?

VT-x will indeed improve your VM performance and is, in fact, required to run VMs in Hyper-V on Windows 8, but it's included on all TPY models.

VT-d addresses a very specific vertical scenario - it allows you to map a supported device (like an Ethernet controller or a graphics card) directly to the VM to use native drivers inside VM and get better performance. However, this requires you do use a specialized hypervisor (AFAIK only bare metal/server-only hypervisors like vSphere ESXi, Hyper-V Server and Xen - with some fiddling - support VT-d) and will require you do dedicate a device to a particular VM (i.e. - you cannot "share" it with the host or another VM). In case of a laptop this doesn't really make much sense - you don't have a dedicated graphics card to take advantage of and you wouldn't really run a high-load server inside a VM on it to saturate the network connection.
Really, I can't think of a reason to have VT-d on laptop SKUs at all.

So, I wouldn't base my TPY purchasing decision on VT-d.
And if you do indeed have some specific use-case for VT-d on a laptop - I'd be very much interested to hear about it.

 

I may be incorrect in thinking I need VT-d, it is entirely possible. However I definitely ran into performance issues running my VM which I haven't run into on my current systems which all have VT-d. Just did some specific research and you're correct, Virtualbox doesn't support VT-d, and so the issues I was seeing presumably must be something else. How frustrating.

The point is that had Lenovo told me that it could be up to April or even later before I could get the 4600 back in November, which is what they now seem to be saying, then I would have reordered a 4500 from them back in mid November and would have had it by now. If I am to do the same thing now though, I would end up with the 4500 again however it would take until mid-late Feb before I get it!

The lack of information is frustrating.

VT-d is now off my list of requirements, but I still wish a digitizer on a compact light machine. TPY is perfect for my intended use, but the availability is astoundingly poor still and the information that the UK store seems to be receiving is limited or non-existant if what they tell me is true.

 

5 and half weeks? Hope I get it with 2 week total as promised. And I hope it comes without any scratch on screen protector. I seems its average protector on that model and I think that ssd is also not best in class, so I ordered with hdd to replace it later myself.

 

If you can live with a smaller screen and less-of-a-keyboard you might look at the new Surface Pro.
Also, there is Sony VAIO Flip which comes in different sizes (I think they've just announced at CES smaller/cheaper variants), although Sony has a reputation for exceptionally bad customer service and slow/nonexistent driver updates, plus there have been a lot of complaints about Flip's fan noise and it's not a Wacom digitizer, so only limited Photoshop support.
Finally, there is a Fujitsu LIFEBOOK T904 - which, on paper, seems like and awesome device that has pretty much everything, it is however running late (announced a while ago, but still not available) and will, most likely, be very expensive.

 

Bought mine in Canada through the Lenovo store, got a discount using the chat line and speaking (writing) back and forth with them. Only got 10%, but better than nothing.

I've got the 8G, i7-4600u, 256. Works great, so far no problems, only applied 3 updates and I've not experienced any of the items mentioned throughout this thread. Quality of keyboard and screen is outstanding. WiFi works great(I have the AC card), no drop outs. Battery life is fine, +6hrs at 50%screen which is plenty on this machine. Seems the quality of machines through resellers isn't the same as through Lenovo, not sure why, but that's the pattern I've seen throughout these 190 pages.

 

The SSD (at least on mine) is an OEM version of Samsung 840, which is a good, reliable drive. You can, of course, do better in terms of raw speed in benchmarks, consistency and life expectancy, but those are purely theoretical benefits - I doubt you'll see any difference in real life usage.

Scratches on the screen protector, though, are indeed annoying. I have one on mine too - in the middle of the screen - and while it's barely visible when the screen is off, it refracts light differently from the rest of the protector, so when the screen is on at some angles the scratch is super visible - almost as if someone has drawn a line with a magic marker. I don't like reflective screens, though, and I do work outside sometimes, so I'm inclined to keep it on...

 

The MS Store Yoga does not have the digitizer, explaining the difference in price. If you need the digitizer, the only place you can order from (at least for us Canucks) is from Lenovo directly.

That being said, the config I wanted dropped to 1500 and change after applying a 12% coupon that the chat support rep gave me, and it should be here tomorrow so I'll post up some impressions after using it over the weekend.

 

What coupon code is that?

 

Indeed the price is hefty if you end up settling for the i7 with 8gb of ram. I am waiting for the i5 config with 8gb of ram and I plan to get one with the HDD and swap it with an SSD since I save money this way. If I did the math right, the configuration I want should come up to around 1300 - whatever coupon code I can get.

If they had only offered the i5 with 8gb of ram I probably would of bought it by now. I really don't want to get the i7 since the speed difference is trivial and it appears that the battery life is severely diminished (around 1-1:30 hr) according to one website who did the test