Lenovo U300s Owners Thread

I'm not Charles, but I would like to address this:

In my opinion, your analogy doesn't fit here. A VGA port isn't a function of performance, it addresses usability.

These are ultrabooks... "ultraportable" notebooks. As I've stated before, the ultraportable part addresses not having to need a dongle or adapter, the notebook part addresses that most PC notebooks currently have a VGA port. People still use VGA, so why not include it? Especially for business which Lenovo has a large stake in.

So you're saying that ultrabooks weren't meant to send video output to a VGA display? That they should only output via HDMI (which is less ubiquitous than VGA)? Why no DVI output then?

So how about an SD card? Ultrabooks weren't meant to have external communication with memory cards? Or an ethernet port? Ultrabooks were meant to be WiFi only?

And regardless... how does the rating of a notebook for options (which is what all these are) become un-professional? Even Engadget mentions the lack of these in their review.

I'm sorry... but availability of ports is pretty objective to me. Can your ultrabook connect to other things that you may (or may not need)? While one laptop cannot be all things to all people, it should at least strive to do so.

Case in point... I have an older VGA KVM switch because my 4-year old LCD (which is 16:10, not the new 16:9 lower screen realty LCDs) has VGA-in. I didn't get the UX31 (although they have a dongle for it) or the Acer. The Toshiba's big sell point for me was the full sized VGA port. We have a projector that only has VGA-in... another reason.

Is that unprofessional for me to want that?

 

I suggest we spin off another thread on the topic of VGA inclusion/exclusion for the Ultrabook class machines.

On a different topic, how easy is it to scratch the orange or gray finish on the U300s?

Here's the reason I ask. I see no point in getting the orange if it scratches easily. I know my wife will love the color, but it's going to need a lid sticker to cover the outside if I am going to protect it long term. I can order the 256GB i7 Gray model right now for a significant discount via our EPP site.

If that's the case, I might as well order the darn gray version since it's going to be covered anyway. From the pictures I like the gray/silver interior with the black keys better than the black on black anyway.

Any orange owners want to weigh in?

On a separate but related note, I tried to cover my MBA yesterday. That didn't work out so well with the lid sticker I had due to the curvature of the MacBook Air lid.

Is the U300s lid curved or flat?

 

oops, nm. was gonna suggest a sticker or adhesive film but you already tried that. mods feel free to delete this post.

 

For the MacBook Air I am considering Apple MacBook Air 13 inch 2010-2011 Skins | invisibleSHIELD by ZAGG installed by someone that knows what they are doing. My only worry is the installer getting the fluid inside the machine.

But back to the question on the U300s. Is the lid flat or does it have a slight curve like the Air?

Does the lid and body scratch easily?

 

I have the Orange U300s, (only for a week) and so far no scratches, no finger prints... it's still beautiful! Why anyone would ever put a sticker on it, I can't imagine!

There is a slight curve... actually, it's totally flat, but the .5 inch border is slightly contoured.

 

Great post from Buck about the quality, reviews, etc. I completely 100% agree; great post!

As for the VGA.. and this is a dead horse... I just can't help myself. The U300s specifically was designed to not have a VGA port. All of us that bought this amazing computer did not find the need for VGA, so it is indeed very subjective. If you need VGA, Toshiba is your only choice on the Ultrabook front. Otherwise it's dongle or adapter. For me the full size HDMI is exactly what I needed, something the other Ultrabooks mostly lack.

That's the beauty of computers. There are so many choices and great machines out there, there is a perfect computer for each person. For many of us, the U300s is it! And I am loving it!

 

Thanks Dan. I certainly don't want to cover it. But I have a choice. Keep it protected and therefore better resale value, or let the resale value get destroyed.

Usually I don't worry much because slapping a lid cover on the black ThinkPad adds some color, but you're right, why cover beauty?

I guess I'll wait for the orange model to become available again. Thanks.

 

I agree that connections and ports are important. The Toshiba was my first choice because of all of the full sized ports actually. It wasn't until I read about the slow speeds that I changed my mind.

I think that objective reviews are a good thing. Some people really want the SD slot for example. I'm not sure a standard SD slot would work for a high speed SD cad though (please correct me if I'm wrong) so I think that would be a good thing to address if comparing models with/without the SD card.

I'm ok without the VGA port as I can get a small adapter to convert HDMI to VGA and it won't add much weight. Others might not feel that way.

My only concern is that the unit that was provided for review might be a lemon based on the issues that Charles is experiencing. Shame on Lenovo for not putting their best foot forward in that regard if, in fact,nthey gave him a lemon as a test unit. That's marketing 101.

I bought the Lenovo because it was the best value prop available for what I wanted when I needed to buy. I hope it doesn't get slammed but I don't really care.

I see people get so protective about a purchase and they seem t get upset that reviewers don't necessarily validate their purchasing decision but if the unit works for you, then that's the most important thing.

Not meant to flame anyone at all, and I do hope for good reviews, but I'm happy wih my purchase either way. I will probably upgrade in a year or two anyway when ultrabooks start to offer even more than they do now.

Cheers!

Jay

 

From my perspective, the lack of a SD card slot means that digital cameras now require a card reader and I don't want to buy one and cart it around when traveling. The U300s competitors all have an SD card slot so Lenovo was just asleep at the wheel for this one. They're more than capable of adding one, especially to the much thicker U400 "Ultrabook".

To give a + to Lenovo, I love how they chose to keep the Home, Page Up & so on, unlike the other ultrabooks.

 

Hi, I've had the 256gb 15 in grey for a week, purchased from pcworld.co.uk and have a few questions/thoughts for other owners....

thoughts:

Screen -> No issues with the screen, never have it on max brightness.
Keyboard -> The nicest keyboard i've used, better than the thinkpad edge one which i also liked.
Build flex -> none that i've noticed, build feels really nice.
Speakers -> louder and clearer than on my 15inch samsung laptop
Webcam -> seems pretty average, perhaps worse than average.

questions:

Is my fan louder than yours?
Temp is ice cold even when playing video, but my fan is always audible even now with just Chrome open i can hear the fan. It's not loud but my laptop is certainly not silent even under 0 load..

How do i get into the BIOS?
I was thinking to look in the bios to see if there are any fan settings, however it boots up too quickly to see what to press and when!

How do i get rid of lenovo's keyboard shortcuts?
I normally use ctrl+shift+W to "reopen last tab", but it opens some crappy lenovo photo viewer

 

My fan is very quiet. I didn't know there was a 256gb i5. Is that really the spec? what trackpad do you have (Synaptics or cypress)?

On the left hand edge of the laptop, just under the power button, is a tiny button with an arrow on it. Turn on your machine with this button and you are asked if you want to see the bios.

There must be a regedit code for this. Let us know if you find it. You could also try using AutoHotKey, or just delete the appropriate Lenovo program from startup services (open msconfig from start menu CMD line)

 

Sorry i mean 128gb. Synaptics touch pad, which seems nice so far, the chrome smoothscroll plugin makes it even nicer.

When you say "very quiet", as in, you can only hear it when you put your ear to the vent or you can just about hear it when using it in a quite room and not typing?!!

Thanks!

 

Anyone tried to do a clean W7 install ? Can you recommnend it ? Seems ridiculous to me that I have only 50GB space left and 70GB already used to start with on 128GB SSD ...

 

I'm starting to get twitchy about my cypress trackpad.

Should I take this machine back and try get my hands on a synaptics one?

I wouldn't normally be so picky, but spending £900 on a machine like this, I don't want to be unhappy with anything.

What do you guys reckon? Has anyone compared the synaptics and cypress side by side yet?

 

I think you answered your own question there. For 900 pounds, I'd surely want a 100% functioning trackpad. Don't sell yourself short there, especially if it's just a matter of exchanging it to the store. A Cypress vs. Synaptics impression can be found in Engaget's U400 review. They had a U300s with Synaptics and a week later, they got the U400 with Cypress.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/12/lenovo-ideapad-u400-review/

Has anyone gone into their BIOS? These computers come with a Computrace 30 day trial. Is there a BIOS setting to shut it off or do you need to call it in to activate first?

 

Looks like the core drivers are at Lenovo Support - Home (US) but I would look closely as the factory image and compare to the driver area. I typically copy the SWTOOLS area on the ThinkPads I receive but I haven't purchased the U300s so I am not familiar with the factory layout of the file system.

But yea, I'll be looking to get rid of the bloat on the system I buy, too.

 

It's not bloat, but an image partition related to the one key restore... I don't know a lot about it, but if you've read through this thread you'll see our earlier conversation about it. ...keep in mind messing around with the partitions will disable the OKR feature.

Edit: I think there are two extra partitions... one for the actual image data and one for the Lenovo OKR utility and boot tools.

 

I think you are probably right. But how to tell if you have a synpatics or a cypress in your hand? I could swap the system, buy a new one, and be in the same situation.

Argh

Little gripes like these drive me insane

 

I have the u400 and I have also noticed this - ie laptop is cool but I can hear the fan as soon as windows starts loading.

 

Anyone experiences a crackling souds when opening notebook ? It comes from left hinge area ...

 

Cypress --> Synaptics exchange complete. Phew

One thing I noticed between trackpads, the cypress is raised ever so slightly from the machine body, whereas the Synaptics sits ever so slightly lower. This could be incidental, but again, for the sake of future buyers, what is your trackpad and how does it sit?

 

Slighly low....Synaptics

On a side note, has anybody extendet their warranty if so how and with whom

 

How did you manage the exchange?

I have a Cypress that is lowered, but as I've mentioned earlier, it is not level. If we've learned anything from this, it's that Lenovo has poor quality control and there are variations regardless of which touchpad.

I am getting better at and more happy with my Cypress touchpad though. Especially with the Chrome addon.

I'm curious about warranties also...

 

Regarding the warranty, do you see the banner ad and advertisement on the page at Lenovo Support - Check Warranty Status (US)

When I click that, it takes me to Lenovo Warranty Support Services

 

Did that, but website wont reconize serial # in order to extend.

 

also my Windows 7 Experience index for CPU is only 3.3 at best after 3 tries, which is really weird low score ... dont know what to do with this, thinking of sending it back and getting another one

 

I kicked up a fuss, basically. It took time. I took back my machine in its factory settings state. They came around eventually.

All the review models Lenovo sent out had synaptics. To confuse 10% of buyers, especially early geek adopters like myself, with a completely different trackpad is slightly out of order I think

 

New question, sorry if this has been covered elsewhere:

What's with hibernation? It's not offered in the sutdown menu, and when I try and turn it on ( see here) I get a message about firmware not supporting it.

This is the case with the factory 56CN36WW or newer 56CN38WW bios firmware...

Any ideas?

 

Mine was low like that at first also, but after using the Lenovo "energy management" utility to change it to "high performance" and rebooting, everything was fine. Double-checked the windows power options to be sure. My i7 rates 6.9!!

CPUID is good for monitoring the changes to this new processor in real time:
CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

 

Found this in the manual

Intel Rapid Start Technology gets your system up and running faster from the hibernation mode.
�� How to put your computer into hibernation
To put your computer into the hibernation mode, click the Start icon and select Sleep. The
computer will enter the hibernation mode after it remains in the sleep mode for 75 minutes.
Note: By default, rapid boot is enabled for IdeaPad U300s. If the rapid boot function is not enabled, you
can press Fn+F2 (or F2) immediately after your computer boots up to the Lenovo logo screen, to
enter the BIOS setup program.
Note: Intel Rapid Start Technology is applicable only to computers with solid-state hard disks.
Note: If Intel Rapid Start Technology is incorporated, you cannot put your computer into the
hibernation mode by clicking the Start menu and then selecting Hibernation.

 

Can someone tell me whether the U300s has BIOS or UEFI?

And also, has anyone tried installing Windows 8 on it? What are the experiences?

 

Anybody have any idea what's hampering availability? I was under the impression that it was just a matter of delay until the parts have reached the US (or some such thing). Now, I can't even find the higher end u300s - not on Lenovo's site, and not on the Google shopping pages that had had it.

I've been eager to obtain this computer since I first heard about it, and am frustrated by the delays, and even more at the idea that it is not going to be available any time soon.

Suggestions?

Thanks.

 

I'm sure someone knows but they aren't going to tell us. It could be a defect they are trying to iron out. It could be harder to make than initially expected. It could be a shortage of parts. It could be all three. It could be none of the above. Who knows.

I know this, they are losing a ton of sales.

 

afaik, the reason is the Thai floods, as that's where crucial parts of your machine are being built,

I bet someone earlier in the thread has already said it, but hey like you I can't be bothered to read the whole thing.

This is an awesome machine with no issues whatsoever after nearly one month of daily use, that's a lot better than my previous Dell, Toshiba, and HP ah ah !!!

flimsy, not really, still don't drop it.

 

Thanks for the comments.
Actually, I did read through the entire thread, and I knew about the floods. That's the initial delay I knew about regarding parts. I'm wondering why it has disappeared from Lenovo's site as of this morning.

I suppose I could call them, but I've discovered more complete information here.

 

My 45 day old u300s (i5) order with ABT was just filled and shipped yesterday. Hopefully this means they will begin showing up elsewhere as well. Any suggested tweaks right out of the box?

 

jeventures,

if you're using Win7, I can't think of any tweaks, quit frankly. For the first time in about 6 laptops, I haven't done a clean install, and it's working very well. There isn't much bloatware. Still I blew all the recovery and hibernation partitions to install linux/ubuntu. More issues there, as the hardware drivers haven't all been fine-tuned yet, esp. touchpad.

I haven't had any problem (apart from fine-tuning ubuntu), battery life is awesome, at least 6 hours, sometimes more, no overheating at all, in fact hardly any heating in most circumstances, the laptop is a little small for me, but that's just what you'd expect from an extra slim machine no?

I notice a horizontal line on the screen, corresponding to where the screen would make contact with the bottom part of the keyboard, I hope it's just dust rather than scratches.

 

I assume you've got 11.10? What are the other driver issues you're running in to? I also don't remember if you said, but are you on a Synaptics or Cypress touchpad?

 

I installed the latest Synaptics driver today, much better than the out the box drivers. You can almost replicate the sexiness of a Mac osx inertial, backwards scrolling trackpad if you add the 'Smooth Scroll' extension to Google Chrome. Still, there is a little tweaking still needed here.

Am considering deleting the backup partitions also so I can test out a windows 8 install.

 

For you Chrome guys, you know there's also a smooth scrolling feature in the experimental section.

 

Nice one. Works better than the extension.

I look forward to a few more users getting their hands on this system. A community is necessary before the big tips start coming out.

 

Not that most will care but maybe my experience with NewEgg will help some. From earlier in the thread, had to RMA mine to NewEgg for a bad screen.

Just heard from them this afternoon and it's getting returned to me and I have to exchange it with Lenovo directly. The reason, the operating system was "modified", I did an Anytime Upgrade to Ultimate with a key from my Microsoft Action Pack subscription. And even though I was attempting to restore to factory using the Lenovo partition, it didn't finish as that's when the screen went TOTALLY unviewable, they said the factory recovery partition had been altered. So the primary reason the guy said after putting me on hold and talking with the RMA supervisor was the "operating system modification voids the NewEgg return warranty" them not being able to finish the factory restore was the nail in the coffin. The screen wasn't even an issue with them, the OS modification was..... Go figure.

They did say they spoke with Lenovo directly and were told they couldn't return to Lenovo but I could and they already had notes attached to the S/N of the unit. Now I have to wait till it comes back then contact lenovo and ship it to them for "repair or replacement whichever them deem appropriate".

Not looking for pity, just be aware that if you go to return it find a way to get that factory restore done 100%. Learned my lesson.

 

So you were trying to return for replacement within the first 30 days per the newegg.com policy? It's really weird they would care about the partitions, file system, and image installed.

 

Yes, I called for an RMA 5 days after receiving the unit.

I thought so also, but the RMA guy said the RMA supervisor said it's somewhere in the 30 day warranty terms that any modification to the manufacturer installed OS (upgrades apparently included) void that warranty. It has to be returned in sellable condition....

 

Can you hook up to an external monitor, finish the install and then roll back to an earlier restore point?

I am a little worried that I haven't been able to log my serial number on Lenovo's extended warranty website. I usually don't bother with those since I plan to upgrade soon but, as sturdy as this thing feels, I worry I may take that for granted and treat it less than carefully.

Good luck and keep us posted on your situation. Hope it gets resolved soon.

Jay

 

Don't have any HDMI to VGA adapters and no displays around that accept HDMI.... Duh, except my TV the XBox is connected to....

Oh well, probably quicker to get a new one from Lenovo direct, or at least I'd hope.

 

@Thors.Hammer:

See... VGA does come in handy some times.

 

If I were the Lenovo feature PM, I would have selected mini DP for the external connector. There are all sorts of mini DP to VGA options on the market thanks to Apple. HDMI to VGA, not so much.

So blame the Lenovo PM.

Or blame the Lenovo engineers for not doing something creative with the dinosaur VGA DB15 connector.

 

I agree... either mini-VGA adapter or DP.

The PM was building for 2015 (heh).

 

My WEI score is low as well and I am on high performance, on AC power. I've tried resetting the score a few times and rebooting. No luck. Any ideas?

See: http://www.mpscan.org/pic/wei.jpg