Lenovo X1 Carbon Owner's Thread

Ok, this is REALLY interesting.

I had this funny suspicion that Lenovo was playing tracking cookie games. So I launched FireFox with NO COOKIES enabled.

Bingo, what do you know the $964 8GB Carbon is BACK !!! Still only 1 Left.

So I bought it.

I go back to my IE with cookies still on, it still does not show.

Go back with FireFox with no Cookies enabled and it STILL shows another one, 1 Left in stock.

Gosh these guys are slimy, I hate dealing with them even though I like their offerings.

So I suspect they knew I wanted it, when I went back the second time (with tracking cookies) I'd see it gone. Either they hoped I'd pay more to get one or they would pop it up again at a later time knowing it's a deal that won't last. If I see the same thing listed day after day I'm in no rush to buy because I can always get it later, maybe cheaper. And that is a common thing I do and I'm sure many folks do.

Or it could be just a glitch too, but I suspect not.

Now I KNOW (from past history) if I want it delivered fast and defer credit card payment all I have to do now is Cancel the order

 

Oops deleted my post.

 

I've wiped out the recovery partition. Once a do a fresh install of Windows 7, is there any way to get the recover partition back?

 

I thought I edited this to say that updating to latest BIOS and it has temporarily fixed the problem... until now.
I've reset BIOS to setup defaults with no change.

Slightly different, on A/C, it's at minimum process state no matter what.
Take out the charger, shoots to max
CPU profiles for the power profile is set to 100% for ALL states for testing


So annoying.... logged a ticket with lenovo since there doesn't seem much support around here. Posting this as a FWIW...

 

Did you try posting this on the Lenovo forum?

 

So i have one of these new X1C's. Light fast and I cannot believe the Power Supply is so large, but oh well.
Mine is i7 with 8 gig and a 256 gig SSD and Windows 8. I just spent 2 weeks on the road and this was the only machine I had.
Likes:
fast
light
fits on an airplane tray
good battery life I do not watch movies on this as i have an iPad, but working i flew from the east coast to the west coast without having to charge up.
Great build quality (i do not have the issues other seem to have)
Keyboard is just fine
Trackpoint is like all other, great.

Dislikes
Trackpad driver sucks (yes i am running the latest) . It is buggy and not smooth, the multitouch leaves a lot to be desired.
Wifi driver is ok, but under windows 8 i find it lags to pick up anything and takes forever to connect.
Power Supply could have been made more travel friendly. (almost defeats the purpose of such a light notebook)

Odd things
2 times it did not come out of sleep and a hard reboot was required
Updating all drivers and software from Lenovo and doing Windows Update required me to reinstall the OS. not sure why.


I do have a slight screen door effect on my screen, but it does not really matter as i use a 3M Gold Privacy filter.
I tried the trackpad drivers from the manufacture but it gave me problems so i am using the Lenovo ones.

No Fault of Lenovo's, but using Windows 8 on this machine is just not fun. Constant fight with the WIFI and LAN nics (uses i have the dongle and have to use both in my job, just not at the same time).
I am a huge Windows fan, but not of 8. it is not the tiles or the desktop (i have tried start8) just the little things that cause me headaches.

 

The lack of waking up from sleep (or hibernation) is a random problem that drives some of us crazy (see the "X1 Carbon Won't Boot without AC Cord" thread on Lenovo Community for details). Lenovo seems to have no interest in fixing it.

 

Lenovo isn't in the habit of acknowledging issues like that in their forums until they have a fix. Some issues are never resolved.

 

I'm interested in getting the X1C for my college notebook, probably going to be waiting on Haswell.

Do you guys think they're going to launch a X2 carbon, or just specbump the current X1C body?

 

Typical they don't redesign after the first generation.

 

Just got a great deal on the outlet.

i5, 8GB, 256GB SSD for $1014.00 new.

For a few minutes I saw an i7 for the SAME price and config. But when I clicked Add to Cart, it was gone.

I think I want an i5 for better battery and cooling based on comments by others.

 

cool, where do you find this mswlogo?

 

They have been coming and going all day on the outlet.

I Click X models,8GB,1600x900,200-300GB,New and that quickly narrows it down. Most are around $1140.00 (which is still a good deal). But for some reason one was priced at $1014.00 and it looks exactly the same.

Mine has Windows Home but some other higher priced ones did too.

This is the part number I got 344835U

I keep worrying their is something missing that I want on the one I got. But their isn't that much to configure. Maybe mine won't include a Keyboard or something

Their are 6 on their right now at a good price. But they could be gone in 5 minutes. Prof Win 8 adds like $100.00 to the price.

 

Can you shut the TouchPad off and still use the "Mouse Clicks" for the TrackPoint. I always shut the touch pad off on all my prior thinkpads?

 

Reading through the thread a bit.

Is it still true that if I want to install Win 8 Prof from scratch I won't be able to install Power Management and the like drivers because you now have to get them through the App Store and the App Store won't work if it's a DIY Win 8 install?

 

Yea, you are pretty close. Basically you can't install the Lenovo " Innovation apps"

 

No, these Apps are now accessible for all ThinkPad users through the App store, not only for the users with a preinstalled Lenovo image. You can now simply download them if you want. See: Lenovo Settings for Win8 available for download in... - Lenovo Community

The "Settings App": Lenovo Settings app for Windows in the Windows Store

 

Thanks for the heads up. I wasn't aware that had taken place because I don't look at the Windows 8 forum there.

I installed the app. What a joke. So many of the wonderful power management settings that used to be present in Lenovo Power Manager have been deprecated that there's no reason to even bother.

 

That was the impression I was getting looking at the link you gave a few posts back.

It looks like all the standard power management stuff is available for Win8 like it is for Win7 but I don't have the laptop yet to try it.

 

Is there a consensus on good external optical drives?

I know Lenovo makes one.

I was looking at others and some require two USB connections to get enough power.

Is USB 3.0 on a Optical Drive overkill?

I have seen several Blu-Ray RW,DVD-RW, CD-RW for a little over $100.00 (Samsung, Memorex, Panasonic) does anyone have experience with those.

 

Power Manager has historically provided MUCH finer grained controls than the controls you get with Windows. It is disappointing Lenovo is dropping support for some of that control. They might as well not even bothered with the Windows 8 app and just said what you see is what you get with Windows 8.

 

Doesn't the standard "Power Management" tools still also exist in Win8 (besides the dumbed down Windows 8 apps)?

I usually only install just the Power Management "Drivers" and it gave me the control I needed (through the standard Windows 7 Power Settings), is that still true in Win8?

The Lenovo Power Management "UI" on Windows 7 may have given more control and some people want, but I'm curious if just the standard Win7 like built in interface will work as it always has?

 

I ended up ordering a Samsung SE-506BB/TSBD 6X USB2.0 External Slim Blu-ray Writer Drive for $89 on Amazon based on many positive Reviews compared to all others.

All the USB 3.0 ones seems to need dual USB cables for enough power which is awkward on Laptops like the X1 Carbon with one port on each side. Some say it will run on one if you have a beefy USB port.

I don't think the Samsung has dual cables and uses a Mini USB on the drive end.

Most (all) USB 3.0 drives were limited to 6x Blu-Ray write speeds which is the same for the Samsung USB 2.0 model.

 

I quite agree. For me, key differentiators and true ambassadors for the Thinkpad experience have always been Access Connections, Power Manager and Security Suite (predominantly Fingerprint and Password Vault). Only the fingerprint/password ones remained intact, for the former two Lenovo either succombed to Microsoft requirements or simply decided not to bother anymore. I for one truly miss Access Connections and Power Manager in Windows 8.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

And for the record, I removed the Lenovo app and the settings dependency package. No sense in cluttering my W530 with that code. They probably create more problems than they solve.

 

Hi,

I sent in my laptop for depot service last Monday as the X1C had suddenly stopped working. The charging port was showing the green light and the laptop was not starting up. Heard back from Lenovo (rather I was the one who had to call them repeatedly) that the base cover had been damaged and now they are asking me in excess of $350 to replace it. I have 2 years parts and labor depot warranty. It never had physical damage when I sent it in and they asked if I'd like pictures to see what they are referring to. That was last Thursday morning. I was supposed to get the pictures by email on Friday morning but haven't got them till now. Whenever I call them up, they say they have requested pictures and cannot do anything about it till the repair center doesn't sends it to them. I mean, this is very annoying and seems intentional so that I pay. As a college student, each day without a laptop is tough and it's been more than a week now.

 

As ugly as it seems, I no longer ship anything to anyone without taking pictures of the process. Therefore, if I shipped a machine to Lenovo for service I would have taken pictures of the machine before boxing, the boxing process, the condition of the box before shipment, etc.

If it was damaged in transit, you should file a claim with the shipper.

 

Even though I am a Lenovo Business Partner and have good experience with the Lenovo depot services I nevertheless recommend everyone to upgrade to or buy on-site. That way you have control over what happens with your device.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I won't buy a thing from this company without onsite. It's very cheap for peace mind.

Your first mistake was sending it to them.

 

Hey guys,

I just got my X1 Carbon! i7 with 256 SSD. I deleted the recovery partition, and with a clean slate, have 201 GB free of 229 total GB available. Why is there only 229 GB available? I thought this was a 256 GB drive? Thanks guys - so excited!

 

Because a certain amount of data is reserved for the master boot sector and partition, which allows Windows to boot.

 

It is doubtful that Lenovo has adressed the bezel gap issue: I ordered a CTO customized X1C in the Lenovo Onlineshop on Mar 16th and received it yesterday. It still has the same issue: A huge bezel gap above the right hinge.



It also has a smaller bezel gap above the other hinge and also a long scratch on the touchpad. My X1C does not have the rubber touchpad. It has a black painted touchpad.

To be honest it seems that Lenovo does not have any quality control as I'd expect on premium products. There is no other explaination why Lenovo ships products with that much flaws.

 

Thanks for the photo. I should have mine by Friday.

It could be an issue that when they first put it on it's ok and due to foam tape and some temperature swings it pops out.

But they certainly should correct it by now.

I think a lot of folks have fixed it themselves by retucking in the wires more carefully so the tape does not have to compress them to hold them back.

If that is my only issue I'll be happy.

Expectation is everything. So thanks for the photo.

 

Consider the conversion of bytes to GB. Here is what Windows 8 file explorer reports for my Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD:



That is the starting point.

 

Huh. I thought the HD was advertised using the same metric (GB)? I'm a bit confused - sorry, I've never had a SSD drive before and never really had to worry about space!

 

Nah, hard drive companies have been playing this game for years and it's still dumb. They market drives as GB (billions of bytes) whereas operating systems measure them in terms of GiB (2^30, which is a little over a billion bytes) because in computer land everything is based on powers of two. The OS GB eventually got a different (stupid) name, gibibytes (GiB), so that people could be precise about what they're talking about but really you just look silly and hard drive makers get the last laugh. I don't think any OSes really show GiB instead of GB because that's even more confusing so people just write it off as formatting losses or something when it's really just a difference in units. I think there may be some manufacturers that actually report the size in the right units (I'm thinking Intel does) but overall they have no incentive to do so because it'll just look smaller than their competitors.

 

What you folks are also missing, is the difference between FORMATTED capacity and UNFORMATTED.

The reserved partition windows uses is nothing.

FORMATTING includes a lot of space, basically to FIND all your data.

It also has nothing to do with SSD vs HDD. It's the same.

 

Hmm, out of curiosity, anyone here use Linux? I'm wondering how well the track pad works under Linux because my current laptop with integrated buttons is complete crap in Linux. I originally wanted to get one of these but I decided better to wait until I start grad school in the fall, so I might end up going with a T431S instead because it has an mSATA slot but that has even the trackpoint buttons integrated so I'm curious whether there's any palm rejection or general noise rejection in the Linux drivers for the touchpad.

 

I use Linux (Archlinux) on my X1C and the trackpad is working great, with the synaptics driver you can enable the palm rejection and configure what should be considered a palm (touch size, pressure). Multitouch scrolling is smooth an double / triple tap for right / middle click is also working.

Edit: That's funny, just saw your signature and I had the exact same laptop as yours before the X1C

 

That's good to hear, thanks! Can you click and drag easily? I have switched to just double tapping to drag but that's one of the things that really trips up my laptop.

I think the Envy 14 was one of the earlier integrated touchpad buttons laptops, and it really sucks under Linux. Especially whenever mac users touch my laptop they get super frustrated and confused when it jumps around randomly when they type. It's the main reason I want to get a new laptop with a trackpoint, though I figured that between now and the fall when I start grad school, there will probably be a revision of the X1C or the T431S will be out which looks pretty comparable to me in terms of profile but with more expandability. Ideally I would actually want a 15" version with a 1080p screen but I don't know how likely that actually is, since there are very few 15" ultra books.

 

I run Xubuntu on mine (12.10) and the trackpad/trackpoint works flawlessly. Disable trackpad while typing is a godsend (you have to enable this yourself). Everything worked perfectly with a fresh install. 128gb obviously plenty of space for Linux as well (I added a 64gb SD card for media).

 

After 25 years of having various forms of ultralight notebooks, I was really quite excited to be at last getting a Lenovo, with its reputation for ruggedness and for being a business-oriented company, I do like the notebook a lot, though that's almost entirely owing to 3 items: the keyboard, the separate click buttons, and the esthetics.

However, buying it was a nightmare which I won't go into here - suffice to say, they still owe me $30 from double-billing me, but it took two months to be reimbursed for the majority of it, and I no longer expect even a response from them - there's simply no one in charge, as far as I can tell, and their computer records seem scattered and haphazard. The experience was so bad that when I wanted the portable LCD panel I ordered it from a local electronics store rather than dealing with Lenovo again.

Quite a bit has been written about quality control - I would say both the Asus and the Samsung ultrabooks not only have considerably better quality control, but also have more solid designs (at least the newer Series 9). Mine seemed OK, apart from the bulging bezel above the left hinge. But after a couple of months this developed a crack, so I sent it back for repair. This was completed inside a week, but about a month later the bezel began to bulge around the middle, and I could see the tape was poorly applied, and it looked like their might be a crack in the LCD panel behind it. As it didn't affect performance I ignored this.

Then the "e" keycap came loose, and could not be properly reattached. I was planning to go to Europe later in March, but I sent it back for warranty repair on March 4. I called the following week, but no one could tell me what was going on - they would call me back. No one called back.

I called again the following week, and this time the rep called me back to say that the keyboard was out of stock in Canada, had been ordered from the US on March 12 - meaning that the computer just sat there until my first phone call - and would arrive that Friday, with the notebook being returned to me the following week.

I repeated the procedure this week, and after three conversations I have now been told that the keyboard is back ordered, but should arrive - you guessed it - next week,, though the rep who told me this also told me they have no way of checking keyboard inventory.

I have no faith in the new date, but even if it's true, Lenovo's organization, customer support and communication simply seem the poorest of any major company I have ever dealt with. And this rugged business-oriented laptop has now been back for warranty repair twice in the first 6 months.

I will miss the keyboard a lot when this one ends its life, but I will never buy another Lenovo product.

 

Out of interest why didn't you just request the part then fit it yourself? That's what I always do with Dell. If it needs an engineer their warranty is on site - I'd never post my laptop off anywhere for any reason.

 

Sorry to hear your story, but 1) as coder mentioned, you can just ask lenovo to send you a keyboard and you install it by yourself. 2) you can escalate your case by calling lenovo (I have heard good things about the escalation process but have no personal experience).

 

Can I run the Windows 7 Power Manager on Windows 8 (since it does not exist for 8)?

I have the Win8 Drivers installed.

I know about the Win8 download available from Apps Store but I read here it's useless.

 

Tried Windows 7 for other reasons (RGB Anti Aliasing) and installed the Lenovo Power Management. It was ok but not worth it. I went to uninstall it and it hung. Rebooted and I was stuck in a Bluescreen Bootloop (including Safe mode).

I had to do a Repair Install which fixed it by using System Restore.

Uninstalled (in safe mode) and it went smooth.

 

I had no idea that was an option. When i previously called about the bezel, they initially said it wasn't covered by the warranty at all, and only agreed to consider it - it would be up to the repair depot to assess - when I insisted it was defective. So I assumed they would at least want to check whether the keyboard could be repaired.

But when I call them again tomorrow - another week has now gone by - I will ask to have the computer sent back to me so I can replace it myself.

 

Regarding escalation, I have called Lenovo repeatedly, and plan to do so again tomorrow. It has no effect, other than my eventually being told the keyboard will arrive 'next week.'

My claim about the extra fees was 'escalated.' It was that person who, after requesting additional information, never responded to my emails or phone messages. So I'm not too impressed with the escalation process.

 

Keyboard replacement is not a simple job like most notebooks.
It took the onsite engineer almost 30 minutes.

 

Used to be a simple job until UltraBooks came along with their form over function mantra.