My take on the Edge e220s

I was first drawn to the Edge e220s as it offered a great combination of the few things I was looking for: decently light and small, uses a CPU that has AES-NI, could accommodate two internal storage devices, and a modest price tag. Well, I’ve found those things and a few more pleasant surprises that make me glad about this purchase.

I bought the system with the following specs:
-i7-2617M
-2GB RAM
-250GB HDD
-Bluetooth
-Intel Wifi 1000
-Windows 7 Home Premium

And have since upgraded the RAM to 4GB, and added an Intel 310 80GB SSD. There certainly has been a step up in performance with particularly the Intel 310. I haven’t pushed the system enough yet to justify the 4GB.

My usage largely revolves around Microsoft Office apps, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Google Earth, casual digital photography, and general web use. Not particularly demanding stuff. But I do fully encrypt my disks with TrueCrypt, and was tired of paying a performance tax for that. This is actually the first SSD I’ve encrypted, and the performance of my Intel 310 has been taken down a few notches (see first attached pic. These are only the read speeds, but in the File Benchmark, roughly the same percentage drop applies to the writes). But still, it blows away those spinning disks.

Pretty much everything is as could be expected, though I am disappointed at the difficulty of fitting in a 9.5mm disk. My photos and audio material really do add up, and I’d like to drop in either a 750GB or 1TB 9.5mm drive in the very near future. This will involve a slight trim of the internal mount for that corner’s foot. I don’t even need to do anything to the SATA connection height – it’s already perfect. For those concerned about the warranty implications of that modification, well, I need only point to the terminology used in the warranty declaration: it says that they will not warranty damages *resulting from* modifications and so on. So, as long as I don’t screw anything else up while I’m trimming down that little hump in the body, they basically just won’t warranty that bottom body panel. They don’t have a leg to stand on to deny me of anything else. If you're curious to see inside the system, have a look at the other pics I've attached. The third one shows the hump that is the main obstacle to installing a 9.5mm drive.

The built-in webcam is a very good upgrade to what I was using before (a Creative 720p USB with built-in mic). I am seeing much better exposure control than the Creative. Where I used to see overexposed areas of my face when met with direct light, there is now none of that.

Like I mentioned, there have been a few pleasant surprises. I was really impressed by how simple this machine can be to work on. Taking out two screws to lift the keyboard and access the mSATA and RAM is just a dream come true. Also, it is possible to use the power settings to make the system completely silent. When on battery power, I’ve set the CPU limit to 50%, and to use only passive cooling. It doesn’t get hot at all, and still, things like a Skype video chat and a windowed session of YouTube run just fine. I also have the HDD set to spin down after 2 minutes, and due to the full partition encryption, the drive is only mounted through TrueCrypt when I need it – therefore, it doesn’t have a drive letter for services to call upon when I’m not using it. With this usage model, battery life looks very decent, and 5+ hours doesn’t look like a challenge at all.

If I had to nitpick about this system, I’d certainly need to reiterate the hard drive bay size. It is perfectly feasible to fit a 9.5mm drive if they really wanted to (and I do…). Also, I would absolutely love to see the option of a higher screen resolution, perhaps 1440x900. That 17% gain in vertical pixels would make a big difference. Some might wish for a longer battery life, and while I can’t deny that this is a weak point of the system, it isn’t a hindrance to my use.

Overall, certainly no regrets.

 

im about to buy one of these for my family. the upgrades are lenovo sure are expensive i think im just going to go with stock everything. did you upgrade the build in cam to hd?

on a side note there is no 1440*900 in production 16:10 ratios are extinct.

 

There is no cam option. It just comes with this one by default.

I know the increased resolution is becoming more and more of a pipe dream these days :-(

 

o sorry i mustve been thinking about the e420, im trying to decide between the two.

do you ever feel cpu/ram limited when working with large photos (photoshop + 12mb dslr photos)? thats what my aunt would use this laptop mainly for. thanks for responding

 

I haven't installed those sorts of programs yet. Still in migration hehehe... But I really don't see how it would be a problem for someone who doesn't absolutely depend on the performance for their livelihood. Though of course she might very much appreciate having a bigger display she can plug in to at the house.

 

she orginally asked for a macbook pro, and i was like F NO, i asked her and she saids the smaller the better, but im just worried about the 1.5ghz cpu and 2gb ram not cutting it for editing photos

 

I was thinking about getting one of these for long time for the same reasons but put off by the 4GB RAM limit (run VMs quite often) and high price tag here in Singapore (approx US$1600).

So I take it the RAM is not soldered onto the mainboard?

 

Wow... that's quite a price.

The RAM is not soldered. The slot is visible in the second pic.

 

Thanks.

To be fair, it does apparently include the RapidDrive and 4GB RAM but still quite pricey.

I wonder if the slot would be able to take a 8GB stick if they were available in the future?

 

not sure... The Intel page for this CPU says the maximum amount of RAM is 8GB, but it also states the max channels is 2. That 8GB may or may not need to be spread across both channels.

Intel® Core? i7-2617M Processor (4M Cache, 1.50 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SR03T

 

thetoast.....I bought an E220S which I liked, except for the fact that the bottom corners of the clickpad did not register clicks on my machine at all. Since I've spent years clicking the very corners of the buttons (before the current trend of buttonless clickpads) I found this to be absolutely infuriating.

I ended up returning it, which I was more than a bit bummed about, because I got it at an excellent price.

Is there any way you could check your machine to see if the clickpad registers clicks in the extreme bottom left and right corners? If it was just my machine, I might try and purchase another one, but if it's a flaw in the clickpad itself, I'll potentially look at a U260 instead, which still has physical click buttons.

Thanks!

 

Mine seems fine... both on the light-touch click, and on the full, deep click

 

Much appreciated!

Though now the e220s is priced almost $100 higher than I paid for it last month...grrrr. It's even more than an i3-based X220, which I'm shocked at.

 

Yeah, I don't know what's going on in the USA there... our base price in Canada is still $749.