New Y460 and Y560 Ideapads

I'd get the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid HDD/SSD. For $130, you get a 500GB HD (4GB of which is SSD). Check out this review, it explains how it works, and gives it a very strong recommendation.

Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

that price premium is actually not as bad as it may seem:

lowest price i can find for decent 8 gb of Laptop ddr 3 ram is 250$.
faster processor is around 110$ premium (thats assuming you can find the i7 for list prices of 332 AND sell your old 520m for list price of 225. in reality provantage charges 361+ tax for the i7)
momentus xt =130$ (altho u do get to keep the old hdd and can caddy it as i did)
so those 3 pieces would cost u about 480$+ Tax+ Shipping; i will call it 550$ even, versus lenovo premium of 641$ which gives u the bonus of insuring the warranty is not voided. also would their rapid drive be faster than a momentus? maybe speed would be more like a real ssd

the challenge there is who wants the 8 gb of ram? the only scenario i can think of is if you want a windows perf score of 7.5+ to showboat. that test tests quantity as much as Speed of memory and having 8 gig definitely ups the score, altho i am not sure if there is any real world benefit with most apps people use...maybe if you are graphics heavy in blender/photoshop/maya

EDIT: miscalculated i7 price of upgrade and updated accordingly

 

Good news (or bad news in disguise )

Got 14th as shipping date.

 

So I got my 560 yesterday and I started to play around with it. I'm trying to transfer all my back up stuff from my external hdd on here. But the USB transfer speed is ridiculously slow. It'll start around like 9mbs then just drop to around 100kbs (sometimes higher or lower).

The HDD worked fine before on my other computers, not really sure what to do. I mean the laptop IS brand new.. Everything is up to date, I did all windows updates, checked all drivers.

Now, sometimes the drive just disappears from my computer, and I'll have to turn off my external, unplug it, plug it back in and turn it back on; then it'll recognize.

I've been searching around and seems like 2 fixes were to uncheck Remote Differential Compression and under the external hdd to go into its properties-policies and change it to Best Performance, if not already. Which I did both and there is no change.

Not really sure what to do...

 

How about looking through BIOS ?

 

just checked right now. nothing

 

Hi,

need a little help, how do I make the sound come out via hdmi? I went to sound settings but i can only see speaker and realtek digital output. But the digital output doesn't do anything

 

That sucks, man. It seems you might have defective board that is affecting your USB lanes.

That just sucks.

 

I'm about to join the Y560 club. Got it at $949.99 with the recent coupon ($100 instant savings + $350 off). Ordered at 13:36 yesterday and received a shipping confirmation 6 hours later!! =)

 

yea i was debating between the two.. but then cause the y560 had the deal for 950 i got it instead of the xps which would be like 1400 just for the better screen.

oh and i ordered on 6/3 and it arrived today 6/10. except no one was home to sign so i dont get it until tomorrow T_T

 

The screen seems to be the foible of this laptop, which is ok with me as I planned to use it as a desktop replacement linked to a monitor (or hdtv for gaming).

What I can't confirm is whether the screen supports 3D and comes with polarized glasses?

 

Hiya,
You need to go to the Lenovo site and download the updated driver.
Lenovo Ideapad Support & downloads

I had this problem last week and this fixed the problem. Let me know if it works or if you need any help.

 

I got an e-mail saying that it's been shipped last night despite of having given June 14th as shipping date, but tracking number is not available according to CSR.

Getting there.

 

Don't worry. Thats good news. You won't get your tracking number to work on UPS website until two days before it arrives. For some people, they got a working tracking number the day it was delivered.

 

heating concerns?!!!

Y560


So the side vent is warm, but never hot.

BUT the surface under the notebook is always warm-hot temp. Is that what others have noticed?

My former asus notebook had a HOT vent, but the bottom was usually cool.

 

Computer components are designed to work under hot temp, so you don't really need to worry about it.

Unless of course it is going over boiling degree.

 

I ordered a refurbished Y460 last Friday for $720. UPS delivered it on Thursday.
It is in good shape. Played Warcraft, Farcry2, Sartcraft2. CPU temperature max
out at 81C by HWMonitor. 3DMark06 score is at 7377. Is it pretty low ?
Could someone show me how to overclock the ATI Radeon HD 5650 ?

 

7377 is low for Desktop computers, but for laptop, it's well above average.

 

81C is fine, that is what most of my games run up to. The 3DMark06 is right where is should be as well.

Use this to overclock: AMD GPU Clock Tool v0.9.26.0 For HD 5870 download from Guru3D.com

Try clock at: 700MHz and Memory at: 900MHz

Works great for me, with temps in the low to mid 70C's

 

81 is perfectly acceptable when doing high load things like playing games. From the spec sheets on Intel's website, the i7 720QM is spec'd to 100 degrees and the i5 520m is spec'd to 105. If you're worried that it's too hot because the laptop is uncomfortable, then get a laptop desk. If you're worried about the components, don't, they can handle much worse. As long as you aren't blocking the vents you'll be fine.

 

what is the lenovo y560(core i7) 3dmark 06 point?

 

Thanks a lot, its fixed now. But I guess dolby home theater still doesn't work even with the update

 

have you installed latest bios update yet?it ll probably run lower temps

 

see my post earlier about my y460

the hottest thing in the laptop (perceivable by putting it on your lap and doing stuff) i am ssuming y560 is built on similar chassis, and you can confirm the hardware by popping the screwless panel on the bottom to see the wifi

1) hard drive --clicky little thing
2) wifi card --intel 1000

hard drive heat (left palmrest and underneath laptop on the left-front) went away completely after i swapped the stock hdd for an ssd.

Wifi card --i swapped for a 5ghz capable intel card 6300 and my heat in the right-center-underneath got even hotter. about the only idea for this is to get an alternative brand wifi card (not intel, the new intel 1000/5300/6300 seem to run very hot) and swap it..maybe an atheros like one of these:

atheros mini card - Google Product Search

albeit in my experience it is a trade off of heat versus performance...i have a atheros mini card in another pc and it does run cooler, albeit it works great for websurfing, jut not that fast for heavy downloading or low latency gaming

 

very sorry for this noob question..how do we reinstall the OS of window7 to get rid of bloatwares..the OS we are going to reinstall is original?will it cost more $$?how about the driver like navigation,1-key theatre,face veri etc...can we get those driver back?thank you very much for any pro who can enlighten me...^^

 

If you don't want the bloatware, just uninstall it, one program at a time, through Control Panel. Don't re-install Windows, unless you're prepared to re-install most of the drivers. If you re-install using the built-in recovery program, you'll just end up with the same bloatware because it restores the computer to factory state.

 

As already stated, if you don't want the bloatware or the included drivers for certain things, you can just install them.

If you are feeling inclined to do a clean install; this is a free and legal way of doing it. http://forum.notebookreview.com/microsoft-windows-7/428068-legal-windows-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

 

I think we should start an "Ideapad Y460/Y560 Owner's Thread". This one is getting way too long and goes all the way back to January before these models were even available. That makes for too much reading to find what you need. An owner's thread would have more compact and relevant info for those of us who now own these models. It would be much easier to search for specific questions/problems/solutions.

What say you? If I see a few posts in agreement, I'll start the thread myself or anyone else can do so. Just title it as stated above (in the quotes).

 

thank you ray and threefifty...2 more questions..1st one ''is it ok with both of u with 5400rpm harddrive?any slow-down on booting and opening application?'' 2nd ques..after uninstalling the bloatwares..the y460 still has any heat issue?Because the 1st drawback for me to pull the trigger of y460 is the heat problem''...THANK YOU AGAIN..

 

I think an owners thread would be great for people who have them to compare/share insight.(I'd ask a Mod first) At the very least someone should delete the first 50 pages or so since it is just arguing and assumptions.

Veryron, I'm confused on how you wrote your question... Is the 5400rpm good? It's not bad, just noisy.(SSD's are about twice as quick) Heat isn't too bad. Only under 100% load CPU temps reach into the 90C's. From what I've seen these new Intel i series do this with a lot of notebooks, including the new Macbook pros. GPU temps hardly break 70C even with overclocking.

 

sorry for your confusion..my english is bad..the thing i am trying to say is compare a 5400rpm hdd to a 7200rpm hdd..is there any significant improvement?heard about the momentus seagate hybrid thing..can we replace the hdd inside y460 to hybrid ssd+hdd?considering the size and suitability..sry again for my bad english..

 

anyone else has a high pitched whistling sound coming from the right palm rest of the y460?

also im thinking of changing the hdd to a 64gb ssd. but i realise 3 games will already take up half the space. is it worth it?

 

Keep in mind that if you want to upgrade your OS, you'll need about an extra 20GB of free space. Most ppl who buy SSD's also run an HDD externally.

Personally I think SSD's aren't worth it: the cheap ones cost about $2/GB and HDD's are about $0.20/GB. The Momentus XT is only $40 more than a compareable HDD, and provides many of the performance benefits of an SSD for common usage scenarios.

 

The HDD controller firmware seems to be more important than the rotational speed. Read this evaluation of 5 models of 500GB laptop hard drives:
Five 2.5-inch hard drives at 500GB - The Tech Report - Page 1

If you skip to the last page (conclusions) they picked the 5400rpm drive over the Seagate 7200rpm drive even though the 7200 one had double the cache. So, spindle speed isn't everything.

As for SSDs: until the Intels come down a lot in price, I wouldn't even consider one.... mostly because I can't afford them right now. And from what I've read, the Intels are still, by far, the best.

Also, I concur with others' reports that, amazingly, heat does not seem to be an issue with these models.... at least not with my Y560.

 

Having owned 3 SSDs for my desktop and for one of my latops and lastly for my NAS, it's really realllly hard to go back to spindle drives, but Seagate Momentus XT might do the trick.

Harddrive is the lowest part of any machine. My NAS has **** spec but after I installed a SSD as boot drive, its response and smoothness became better than my Gateway gaming laptop.

I mean, for God's sake, my NAS has only an ATOM cpu with 2gb RAM with Windows 7 pro. It actually installs windows udpates faster than my P8600 9800M GTS 4GB RAM gaming laptop.

That's something.

 

it says overclock for 5870. but don't we have the 5370?

so it is possible to overclock the mobile graphics card on this notebook? is it possible to also do that with the i5 430m we have?

 

You mean the 5730? It should work. The software isn't specific for each graphics card and should work with most ATI cards. At least it works on my 5650

I don't know if the i5's and i7's can be overclocked. I do know you can buy overclocked desktop CPU's from Intel, but don't know of any software that can do it. Here's the link again, just give it a try if you want to overclock it. AMD GPU Clock Tool v0.9.26.0 For HD 5870 download from Guru3D.com

 

A few pages back people with the Y560 were complaining about dancing pixels on their screen. Does everyone have this same problem? Or is it only some people that are experiencing this issue? And does anyone know how to fix it?

 

Yes, I just got mine in on Friday and it has the 'dancing' or 'fuzzy' pixels as well. But, if you turn down the contrast a few notches (94 was the magic number for me) they disappear. It pisses me off that they used such a cheap monitor. I've never seen anything like it before. At least it's an easy fix, or I would have sent it back just because of that.

 

Did you try complaining to them at least?

 

Thank you, AboutThreeFitty
I tried what you suggested, core clk at 700MHz and mem clk 900MHz
My Y460's 3DMark06 score jumped from 7377 to 8417
It is real nice.

 

I haven't seen the need for any overclocking and I don't have any "fuzzy pixels". These screens do have a little bit of the "screen door effect". Sort of like looking thru a screen door at high brightness levels. But almost all recent laptops have this. At least the ones with glossy screens at 1366 x 768.

As for overclocking -- I don't know that the i7-720QM can be oc'ed and I wouldn't try anyway. It's blazing fast just as it is with the Turbo Boost, which ramps it up to 2.8GHz. I've watched it do this with CPU-Z running. Just put a load on it and you'll see.... as long as your power plan is either "balanced" or "high performance". On "high performance" it STAYS there at 2.8GHz or close to it. That comes in handy when playing "COD:Modern Warfare 2", which runs great on this machine.

Has anyone tried running Crysis on the Y560? I'm curious to know how well the Y560 would handle it -- it's a really demanding game, hardware-wise.

 

does anyone know the best way to compare the version of the firmware for graphics, audio, cpu, etc. to what is online

ALSO how do you get rid of french keyboard

i canàt type question marks and stuff ééééÉÉÉÉèàèç

 

Even after I turned down the contrast, which did help, looking at the screen still gives me a splitting headache. Then I noticed that if I tilted the screen away from my self slightly that I could still see the sparkling pixels. This is not the same as the 'screen door effect'. I noticed that too, but it doesn't bother me, not like the sparkling pixels.

Based on someone earlier's comment about dithering, I tried to turn the color down from 32-bit to 16-bit, but that didn't change anything. I don't know if that means that dithering isn't the problem, or if it's something else.

I've never had a problem like this on an LCD screen before, not even in super-cheap laptops or portable DVD players. I guess I expected a bit more from the Lenovo name and high price tag.

However, besides the screen, the laptop is great. The case is sturdy and attractive (though a real fingerprint magnet), the keyboard and touchpad are the best I've ever used in a laptop, and it has more than enough processing power. My only other complaint (also screen related, lol) is the auto-dimming screen. It was really annoying, the brightness would change every time my shadow covered up the sensor, but it was easy to disable.

I called Lenovo warranty support, and they want me to send it in for depot repair. It's ridiculous that I have to send a brand new laptop in for repair, but I sure hope they can fix this. I'll let you guys know if they fixed it (in 5-7 working days).

 

How many of the rest of you are having this problem? Have you heard of a problem like this in any other notebook?

 

Hi,

Problem came back, I guess the driver is not really a permanent fix

 

I'm really getting discouraged after I have read all complaints about the Y560's display. Is it really that bad, or is it well bearable?

If not, do you find Y460's display better? I'm still considering if I should wait for these laptops or to choose one with better display. Thanks.

 

Did you try installing both the Audio and the Video driver? Even though this is an audio problem, the HDMI port is attached to the ATI video card, and all audio is routed through it.

 

The Y560 display (at least mine) really is that bad. With the contrast turned up it isn't bearable at all. With it turned down a bit it's bearable (picture wise), but it still gives me a headache, maybe from eye strain. Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it, like some people are more sensitive to the 'rainbow effect' of the old DLP TV's, while others didn't notice it. Either way, I've never had this problem on any LCD panel before, so I'm more apt to believe that it's some sort of hardware problem.

I don't know if they're all like that, or just for a minority of us. I'm sending mine in for repair tomorrow. I hope that a few of us just got a bad panel, and that a new one will fix it. I'll let you guys know when it gets back from repair.

 

My Y560 display is just fine. No sparkling pixels. No problems. The auto-dimming can be disabled simply by turning off the automatic light sensor thru the energy management panel (push the little, lit-up battery button above the F10 and F11 keys and click on the little gear icon near the bottom, then go to the "smart control" tab. Uncheck ALS).