New Y460 and Y560 Ideapads

I've had none of problems with my y460 that some of y560 owners are having. Hopefully it's just a few bad screens and not the result of stretching the 1366x768 beyond it's limits. In any case, both computers could benefit from at least a 1600x900 resolution.

 

I know, the 1366x768 really is the bare minimum for a 15.6 screen. However, this is not a Lenovo specific problem. If you look around, only the really high-end 15.6 laptops, like Dell Studio and HP Envy (and then only as an extra $100 option) or the ASUS G series laptops have higher than 1366x768. Even with those though, they all have 1080 screens, which are almost too much (140 ppi at 15.6"). I really wish more manufactures would use 1600x900 (120ppi) for this size. Or even better, 1680*1050. I really think 16:10 is a better ratio than 16:9 for laptops. 16:9 is just too wide for computing, where most information is stacked vertical than stretched horizontal.

 

They've all mostly gone to 16:9 for movie viewing. That aspect ratio makes most movies fit perfectly on the screen. But I agree, a higher resolution is needed on a 15.6" display. But I have no complaints with mine. It seems "normal" or "typical" to me. I've had several different brands of laptops lately and they all seem to use these cheap screen panels. I think 90% of the laptop screens are made by Samsung.

Brighter would be better and so would getting rid of the "screen door effect" on high brightness levels. Fortunately, most of the time I don't even notice it.

 

Ugh, I really hope it is juts a few computers that are experiencing this. My Y560 just shipped yesterday and I would hate to get it and find problems with the screen.

 

Both the screens in my new Y560 and my old ASUS S96S (which I love in comparison) were made by AU Optronics (the largest maker of laptop screens, and the makers of BenQ monitors).

I can't complain about the brightness in my Y560 though, when you turn it up all the way it's extremely bright.

 

I have one dead pixel on my display, otherwise I haven't had any of the issues people are complaining about as far as their displays go.

My issue however, is that I'm trying to stream online tv to my hdtv, and i get a stutter. I just tried downloading the new driver from Lenovo's website, and seems to have somewhat fixed that stutter, but now my audio won't work through the HDMI out. I'll keep tinkering, maybe try rolling back the driver or wander over to AMD's website and see if I can find a solution there. Is the 5730 just not good enough to stream to an HDTV fluidly? My desktop has no issues (which is why it's in the living room, the laptop is primarily for watching in the bedroom, among other things) and I run a 1Gb 4870 in that machine. I wonder if I need more speed in the graphics card or if my problem is elsewhere. I'll maybe try the overclock that was mentioned. I really want to get this issue figured out.

Otherwise I'm very happy with my y560, the battery life is good and you can drop the display brightness to a lower setting and it makes a HUGE impact on your battery life. I ended up uninstalling most of the bloatware. Haven't started playing any graphics intensive games (waiting for the next patch for BC2 before I jump back into that boat), but it's doing everything else just dandy so far.

But yeah if anyone has any advice for me on how to fix me stuttering streaming tv i'd love to hear it.


also last page someone asked about the french keyboard and not being able to do apostrophe's, i had that problem too, just go to your language icon in the bottom right corner by the clock and make sure it's set to english. I had it set that way but for some reason it changed the setting for me in firefox, so I had to make sure i was using firefox and do it again while in the browser. hope that helps!

 

What kind of printers are you guys using?

Because... I can't seem to get my canon i860 drivers to install. I downloaded it from canon's website win7 64 version. Didn't work. Installed via windows update, failed to install.

Tried plugging it into the other 2 usb ports. Doesn't work.

Cable is fine, everything is fine, when I bring my printer down to the public computer in the lobby of my apt and use it; no problems.

Not sure wth to do!

>(

 

Re: Widespread Y560 Display Problem? - lenovo community

Here's another website about people with the sparkling pixel problem. The first post in it has a perfect description of the problem.

 

How does shipping work in Lenovo ?

They seem to have the worst order status system I've ever seen.

 

A note on the display issue:

From other posts I see it may not a problem when integrated graphics. If this is the case then it simply should be a driver issue, but it doesn't seem likely that graphics processing affects display quality (unless it's overheating like the 8-series NVidia cards did).

I'm calling them after I find out what happens when others' are service so hopefully this issue can be sorted out.

 

Order date on mine was may 23. Got it last Thursday. Just about 3 weeks, some people took about a month. If it's longer than that, maybe they're out of specific parts for the mobo to install -shrugs- not sure.

 

Hello all,

I've been need a new laptop for a while. (My current rig only has a 9300M GS graphics card).

Anyway, one of the ones I've been keeping my eye on was the ideapad y460. I noticed that Lenovo is having a fathers day sale that will bring down the price of the top model y460 to $849. (2.4 Ghz, 500G HD, and 5650).

So I have two questions I'm hoping you all can help me with... 1) Are there any good reviews of this laptop yet? I'm not finding much) and 2) How often does Lenovo have this kind of sale... I'd really have to go fast to pull the trigger on this before the 20th.

Sincerely,
MXD

 

Mine got shipped only 3 days after placing my order. Which was even faster than how long it took my Dell XPS M1330 shipped years ago, but when my XPS got shipped, it arrived in a day with a fully working tracking number from get-go.

On contrast, for my Lenovo Y460 order, nobody seems to know where the damn thing is. CSR has no tracking number. One gave me a UPS reference number which of course doesn't work even after 2 days.

I tend to get really impatient when I don't know what's going on.

I think lack of review comes from lack of attention on Lenovo's new "ideapad". They are known for their Thinkpad line. In addition, I don't think many have it.

Well, right now, Lenovo has two sales going on for Y series. Y460 is 1240 (or something) CAD on Lenovo Canada. They got a sale going on it which made the price down to 1099 (or something). Then I used father's sale coupon which further reduced the price down to 944.

I am sure Lenovo always has some coupons and deals going on at once, but getting coupons and deals on the same model you want may be a challenge. In that case, this might be a good time to get it.

 

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*****ATTENTION ALL y560 USERS********

I have found a fix to all shuttering, fuzziness and haziness.. please reply if this works for you, took some time to play with but i got it.

When running ati(because all intel should be running fine) go the the control centre > desktop properties > colour > and set Contrast to 90 this will fix alll your problems! Let everyone with the problem know, and if it works let me know! thanks.

*****ATTENTION ALL y560 USERS********

Also, if 90 isn't perfect for you, adjust it accordingly, but it IS the contrast level(for me)

 

Been playing around with my 560 all weekend and I love it. Seriously love it. Coming up from an Acer Aspire 5102wlmi, AMD turion x2-64, integrated ATI 200m, 677mhz 2gb mem, 7200 rpm pata hdd....

Playing mw2 with 4x aliasing and everything on max, smooth as butter. 5650.. sick. No complaints. Other than can't getting my canon printer to work.

Just... pure awesomeness. I definitely say peer pressure and order it. There shouldn't be any second thoughts here imo. I've searched around for the past 2 months when my laptop died before finals, dell, toshiba, asus, sager, gateway, HP, literally exhausted all options. Originally bought an asus g60 with an i5 and nvidia 360m, but just had problems since day one and returned it. Then bought this cause my older brother has a thinkpad and.. just can't beat it. This is my first lenovo computer/laptop and I seriously don't have any regrets at all. This tops everything I've had in my life. In all seriousness, it definitely does.

I wouldn't be surprised, when I ordered this back in May that's when they were having that 10% off or whatever. So I figured it would be another couple months or so, but a fathers day special; that's legit. Don't lose out on the opportunity since I don't think there's really any other deal for a special day or theme to go by for a while. Probably not until end of July or August if they do any sort of "college student.. going away to college" specials like those.

 

Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 Review - A Review of the Lenovo IdeaPad Y460

YouTube - Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 0633 Review

They usually have coupons about twice a month.

 

I'm assuming you were only having these issues when hooking up to a TV with HDMI. Correct? And if so, did you have any problem getting sound over the HDMI? Do we need to enable a different output for sound in the sound properties?

 

Yeah hear yah on that. I got a ETA a week after it was ordered, then the ETA changed for the week after that. So got delayed for whatever reason.

 

After hours of researching and emailing back and forth with Canon, I figured out the problem.

Just putting this out there if any of you guys are having problems with printer drivers not installing.

Things I've tried:
-Windows update is on. Auto device installation setting is on.
-Tried all usb ports, they are all functioning and not defected.
-Tried a different usb cable (both are in excellent condition)
-Manually installing the canon driver off from the canon website with the printer unplugged, then plugging it in after installation and turning on the printer.
-Manually installing the canon driver with the printer plugged in and turned on
-When trying different usb ports, that specific port the cable was plugged into, the port was properly forwarded for the device. (Which should be USB and not parallel port or etc)
-No program conflicting with the installation, such as 3rd party firewalls, spyware, malware, etc programs running in the background
-Printer itself is in working condition. Used it multiple times on my old laptop that died 2 months ago. Installed it on the public computer in the lobby of my apartment. No problems.

And every single other variable you can think of, I've exhausted.

Problem was the print spooler setting.

start-run-services.msc-print spooler-start up has to be on automatic not manual

c:/windows/system32/spool/printer (delete any content in the printer folder only)

Reboot. Let windows auto driver installation do its thing and all is good.

Again, just putting this out there for a reference.

 

@GtsXracer:
I'm dumbfounded that both Windows 7 and Canon failed on your printer problem. Someone should be flogged at one or both companies. Something as simple as activating a service -- how could they miss that? Maybe the 64-bit driver is new and was hurriedly put together. Or maybe it's a 32-bit driver and can't start the needed service in 64-bit Windows. Someone dropped the ball here, big time. Guess I'll avoid getting a Canon printer. You really shouldn't have had to go through all that hassle for something as simple as a "plug-and-play" printer.

 

Yeah by all means. Not really sure if the driver development was rushed out. However, from Canon's website, the Windows 7 and 64bit version are both the same. Which I was using.

-shrugs- not sure.

All in all though, it's taken care of and I emailed back the rep at canon about this solution who responded to my question. So at least they know.

That's what I thought too, haha. PnP is... PnP for a reason =\

 

Yeah, some people on the other thread were also saying it was a problem with the ATI graphics. However, I could still see the problem in the BIOS screen (no windows or drivers to screw it up), and when I connected it to my TV with an HDMI cable it worked just fine (no sparkling). So I think it's more likely to be a problem with the monitor. I have one with an i7, so I have no way to switch to integrated graphics to test that out.

BTW, when I plugged my HDMI into my receiver, and got both video and 7.1 surround sound, no issues, no changing settings, or anything.

 

NEW Y560 BIOS AVAILABLE: ver. 30CN57WW dated June 13, 2010.

I downloaded it but it will not run. Windows gives me an error message, "AppCrash". I even tried running it in Safe Mode and it still wouldn't run. I downloaded it several times to make sure it wasn't a bad download.

My 560 came with BIOS 30CN51WW and I had no problem updating it to 30CN53WW. Anyone else having a problem updating to this latest BIOS?

 

For me, dropping the contrast down to 94 helped with the issue significantly. However, it didn't fix it all together. If I tilted the screen away from me slightly I could still see it in certain colors, especially bright blue, green, and beige. I really had to look hard to see it looking at the picture straight on, but it was still enough to make my eyes hurt. Continuing to turn it down past 94 didn't make it any better, but as soon as I turned it up to 95 it got WAY worse.

 

Mine came with 30CN57WW already installed. I got it in on the 11th, so it was probably out before they released it on the website.

On a side note, Lenovo warranty returns worked out pretty well. They e-mail you a Fed-Ex voucher, then you just bring the voucher and your laptop to a Fed-Ex store, they box it up for you and send it off 2 day air to their repair depot in Texas, paid for by Lenovo. It's supposed to be back in 5-7 days. I just hope they're able to fix it.

 

I just bought my 560 on the 10th (June). But I got it from Fry's and I'm sure they've had it for a few weeks. The manufacture date is sometime in April, hence the older BIOS. I sure wish I could update mine. I sent Lenovo an email about it.

 

If people are still having problems with getting sound out through their HDMI, I go into device manager and look for "High Definition Audio Controller", theres 2 of them but one of them might be disabled, enable it and then go to your playback deviced under Sound and set the HDMI as the default audio device.

 

Thank You seedopeedo! You just got a rep point from me.

 

Hey,
I'm looking at the Lenovo ỵ560 that's out on Fry's electronics. The price is fair and I like the specs on it; however, I'm still skeptical about it's gaming quality, and speed overall. At the moment, I'm deciding between the Asus N61 and this ỵ560. My question is, can the Lenovo y560 play sc2 as flawlessly, and is it as good as the Asus?

(I've not own a computer for about 7-8 months and have not kept up with the new stuff so my apologies ahead if I do not understand certain things lol)

 

The Y560 and the N61Jq have the exact same specs (video card, processor, ram, resolution) so their gaming performance should be identical. Also, the N61Jq is the most powerful of the N61 line, any other like the N61Jv or Jg or Jn are significantly less powerful than the Y560.

 

LOUISVILLE, KY, US 06/13/2010 8:28 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
ANCHORAGE, AK, US 06/11/2010 1:37 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
SHANGHAI, CN 06/11/2010 10:03 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
06/11/2010 4:21 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
SHANGHAI, CN 06/10/2010 9:31 P.M. EXPORT SCAN
06/10/2010 9:22 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN
CN 06/09/2010 2:45 A.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED


Do the laptops get stuck in Kentucky for a while? There is no estimated shipping date...which is kind of odd.

 

Seems so. Some users on Lenovo official forum were crying because their shipments got stuck there for half a month.

Oh, the joy ...

 

Alright. Thanks. I think I'm going to head to fry's later this week for the ỵ560 lol.

 

for HALF A MONTH? holy cow overload of joy... i hope mine makes it out of there soon... lol i mean it's only been there for a day but...

 

That is the home of a huge UPS hub. Mine was there for the better part of two days. The shipping date should reappear when it gets scanned. Just hope customs doesn't get their hands on it.

 

I bought mine from Fry's (at the store). Does Lenovo have an express shipping option? If so, it would have been worth it. I once ordered a laptop from Newegg and opted for express order processing and FedEx overnight. It was in my hands 20 hrs later. Definitely worth the extra few bucks. Nothing worse than the anxiety of waiting.

 

Is it just the Y460's that are coming out of China and taking forever to be delivered? When I bought the 560 it was shipped out from North Carolina 2 days after I ordered. Maybe the 460 is more popular than they expected, and their local inventory is exhausted.

 

I ordered the y560 and it shipped out of China.. I think it's both models!

 

Yeah, if they offered faster shipping, I would have taken it even if it cost me 100 CAD.
They don't offer any other shipping than standard for Canada at least.

And if I could find Y460 elsewhere, I would have gotten it.

 

if i were you,i would get lenovo y560,because n61jq is bigger and heavier and i heard n61jq's cpu temps reachs 80C.on the other and lenovo y560 has one key theathre and also has rich sound quality.my bro bought lenovo y560 from frys he ll send to me in this week

 

Does anyone know if it's possible to re-configure the slidenav to do something useful, such as changing songs? I really miss the play/pause/fwrd/back hotkeys that used to be on my old laptop, I have music running almost 90% of the time and it'd be nice if I could just change songs through the slidenav somehow because atm it's virtually useless to me

 

Called Lenovo today again. This will be my 6th call to them so far.

CSR I talked to claimed that my shipment *should* be in Canadian customs. And I am told that Canadian customs may hold the shipment up to 4 days.
(or up to half a month according to Lenovo forum)

And of course, since it's stuck in customs, there is no tracking # yet nor does the UPS reference # work.

 

Received it yesterday. Very powerful pc and happy with it overall. Was surprised at how well it handled Crysis and Supcom 2 and it looked stunning when output to a HD tv.

If anybody is having a problem with the dancing pixels, here's how I fixed it.

1. Load Paint (Start->All Programs->Accessories->Paint)
2. Click 'Edit Colors'. From the palette on the right of that window there may be dancing pixels for a particular color range. The gradient may also not appear correctly.
3. Right click on the desktop and open the 'Catalyst Control Center'. Click 'Graphics' at the top left then 'Desktop Properties'. Change the tab to 'Color'.
4. Adjust the settings until the palette in Paint looks ok and the dancing pixels have disappeared. The following settings did the trick for me: -
Gamma: 1.00
Brightness: -1
Contrast: 94

Also, there's an issue where the screen brightness (usually controlled by Fn+ up/down cursor key) reverts to dim after a few minutes. This is easily resolved by adjusting the power settings (Start->Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Power Options->Change plan settings. Change 'plugged in' settings to 'dim the display: Never' and make sure the brightness slider at the bottom is over to the right. Finally, disable the light sensor (to the right of the wifi icon above the keyboard): Start->All Programs->Lenovo->Energy Management->Power management options. Click the small gear icon at the bottom right, then choose the 'Smart Control' tab and uncheck 'ALS (Ambient Light Sensor) Control'.

Though I was disappointed with the screen initially, these two changes made a huge difference. I suspect a lot of people who were unhappy with the screen (especially those who seen it on display in a shop) may change their mind. Looks just as good now as my desktop's 22" Dell monitor.

 

How many cores are in the i7 for the lenovo ỵ560? I apologize if that was a stupid question lol.

 

It's a quad core. Don't be confused if it shows up as eight in task manager - that's because of hyper-threading.

 

It's not a stupid question but remember that Google is your friend. (Click the link below.)

Intel® Core? i7-720QM Processor (6M Cache, 1.60 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBLY

I wish the AES New Instructions and Thermal Monitoring were enabled in this model of the Core i7. Especially the AES -- that can speed up encryption by up to a factor of 10. Handy if you want to use Bitlocker or any other encryption software like TrueCrypt.

 

I'm looking for a new laptop and the 560 looks also like a good choice for my needs. But some of the screen issues I'm reading about has me a little worried.

But other than than it's got a really fast CPU and a very good GPU.

 

I've had my 560 for 6 days now. I'm amazed at the speed and graphics. My screen is fine. I think just a few ppl got screens that were either defective or the settings for the ATI card needed to be adjusted. I've had no such problems. It's your typical backlit LED screen that most all laptops come with these days.

This CPU (Core i7-720QM) is not the MOST powerful CPU that Intel makes for laptops, but it's close. Only desktop models and the 820QM and the 920XM are faster. It has a passmark score of 3228:
PassMark CPU Lookup

All the other CPUs on that page are desktop processors except for those mentioned above.

 

I am stuck. Should I get they Y460, wait for acer 3820TG/4820TG (Does anyone know when this will be released in the us?) or look elsewhere.I want to be able to game and have good battery life (3+ hours) all in a 13-14 inch screen that I can take around with me easily in college.

I have also always been an nvidia guy so I don't know about switching over to ati.

I would like to make a decision before this father's day deal is over so any thoughts/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

For you LINUX geeks out there:
I just put Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) 32-bit on my Y560 and it seems that everything is working just fine. I haven't had a chance to test the ethernet port yet, but it shows up in the hardware, so I'm sure that's fine. The Wi-Fi works great, sound is good and the FN+arrow keys work for brightness and volume. The mute and sound buttons on the right side of keyboard work too. The FN+F6 doesn't turn off the touchpad but I know there's a terminal command to do that... I'll post it when I find it.

After booting the LivdCD from a USB flash drive it took all of 7 minutes to install -- amazing! (I shrunk the Windows 7 partition first to leave about 80 GB of unallocated space for Ubuntu.)

After booting into the installation, I downloaded the 189 updates and installed the ATI driver that it offered. Works great. I also installed "Cheese" (webcam software) from the Ubuntu Software Center and that works great too. Installed GIMP and VLC and the "rar" and "unrar" capabilities to the archiver. All is well, so far.

I didn't install the 64-bit version because I've heard that 64-bit Flash can cause some problems. I'll wait until they work that out before I go to 64-bit. However, I did install the PAE Kernel (Physical Address Extensions) so that I could use all 4 GB of RAM. Just search "PAE" in the Synaptic Package Manager.

Since Thinkpads have always been known to be very Linux-friendly, I was hoping that Lenovo would do the same for Ideapads. Looks like they did -- at least Ubuntu runs well, I don't know about any other distros.