Screen control and display problems Windows 7

I finished setting up my new X200S with Windows 7!

Virtually everything is running beautifully, and all my old programs seem to work well. No crashes at all so far. I have updated several elements with the Lenovo listed Windows 7 beta drivers, including Hotkey, Power Manager, Power Management (not sure of difference), 4500 video driver, Access Connections, Active Protection and Bluetooth Mouse.

ONLY TWO PROBLEMS that I can find with anything on the machine are:

1- that the brightness control does not always function properly and there is no OSD most of the time when this is changed. A few times, the OSD has popped up (maybe when on battery), but then the Fn+brightness up or down had NO EFFECT!

2- the battery gauge is wrong in it's power estimation and may change from time to time by hours wrong. With 6 cell battery it has said 7 hours and then switched to 2.5 hours minutes later.

Any suggestions on how to fix these two glitches???????

Overall, the machine is fabulous and a worthy replacement for my T60. wPrime 2.0 runs in 44 sec, weight is 2.65# with 4cell and 2.9# with six cell. Even used my T60 power adapters.

Also,opened up and confirmed no red/blue wires for WWAN in my 1440x900 screen. Anyone else have this working in WXGA+? FYI, I do have a sim slot in the battery area.

I wish I could add a camera...any chance this can be done?

My first post here, but kudos to all the contributors, as I devoured info from prior posts before getting this baby.

 

The display driver on the Windows 7 Beta drivers page does not properly support OSD for brightness, or the full range of brightness control. However, the latest Vista driver seems to work fine ( 32-bit, 64-bit).


As far as the power manager. Your energy usage is likely fluctuating (e.g. going from 8 watts to 15 watts) and this is causing the re-estimation. As long as the estimate goes back up I wouldn't worry about it.


There was a thread a while back about adding WWAN to the x200s (LED WXGA+ variant). This seems to be it, good luck.

 

Why would the Win7 Drivers not work properly, but the Vista do? Am I loosing much by downgrading to Vista (which I did and which did work as you said)?

Also, why is the 4cell nominal 14.4v (2.0ah) and the 6cell nominal 10.8v (5.2ah). My 6cell is not giving me the life that it seem it should so far. Do I need to run it down and recharge it a number of times? I do like the lightness and balance of the 4cell. Any idea what cells are in it to fit the slim shape? Weight is 7oz vs 11.4oz for 6cell.

I'm not going to add WWAN at this time...just wondering if the WUSB antenna works OK rather than the two that are supposed to be there. I will add 2 more GB ram.

BTW Jon, you are doing a phenomenal job on this forum and I just want you to know that I am appreciative.

 

I'm not sure of any features that you lose and Lenovo's driver practices are far beyond me. All I know is that I'm using the 64-bit Vista driver on Win7 build 7600 x64 and it works fine.

The 4 cell and 6 cell have different technologies. I believe the 4 cell is a prismatic rather than a standard Li-Ion. As a result the 4 cell is flush but has a lower per cell charge (7.2Whr per cell for 4 cell vs. 9.36 WHr per cell for 6 cell).

If you open the advanced tab in power manager you should be able to see the current full charge and design capacity for each battery. The 4 cell should be 28.8WHr design and the 6 cell should be 56.6WHr design; full charge capacity may be slightly higher for each. As a result of this the 6 cell should get roughly double the battery life of the 4.