Second-hand thinkpad x301 owner's thread.

I'm thinking about getting an x301 soon but I'm concerned about the longevity of the notebook. How long do you think this notebook will last before it becomes too slow to use or breaks down? It would be nice if the x301 could last me 5 or 6 years. I plan on using it for web browsing, word processing, and watching/streaming HD videos.

 

I plan on using it for another 10 years and I'm pretty confident that it will last.

 

That's good to hear. Is there a significant difference between the SU9400 and the SU9600 models? Or will they both perform similarly?

 

You'll never notice the difference.

Just get the best-kept example you can find, and enjoy.

 

What kind of CPU usage do you see if you play a youtube video at 720p?

 

I don't have one around to test but would expect *some* stuttering...nothing major.

Those CPUs were nothing to write home about back then in terms of performance, let alone now...

600X, Bronsky, what do you guys say?

 

I can report from my "scientific" experiments (open task manager and average numbers with your eyes) that youtube video at 720 normally pegs the CPU at something 30-50% and a 1080p shoots it upto a max of 65%. No stutter at all.

 

Good to hear.

If our friend 600X succeeds with his IPS mod, I might just get one myself...

 

I'm also considering getting an ultrabay battery too. What kind of battery life can I expect with the 6 cell vs. the 6 cell+3 cell?

 

It depends on how much wear your 6 cell already has. If has no lost capacity, the 6&3 cell combined should get you around 6 hours of medium use and more if you conserve power. I have a 6 cell battery with a 35% capacity loss, a new 6 cell and a fairly new 3 cell ultrabay. I can easily get 8 hours of battery life outside the office with normal settings, BT and Wifi on.

As far as expected life of this X301, I've used it everyday for the past 14 months. It was 3 years old when I bought it. It does everything I need from a notebook and hasn't shown any inclination to wear. I have no power issues and have not had any problem playing HD videos on its HDX4500 GPU. In every way, this little workhorse has exceeded my expectations. I can't imagine what I would ever replace it with? The display size is perfect, the keyboard is the best I've ever used on a notebook, and that includes some older Latitudes, Thinkpads and Vostros, which I also liked.

 

Just tested it: Full HD Flash Video (YouTube) gets the CPU up to 40% usage. I'm running Win 8 and 4GB of RAM. Got the 1,4GHz CPU. Obviously no stuttering at all.

 

So my X301 should be coming in soon. Are there any tweaks I should do or software I should install? Also, what are your thoughts on Win7 vs. Win8 on this machine? Is there much of a difference? Thanks again for answering my questions.

 

That's a very broad question. What will be the machine used for?

My vote would go to W7, but I'd vote the same way for any non-touchscreen unit...

 

Oh sorry. What I meant was are there any tweaks I can do to improve battery life. Also, is there any particular reason why you would use W7 over W8 or is it more of a preference thing?

 

Windows is more of a preference thing. I use Win 8 and can recommend it. The X301 runs extremely well with it. Much faster than Win 7.

For battery life, this link is on the first page of the thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/595343-keep-x301-buy-x1-3.html#post8258800

 

On a whole different note, TPFC is something I'd highly recommend:

TPFanControl by troubadix

 

Is the fan on the x301 particularly loud?

Also, 600X, could I get your color profile and the modded BIOS? Thanks.

 

Once the X301 fan turns itself on (ususally after a few minutes of use) it is audible but not loud. However, in a quiet in room it is nice to lower the fan level because it just doesn't need that constant cooling for simple tasks. Mine is currently running at 45°C with the fan speed lowered and I'm just surfing a bit. If you want to watch YouTube videos I'd recommend switching the fan to a faster speed again.

As for the color profile and BIOS, I'll send you a PM.

 

Have you found proper touchpad driver for X301 / windows 8? I am looking driver which could be used to disable touchpad tapping (I dot not like that), but haven't found any.

 

I'm using these drivers: UltraNav and UltraNav 2 driver for Windows 7 (64-bit), Vista (64-bit) - ThinkPad

 

Unfortunately those do not help in my case. There will be some alps settings with weird strings in mouse settings, but no option for tapping.

 

Lenovo probably removed the drivers I am using. Mine allows to disable tapping.

Your best bet is to use an internet archive/time machine and go back to early 2013 and check if the old drivers are still available. Or you can go complain in the Lenovo forums.

I used the archive to get the old Power Manager, which Lenovo does not offer anymore.

 

Just picked up an X301 for $198:

Lenovo ThinkPad X301 13 3" WXGA Core 2 Duo SU9400 1 4GHz 4GB DVDRW Thin Laptop | eBay

Bought from this guy before - he's legit. I have a spare 256 SSD (yes, it fits the X301) sitting around and an unused copy of Windows 8. Win-win.

Perfect because I needed a cheap machine with USB 2 ports (have two Macbooks - all 3.0). I can't flash my Android phones with USB 3.0, so the X301 will come in handy for Windows stuff.

 

My X301 had just landed which arrived earlier than expected! I'm amazed that I was able to get this kind of machine for £182 considering that it was £1900 (~$3080 USD) when new. My first reaction with the X301 is just how smooth <strike>and cuddly</strike> the touch materials are, I mean I can't stop stroking it as it really is pleasing to touch! The chassis is solid throughout, no flexing or creaks anywhere despite being a second hand machine.

I like to thank Bronsky for this informative thread and 600X for pointing me in the right direction in regards with the ICC profile and SSD recommendations. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find an Intel X18-M or Crucial C300 for a reasonable price (or condition) so I took a gamble...



I bought a mSATA to 1.8" SATA adaptor ( this one) and the 256GB Plextor PX-256M5M mSATA SSD for my X301, I had to improvise on the Easy Access tab with black electrical tape! Now I have read from here that the X301 can be quite picky with this setup but for me it actually works fine, so far I had zero problems with this mSATA setup but we see as time goes on. You're probably wondering what the Plextor is like rocking inside a X301 so here are the benchmarks:



Overall I'm quite satisfied with the results, the Plextor can run much faster as it's a SATA III drive natively but it is capped by the X301 chipset to run at SATA II. I haven't had the chance to do a run for the stock Samsung 128GB SSD drive, maybe some point later when I have the time.

At the moment I'm experiencing discomfort looking at the screen on the X301, but that's probably me suffering fatigue from driving 6 hours straight in the dark against glaring headlights so I give a fairer insight on it some point later when I have some rest!

 

I did another mini-mod to my X301, was browsing my inventory of spare parts where I found a brand new Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 card that I completely forgotten about (I knew it would come in handy one day). I also found my stash of Half-Height Mini-PCI brackets that I used in my ThinkPad T61 earlier so I was ready to go with the wireless card upgrade.



First thing I did is to flash the X301 with a modified BIOS that removed the whitelist restriction - it went through with no problem. Then I ripped out the Intel 5100 card and placed my bracketed Intel 6200 card inside...



The ThinkPad booted through fine but no drivers which is expected, it would be wise to download the drivers beforehand if this is your only machine but my other ThinkPads helped out to download the necessary driver.

I don't know if it just me but I did noticed that it seemed to gain some extra strength in signal over the previous 5100 card. I did a speedtest and it achieved 44Mb/s on the G band alone which is impressive given that my router is down in my living room while I'm up in my bedroom doing the test.



So there we have it, another mod down and few more to come if I have some spare monies lying around...

 

The 6200 is a good card, but my X301 came shipped with a 5300 which is already a top-notch card (signal is significantly better than the 5100 in my T500) so I didn't exchange it.

If you could do me a favor though, could you check how warm the ram cover gets after a few hours of surfing with the 6200? Because the ram cover is the hottest part on my machine but I can't tell if it's because of the WiFI card or something else.

 

I haven't got one of those special thermometers to give you a detailed analysis (you could ask lead_org for that) but the RAM cover is also the warmest part of the machine. I would think the bulk of the heat would come from the RAMs itself rather than the wireless card, they do get quite hot where some require heatsink covers. I wouldn't worry on the wireless card unless it keeps cutting out all the time which doesn't seem to be the case for you.

 

Hello, proud to be a new member. I'm a bit broke, so the x301 seemed like a good deal.

For a C2D U9400 1.4 GHz, 4GB, 128GB SSD, how does the US$399 I paid sound?

The defect is a bent speaker cover. It's yet to arrive from the eBay seller, and I.. don't exactly know what I'm looking at from the picture he sent; perhaps a deep indent. Speaker cover problems anyone?

Awaiting delivery, Anxious in Oakland ;

 

you want a thermography image of the X301? I would do one if i have time this weekend. As i have to boot the X301, which has no OS right now.

 

Could be cheaper but just wait and see what you get. My speaker cover was not only dent but actually smashed. With some help I cut new covers from aluminum. Holding up great ever since.

@Jin

That would be great, if possible try using the X301 for few hours with the fan on bios and check the temperature afterwards. Then do the same with the fan switched off.

 

You guys are tempting me...and that's just plain unfair...

M U S T

R E S I S T ....

 

1.6GHz CPU: Awesome Lenovo ThinkPad X301 C2D 1 6GHz 8GB 128GB SDD Win7 Pro 64 Laptop | eBay

 

Thanks 600x. So did you start by buying from a store like this? reliablehardware.com/customspeakergrill.aspx

Much appreciated

 

Nah...

A good friend of mine owns a dead-mint X301 which hasn't seen use in quite a while...it's "only" a 1.4 but really, really nice...

Now if my daughter would agree to give up either her exceptional 14" T60 or the somewhat-vanilla T410 I would have an excuse to buy that X301...neither is likely to happen, though...

 

So to follow up, the $400 x301 I bought actually came with two white dead spots on the screen, as well as dark marks on the screen from the right and left buttons beneath the touchpoint. They did not come off with GooGone.. I'll talk with the seller, I get the feeling he sold it on behalf of someone. It's good otherwise, 2hr battery life.

I'd like a partial refund. How much.. what do you guys think the final price should be? Thank you.

 

I would return it for a FULL refund. Period.

 

I agree with this.

 

I agree as well, if you can swing it. My display was flawless and still is. Moreover, a problematic display may be an indicator of hard use or misuse. I would do what I could to return it.

 

Unless you plan on doing the AFFS mod (which I do not recommend), return it.

 

$400 is an outrageous price for a less-than-pristine X301...that's all I have to say.

See here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=112406

I'm not affiliated with the seller in any way, so proceed at your own risk, BUT it does seem like a very nice example, for less money...

 

Thank you all, it is being returned. I was able to get a Yoga 13 for $615.

I'll miss the x301 keyboard, and the beautifully matte screen. Alas, if the price had been right!

 

Hello!

I'm looking for X301 IDA BIOS from Middleton. Why it's so secret and there is no direct link I could find .
All I saw please send me PM and I will send you the link. I've done it on several forums including german forum but still haven't got it .

I love my X301 and will be happy to get free 200Mhz!

 

As you can read from previous posts, ask me and you will get the BIOS. However you need 5 posts to use the PM system.

 

Thank you! That's why I started posting

 

Is anyone faced with weird artefacts on display in Windows 7 when more than 4Gb memory is installed?

 

In fact I am. I'm using Windows 8 and 4GB of RAM. Happened with 2GB too though. I've also heard of other people reporting this problem. Up to this day it is unknown what causes these artifacts. That is if you are referring to text becoming gibberish sometimes.

 

Exactly! I found the solution one year ago on forum.thinkpads.com.

Control Panel --> System --> Advanced System Settings --> Performance Settings; uncheck "Enable Desktop Composition"

 

Nice find! I'll give it a shot and see if it makes any difference!

+repped

 

You're welcome!

And last question I'm interested in. My original battery got completely unusable (lasts just 30 minutes) and I bought 5200mah (58WH) battery on ebay.

First according Thinkpad software it's just 40WH !

Next I have two questions:
1) New battery lasts sligthly more than 2 hours of ligth work. Is it good result for 40WH? Or even 40WH is a fake capacity?
2) Is there extended battery for X301 with true capacity more than origianl 44WH?

 

..And another return, got a better x301. With TPFanControl it's like a new computer