ThinkPad Edge S430 Lounge

Edit: Nevermind, I'm an idiot.

 

Should be fine.

 

Looking for upgrade of my top T510 with i7-640m and I have a two questions:

1) max mem support is listed 8gb, but cpu should support more, if I install two 8gb modules will it support 16gb?
2) for dGPU model, is it possible to completely disable iGPU as it's possible on W520 and other T/W?

Thunderbolt rocks! Hope to use this laptop for Premiere Pro with Thunderbolt eGPU + GTX 280=)

 

Thanks!

Hi,

Max mem is 16GB, as ThinkPad Edge S430 | 14" Laptop | Learn | Lenovo | Australia (AU)

Correct me if I'm wrong... You want to disable the integrated (iGPU) Intel HD Graphics 4000? I don't believe it's possible.

I still haven't seen any useful Thunderbolt device or at reasonable price... I believe I will get much more benefits from USB 3.0 (speed for storage and power).

Cheers.

 

16Gb is OK as I expected

Yeah I want to disable HD4000 and maximize performance from nvidia solution. On my working W520 I just can disable HD 3000 In bios and use only Quadro 2000 all time without any optimus hangs when switch to intel igpu.

If disable is not possible, I think best way is to buy only max CPU config without nvidia at all.

 

My guess is the Quadro to be different because of a more "professional" aproach. If you are not in a hurry, I should receive my S430 in a few more days and I can dig into it.

 

Sure I can wait

Here is how it looks like on W520

 

I don't know if it's possible or not, I too am waiting on my order.
Lenovo apparently uses the GF108 chip which is 40nm which is a mistake on Lenovo's part since it's power hungry (35W) and generates much more heat.

However there is also the GF117 chip which is the 28nm counterpart, it uses less energy (15W) and generates less heat, it is used in the Asus Zenbook UX32VD. However It should be noted that the 28nm version of the GT 620M does not offer dedicated graphics ports and can therefore only be used in conjunction with Optimus.

Happily however since the 620m is a downclocked version of the 630m. They both have the same numbers of cores (96:16:4), 128 bit bus width, DDR3 memory.
The difference is clock speed and shader clock speed.

Chip: : Clock speed: Shader Clock Speed: Memory Clock Speed
620m : 625mHz : 1250 mHz : 1800 mHz
630m : 672mHz : 1344 mHz : 1800 mHz

Lenovo should have stuck the 630m in the S430, it would have just been like $10-20$ more expensive yet it's much much better.
Also fermi should die off it sucks and is inefficient.

Before you ask whether you should overclock or not, the answer is you can't, Lenovo throttles it to 425mHz or less to compensate for the heat that fermi brings, especially the 40nm variants.
Or Lenovo skimped on the cooling on this laptop, since the the CPU and GPU hits 90 degrees celcius, but that's when you're stress testing the machine, i.e 100% load on both CPU and GPU, however the GPU is throttled to 238mHz.

Funny thing is is that Intel's iGPU from Haswell/Broadwell will be much better than the 610m-630m if the 3x more powerful rumour is true.
Also HD4000 is not much slower than the 620m.

It should also be noted that the 640m LE (Kepler) is much much faster, whilst being reasonable in power consumption and heat. (17W). However it does cost more and Lenovo isn't going to pay for it, especially since it's only a budget business machine.
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I am never ever going to recommend to anyone to order a Lenovo laptop directly (managed by digital river in EU), it has comparatively slow build times, order status pages is almost useless. Worst of all they seem to have no communication between Sales and the actual factory. Evidenced by ignoring 10 Cancellation requests made by me.
They also never sent a return label for the sleeve case. (they said 48 Hours yeah right.)

My order was supposed to be dispatched on Monday, it has since been pushed back to Wednesday (today), now it should have dispatched today, however I have had no email confirmation or any tracking numbers. This stresses me out since I'm going to be abroad when my shipment probably arrives (Was expecting it Friday but incompetent Lenovo factory failed to ship on time [laptop is built]), I will then have to phone up Digital River to ask UPS to hold my delivery off for a week, however judging by the lack of communication, I doubt that they would actually pull it off. It would most probably head off back to China as a failed delivery and thus Lenovo will charge 15% restock fee.

The Cretins.

Credit where credit's due is that Digital River is polite and helpful, however they imperatively need to work on their communication with the main factory in Shanghai.

Big note, EU customers can't change their shipping options, you're stuck with UPS Worldwide Expedited, good points: no waiting in customs, Bad Points: Slow and Unpredictable (2-5 working days)

Now personally I would have paid extra for Express 1 day delivery, hell even Saturday delivery, but they never offered the choice, when I called up they said that it is not possible to change shipping options.
That said all couriers are good in my area (yes that includes HDNL and Yodel). However Royal Mail is not very good these days fist class in my area means 2-15 Working days .

I'm sure I'd be happy with this purchase, but just in case I'm not, I am going MacBook pro since Apple are apparently the only manufacture to build quality notebooks, with decent screens, battery life and speakers. I will have to get a matte filter for it if I did go for the Mac, However I do like the Mag Safe charger,
it saved my friends laptop plenty of times.
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UPDATE: Now Delayed 'til 17/08/2012 - This is a joke, I hate this, I bet it wouldn't even dispatch by next year judging by complaints on this forum. Dell and HP at least dispatch their laptops within 2-3 working days upon ordering and configuring, totally unacceptable. Never ordering direct from Lenovo again, I'll use a retailer next time.

 

Totally agree. I had several issues with them and I don't even want to start talking about it. Finally they pissed me off and I grew tired of them. Bought the laptop through a reseller and arrived in 3 days to my delivery address in Germany. So my notebook is already waiting for me now.

 

Unfortunately I can't cancel it, unless they fail to deliver in 30 Days, then I am entitled to cancel the order regardless of whatever contract or state that the laptop is in, I love the distance selling regulations.

I am not willing to wait 2 months for a laptop, look at the shipping threads. Just because some part isn't available, my Laptop is just base stock, I don't understand where the delay could be, it's not like I ordered anything special.

Unfortunately not many UK resellers are stocking this laptop. I may have to go Apple in the end, I'm tired of dealing with PC companies tbh. At least Apple has some sort of customer support.

I've had 3 delays so far, was supposed to be shipped 10/08/2012 then it got pushed to 13/08/2012 then it got pushed to 17/08/2012.
Now this is totally unacceptable, also the 17/08 date is only an estimate. I wonder how long until I receive it. I've given them my relative's address just in case they do deliver during my holiday. However I doubt that they will inform UPS.

 

They sent the Sleeve Case from "Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong" ...
The best is that the sleeve case for 14" isn't ment to be for the Edge series its meant for T61. The 14" sleeve does not even fit well for the t420 which's dimensions are way much bigger than of the the s430.

The only reason to buy the laptop in the lenovo store is because the warrenty (but I think you can order that the warranty in the lenovo reseller shops aswell), So the only reason to buy it in the offical lenovo shops is the cheaper price for the i7 varaint (because you can leave the UTMS out).
I paid about 50€ less then the standard i7 version (including 3 Years warranty) you find in the reseller shops, but the production takes forever , I bet they gonna send it from hongkong aswell so at least 4 days of shipping.

I bet it does not even arrive in 10 days.

 

Well since my order goes through Germany anyway when it's delivered, it is used to avoid customs in the UK which aren't as efficient as Germany. Now EU makes it nice and easy.

I Have the sleeve case now, it is too big, it's clearly designed for a 4:3 laptop rather than the 16:8 ones. The case is as wide as my 15'' HP notebook and taller, This is one of the reasons why it's going back another is its price, it's actually more expensive than most of the cases I find on Amazon.
Since my order isn't technically finished yet, I will have to wait until my laptop is delivered before I can return the case.

No there's actually no reason to buy directly from the Lenovo, the 1 Year warranty is still with Lenovo plus you can always get the extended warranty afterwards from Lenovo regardless of where the notebook was originally bought (Requires S430 to be purchased in EU though).

My laptop is the same as yours, however I have dropped the 3 year warranty since after some thought I don't really need it, also thinkpad laptops are very reliable aside from the t40 series with the ATI GPU.
I intend to add 8GB ram and a 128GB mSATA drive, now these upgrades from crucial depends if my laptop gets to me within 30 days. So actually my total spend will be more than yours. However I plan to stick with this purchase since I can easily afford a new mobile phone afterwards. However if Lenovo's incompetence continues my money will then be spent on Apple.

Well apparently they have a shortage of parts, I don't know which ones though. I highly doubt it would be dispatched tomorrow and so will be dispatched on Monday instead since UPS does not ship on weekends.

UPS Expedited only took 2 Working days to get to the UK, However, that said it can take up to 5 Working days.

Your S430 is probably going to be on the same pallet as mine, so when you receive your laptop is probably when I will receive mine.

 

Hey guys,

first of all, sorry if my english isn't always okay, i am not a native speaker.

I have bought the S430 model with i7 Core and WWAN from a german reseller for 971€ (pretty much equals 1.200US$). I have also bought the SanDisk U100 128gb SSD for 79€ to upgrade my laptop. I am totally amazed by this combination!!! It does boot faster and the best part of the Story, my power consumption is so freaking low!! With the HDD installed it was about 10 ~ 12 W with the lowest Energy Manager settings and brightness about 8. Now it is about 5W in idle and 10W in working resulting in a Battery life of maximum 9.6 hours!! (5W/48WH = 9.6H) Im pretty sure that it wont ever last so long but still pretty good. It did show me about 4 hours 20 minutes at 80% charge this morning. Funny Part: if i enable extendend battery life setting in lenovo Energy Manager it shows me that it will even shorten the battery life about 2 minutes .

Also i have experienced similar problems with the sleeves. I bought a 14" soft sleeve from a Lenovo reseller but the S430 did fit in so tight that i was scared the zipper would scratch my laptop.

 

The 14" Sleeve is designed for the 16:10 Laptops from Lenovo including thier battery. I've got an old t400 here which fits perfectly. The problem you see when you look at the measures of the t400 compared to the s430 (height can be neglected).

s430 (in mm):
352 x 239
T400 (in mm):
337 (-1.5cm) x 270 (+3.1cm)

(t400)


@homienik
I don't want to know how you got the s430 in there

 

May I ask how in the world people are getting such long battery life? My s430 came Tuesday and while I was initially really impressed (apart from the incorrect keyboard they installed for me, EU instead of US layout for Australia) when I did a battery test I was absolutely shocked at the short duration. At 0 brightness, wifi and max battery life power setting and idling, I couldn't get the thing to give me more than ~2 hrs 20 minutes. My current e520 lasts more than 3 hours at half brightness and while browsing the internet... I've already got a return and refund application approved, but after reading some of these posts I'm beginning to suspect my unit is just faulty =/

Specs are: i7-3520 8gb ram, 128gb ssd, 1tb hdd, gt620m are the important ones off the top of my head.

It's a real shame too, I thought I had finally found a nice and light enough laptop that I could take to uni with me because the form factor is amazing. I really would rather not have to resort to getting a bloody mbp but PC laptops are just so damn clunky and heavy (current e520 included but I love the keyboard) and ultrabooks are a little light on features (namely the gfx card >_>) although that's sort of changing I guess.

 

Notebookcheck has already done a review and maximum battery life you can get is roughly 6 hours and realistic is between 3-4 hours. That was with the i5 and 620m gpu.

 

Turn the graphics off in the BIOS and check out if the batterylife improves.

 

Although it should improve battery life if you disable the GPU in bios, it shouldn't be by much, max is probably 30mins -1 hrs extra. This is due to optimus and well the GPU does not activate until a program needs it or the user specified it. It could be a faulty unit or you may just have a program running in the background draining the battery.

May I ask what the wifi card is? Is it lenovo's own one (Realtek) or is it Intel's one (Centrino)?

Now if my battery life is horrendous, I will return it and get a Mac since Apple is the only ones capable of providing a decent screen although less resolution, better trackpad, better speakers, decent battery life (7 Hrs from Apple's wifi surf test) and also decent build quality. Now with my eduction pricing that brings the 13'' mbp to £859 and well Apple will give me an Additional £70 for the App Store and £60 off a printer. Now I will need to get a matte screen protector, however I will not need a sleeve case since aluminium is pretty hardy. Also comes with 3 Yrs warranty. However there's no SSD.
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UPDATE: Lenovo (Digital River) Has now collected the sleeve case from my premises, It took them 7 Working days to do that when it should have only been 48 hrs tops. The sleeve case should arrive to their warehouse by Monday and my Refund will take 7-10 Working Days [29/08/2012 - 1/09/2012].

 

the wifi adapter is lenovo's own (realtek). I just can't seem to get the system to idle below 15 watts and I have no idea why. I'm just absolutely puzzled as to how Apple seem to be to indeed be the only guys who can produce portable computers that can actually be used off A/C for a practical amount of time all the while offering decent configurations. Yeah they're a tad expensive but my goodness no PC manufacturer seems to understand the concept of notebooks other than perhaps Lenovo (and IBM before them naturally) with their thinkpads. Too bad my lifestyle of travelling often and being a gamer means I'm unable to make use of the majority of the thinkpad range other than the edge series which brings us to this thread here >_>

I might take a peek at the asus ux32vd whenever that releases in Australia.

 

Hmm It may be your wifi card or something since the Lenovo card is an option in my Country so I left it as intel, Other than that I'm stumped, Try disabling the GPU in bios and see what happens.

Yes I have used thinkpad beforehand and well they run really well and they're really reliable apart from my t40 which had the ATI GPU issue.
Now Dell and HP are fine if you buy their business line notebooks such as lattitude and elitebooks, however as you said they're clunky and but also reliable.

Apple's machines are actually designed for the consumer so Apple knows that their target market will be Surfing the web and itunesing all day, some may do photoshop and editing. However for a consumer machine it is really built well however that said Aluminium does dent really easily if you drop it or drop something on it. An example would have been their white macbooks (non unibody) they were popular but were riddled with build quality issues such as yellowing, cracking palm rests and over time users get extreme chassis flex which isn't good.

Now business machines need not to browse wifi all day, instead they aim it at business people who are going to be using the notebook to make presentations and type up reports in microsoft office and whatever else business people use. Hence why lenovo didn't include a quality screen and good speakers since those things aren't important here, instead they provided a great keyboard for typing comfort and pleasure. I don't really like the mac keyboards as they don't provide a lot of travel.

 

+1

I type all day. Sure... I'd like the battery to last longer. But I will trade it (and I do trade it) any day for this keyboard and a business machine in which I can do all my work wherever I want.

I can find a plug almost anywhere. And if I don't have a plug, probably I won't have a decent internet connection for my work anyway.

 

Although you may have ready access to mains power, I may not be so lucky, I often need to get an extention cord and well not being mag safe people who trip over it will take the laptop down with it. Now being a thinkpad it's not such a big deal.
I will get used to a keyboard if you give me time, unless the keyboard is truly awful.

My beef with lenovo (and others) is that this notebook (S430) is larger dimensionally than the 13'' MacBook pro, now Lenovo decides to add a small battery which has a capacity of 48.8 Whr, whereas Apple manages to squeeze 63.5 Whr out of their mbp 13''
The S430 has similar dimensions to the 15'' Macbook Pro (bigger by roughly 1cm) and that has a 77.5 Wh Battery.
I reckon that lenovo could have fit at least 70whr battery if they wanted to, this would have given the S430 comparable battery life with the 13'' MacBook pro, which is considered excellent (It can Idle for 11 Hours, surf the web using wifi for 6 hours, play DVD for 4 hours and at full load the battery runs out in 1.5 Hours) The S430 only achieves 7 Hours idle, 4 Hours wifi internet, 2.5 Hours DVD and 1.5 Hours full load.
So it seems that Lenovo has done well optimising power consumption however it unfortunately cannot replace capacity.
The S420 has pretty much the same specs as the mbp albeit exclude graphics. It even has similar design cues.

The only real thing holding me back on purchasing the MBP is the fact that the screen resolution is low, 1280*800, this is actually worse than the dreaded 1366*768 resolution. However that said it is a quality panel, good contrast, blacks and good coverage of colour gamut.
I will see whether Apple releases a retina version of the 13'' macbook pro or not. I estimate the base price will be around £1300, which is a lot more expensive than the s430 (about double)

 

Call it magic? 80% Charge and still so much time left , didnt even enable the battery life extention stuff.


One trick is to DISABLE LAN and WWAN in the windows hardware manager. Just place a shortcut on your desktop to activate when needed. Also you can eject the DVD drive.


Also try to set the WLAN adapter on minimal power settings.

 

See, that's the thing though, Lenovo are just ONE company out of a dozen PC manufacturers and yet we all seem to be only talking about Lenovo and Apple because god knows what the battery life on other laptops that aren't ultrabooks are like.

@homienik: magic indeed. I want some of that magic >_< haha

 

Your laptop is idling isn't it? Hence the 7 Hours runtime. Now unfortunately I'm going to have to use wifi on campus since there're a limited amount of Ethernet jacks around. WWAN isn't an option on my machine as my phone can do tethering so it's not needed.
I am using intel's wifi card which should save more energy vs the lenovo (realtek) one.
I also intend to add more ram so there's less disk swapping as well as adding a 128GB msata drive, that should save some battery since the SSD will be my boot drive and the HDD will be storage.

My processor is also the base i5-3210m and comes with nvidia's hungry fermi 620m gpu. Since I don't always use the GPU I will have to disable it in bios, unfortunately Sony is the only ones to do this via a hard switch. Stamina for intel's igp or Speed for optimus enabled 640m LE (Kepler). By the way I think this is the best method since it's not always practical just to go in bios.

Well Sorry if we don't talk about other PCs since this is a Lenovo forum but let's digress, we're comparing Apple and Vaio S series because of the similar dimensions and slim whilst providing a full voltage CPU and perhaps a GPU.
Whereas Dell's Latitudes and HP's Elitebooks are thick and heavy like a typical PC laptop. Now you might say what about dell's XPS 14 Ultrabook, well that only has a ulv CPU so it's much slower (a core i3 can outperform a ulv i7 easily).
Other than that Dells other machines are thick or look ugly.

HP has yet to make a thin and light machine other than their ultrabooks.
Acer is not discussed since it makes woefully inadequate products.
Asus - we only really discuss their zenbook line since all the other are typical fat PC laptops.
GIGABYTE - We only took notice when they realesed the U2442n series, however the battery is smaller than the S430 but it's also much more powerful.

Clevo and it's variants - we don't discuss them either since they're typically unknown although they're gaining ground fast. They're good laptops but they currently do not offer matte screens and at least 1600x900 resolution on any of their laptops that are slim and 14'' or under. I'm sure a clevo militant will try to argue against this.

Other than that ALL pc manufactures in a given class of laptops will all have the same battery capacity hence life. So you'd typically find that Thinkpads, lattitudes and elitebooks have compatible battery lives and have around the same capacity (stock).

And gaming laptops also tend to have the same battery lives too.

Apple is the only company so far to recognise that people don't idle all day or typing a report on MS office all day. They base their battery life claim on a wifi web browsing test at 50% Brightness. This gave them around 7 Hours in Lab tests, now notebook check has claimed around 6 Hours. This is very good considering you're going to get 6-7 Hours realistic battery life.

All PC manufactures currently use BAPCO's mobilemark 2007 at the lowest brightness and everything such as wifi is off. Now mobilemark 2007 is as useful as idling the machine. Now you may ask what about mobilemark 2012, PC manufactures won't be using that until next year.

 

That's exactly what I'm referring to. You probably took my comment about only talking about Apple and Lenovo literally, though I don't blame you. laptops have been around for how long now? A while, and yet we're here in August 2012 where the majority of PC laptop manufacturers don't understand that people use laptops away from a powepoint and use them for more than just typing. That completely baffles my mind. If I didn't love my games on the go that much, I would have bought a mbp long ago >.>

 

Heres a screen of the win7 diag tool:


I would really recommend to run the OS on the SSD because it benifits so much from the lower latency of an ssd.

I will do a video tomorrow morning which shows how fast it boots up even maybe a comparison with an 2010/2011 MBP.

Booting time (till logon screen) is about: <20 sec
Shut down time is about: 10 seconds.

And yes it was idle but stille quite a decent score. With the hdd i was barely under 10 Watts even idle.



I have also the intel WIFI card.


Running 2 "HDD" in one Laptop? Dont know i think it will eat much energy.

 

I am not really a gaming person and all the game I play (Source mainly) don't really require more than a HD 4000, I'm goign to use the 620m for it's CUDA rather than its gaming capabilities (620m is only 1.5 times better than the HD 4000).
PC manufactures are trying to make money out of tight margins so they will advertise the battery life whist idling to make their product stand out, this is so they can save money on batteries. I don't think this is going to change unless an industry standard is actually set.

I am only trying an SSD since the prices have gone down and I want a taste of the speed. Note the ssd i'm getting is a msata SSD so it fits into the slot where the WWAN card would have been. \that way I will get to keep the optical drive which I might need because I commonly send projects off by DVD,

The stock HDD will become my storage drive so it should turn off when not in use when I tweek a few settings in windows 7.

I will need some sizeable storage since steam and games do take up a lot of space. I also need somewhere to store my iTunes movies and music as well as my photos, now the 500GB HDD will be ample for this whilst the 128GB SSD won't have enough space for my needs.

 

Macbook Pro and Lenovo S430 boot up comparison - YouTube
Did the video sorry for quality and language but ye
if you have any more questions about the lenovo feel free to post them

personally i find this a good idea to disable the hdd and only enable it if you want to save something there, saves an external hdd ;D

 

Just installed a Crucial C4 mSATA 128GB. Here is a look inside the S430:

 

Nice post!

 

Ah awesome i was planning on doing the same thing. So will this work with any mSATA drive?

is this the right one? Crucial m4 128GB, SATA 6Gb/s mSATA SSD - CT128M4SSD3 | eBay

Would any owners of the s430 recommend buying it, im still sitting on the fence about it

 

Need help:

After installing the mSATA SSD I´ve booted into the BIOS and aktivated it.

Than I´ve installed Windows7 from DVD.

Works very fine.

Than in Windows I´ve deleted every partition on the 500MB drive.
But at least there was one nasty ~1,5GB partition I cant get rid of.

GParted live did it.
On this disk I found three or four "other" partitions which I deleted.

Then I created a full size NTFS partition for my files.

Now the laptop didn´t boot anymore.

Any idea?

EDIT:
Just used my created recovery DVD´s (5) and the device works again. All data I´ve saved on the mSATA SSD where intact.

 

Hi guys!

I'm planing on buying the s430 as well. The only thing that held me back is the screen. I've been using a 15,4" screen and am wondering now whether 14" might be too little for me. Further on I heard rumors the screen on the s430 is not as good as it could be (even with 1600x900) especially concerning brightness. Any opinions about the screen? Is it really that "bad"?

Next question. I have to choose between the models with an i5-3210M and NVIDIA N13P-GLP Graphics 2GB one the one side and an i7-3520M and Intel HD Graphics 4000 on the other side. First option being ~ 100€ cheaper. Is the second option (and better/worse graphic chip) worth the 100€ surcharge (~ 125 US$)?
I'm not up for gaming, just surfing, working, a bit of videos and normal student stuff. I prefer longer battery life to better graphic chip. Should i go for the better processor plus 100€?

I plan to buy the laptop on lenovo's website since its around 100€ cheaper there compared to other shops. I really hope the shipping is not as bad as you pictured ...

 

I orderd the S430 on the Lenovo-Shop on the
06.08 Paid via direct bank transfer,
10.08 Lenovo confirmed my ordner.
17.08 Lenovo confirmed the shipping of the 14" sleeve, arrived 2 business days later.
21.08 Lenovo told me that it might take a bit longer to produce the laptop.
Today I got the confirmation of the shipping of my laptop, it'll arrive proberbly 2-3 business days later on the
28.08 / 29.08

Thank God Lenovo.

If you need your laptop urgent than you better buy the laptop from a reseller.

 

Nice!

Did your S430 came with the 16Gb mSATA SSD, and you replaced it with the Crucial SSD; or did you install it "from scratch"?

I'm considering ordering a s430, and want, as you did, to put a 128Go mSATA SSD to install systems on, and keep the 500Gb drive for storage.
And I'm wondering if I have to order, in the lenovo shop, the "16Gb mSATA SSD" option, in order to be able to replace it by a 128Gb SSD; or if I will be able to put this SSD in a SSD-less S430?

Cheers

 

Answering to myself :

Did some research, the answer seems to be yes, as long as the s430 don't have the WWAN option, a mini PCIe slot is available, and a mSATA SSD can be plugged in.

 

Nice, this is what I am planning to do, could you please tell me if the original hynix ram that lenovo supplies is a 1.5v or 1.35v?

I'd actually recommend that you get it from crucial then ebay you can find it here: CT128M4SSD3 - 128GB, mSATA Solid State Drive , from Crucial.com

I can't actually say yet, I haven't received it yet. I will write up a full review when I receive it, keep watching this forum.

Really it depends on what you're doing, for most the screen is perfectly adequate for day to day tasks, in fact it's better than the macbook air screen. Since you're a student like me, I suggest that you stick with the core i5 and disable the nvidia 620m in bios to save battery since it's not much better than the HD 4000.

It's not so much UPS's fault it's more Lenovo's fault since they can't seem to do something basic, something called stock control. Now Digital River who manages the online store for lenovo for EU customers have absolutely no communication with the actual Chinese factory and that can cause big issues.

Mine actually shipped on 24/08/12 and well it was 2-3 Week delay whilst waiting for a part.
And here's my shipping status so far:

Dubai, United Arab Emirates 26/08/2012 19:05 Departure Scan
Koeln, Germany 26/08/2012 16:53 Arrival Scan
Dubai, United Arab Emirates 26/08/2012 12:14 Departure Scan
26/08/2012 9:43 Arrival Scan
Shanghai, China 26/08/2012 5:24 Departure Scan
Shanghai, China 24/08/2012 20:28 Export Scan
24/08/2012 20:28 Origin Scan
China 23/08/2012 5:41 Order Processed: Ready for UPS

No Idea why it has to go back to Dubai, but it seems that my laptop will take a trip to several countries before it actually reaches me in the UK, Now I am certain that the laptop will go through Germany before going through the UK since everything I order that involves UPS international seems to go through Koeln (Cologne for those that don't know).

My estimated delivery date is too 29/08/2012, So your laptop might be on the same pallet as mine.

I now intend to order some ram and my SSD after my laptop arrives. I hope it hasn't got any defects or arrives DOA since that would almost certainly mean another 3 Week wait. I also will not tolerate any dead pixels.

 

@voyanger:
Regarding CPU-Z it´s "Hyundai Electronics" - 1,5V

@wman:
I removed the included 16GB SSD. Wasn´t that effective anyway.

 

OK fair enough, That means there's not really a point of me getting the 1.35v stick, but then again it is priced the same on crucial's website. I'll probably upgrade to 16 GB at one point, probably 2 years into its life.

Since you had the 16GB SSD cache drive, yours came with the black screw and mine probably won't since I didn't go with wither the WWAN option nor the 16GB cache option. I'll try find a screw that fits if it doesn't come with one.

I heard that performance only really picks up once you start using the computer for quite a bit, I'm not too sure I think I'm wrong though since I'm not a fan of hybrid HDDs and SSDs anyway, point in case being the seagate's momentus XT.

 

Don´t bother with that. If you know some nerds, you get one.
It is just a usually computer screw.

 

I'm thinking about taking the screw from my HP laptop and just stick down the wifi card with electrical tape, is the mSATA slot SATA 2 (3 Gbit/s) or SATA 3 (6 Gbit/s), I don't know since Lenovo doesn't say in their spec sheets, they only mention the mSata slot. However the cache SSD (Sandisk U100) they provide is a SATA 3 drive so that may have answered my question, but I want to see what your M4 gets.

 

As said here, this is a SATA 2 slot

 

Yes but it is only "said", I'd much prefer a screenshot or a specsheet (yes I am aware that the remark comes from a support specialist), it seems odd for Lenovo to limit it to SATA 2 since the cache SSD they provide is SATA 3 (Sandisk U100). Not that it makes a difference in the real world but SATA 3 would be nice.

Ivy Bridge provides 2 ports for SATA 3, one is taken up by the main HDD, and the ODD is only a SATA 2 connector, So where did the other one go?

 

Can anyone tell me if optimus can be disabled in bios?

 

You can choose "HD 4000 only", "GT620 only" or "OPTIMUS" in the BIOS. I´ve only tried "HD4000 only" and it works fine.

 

My S430 arrived today. I'm not disappointed, I'm definitly going to keep that Laptop I actually think that Lenovo did a pretty good job though. It's not IBM ThinkPad quality but it's still on a very good Level. The Laptop never gets too hot somewhere is quiet but still audible the HDD is actually louder than the fan . I really like the surface it's not metal but still feels trivalent and resistant. The first thing I did was gettig rid of that annoying sticker.
My plan is to change the keyboard with the T430u's if it's not too expensive and if I'm not mistaken but I think this is the same size, and hopefully even the same connector ...
Well I'm going to check the BIOS

 

After setting it up with SSD .etc, the laptop is all that's expected, Review will be coming soon,
Here's what I like: Build quality and weight
What I don't like: Battery Life, Screen and The fingerprints
I will be keeping the laptop, it will most probably be replaced after 2 years.

Yes the stupid energy star sticker, it's on the shiny plastic bit of the S430, now this bit is made from the most easy to scratch material ever, Like my HP if I wipe the dust off it using a microfibre cloth there will be micro scratches.
I will talk A lot more in my review to come.

 

Got my S430 a few days ago, (Ordered it on the 9th/8/2012 - arrived the 28th/8/2012) - I live in Sydney. They also said to me there was a delay due to parts, but at least it came a day earlier than the estimate. It also took a LONG time before they actually took payment - as in, I think pretty much when it arrived...

Here is my Full spec:

Processor

Intel Core i7-3520M Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)

Operating system Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)

Operating system language Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 - English

Display type 14.0" W HD+ (1600 x 900) LED Backlit, AntiGlare Glass, Low-light sensitive HD Webcam (w/oWWAN), Mocha

System graphics NVIDIA N13P-GLP Graphics 2GB, Intel Core i7-3520M Processor (4MB L3, 2.90GHz)

Total memory 8 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (2 DIMM)

Keyboard Keyboard - US English

Pointing device ClickPad with FingerPrint Reader - Mocha

Hard drive 128GB Solid State Drive, 2.5"

Optical device DVD Recordable

Battery 4 Cell Li-Polymer 48.8Wh

Power cord 90W AC Adapter - ANZ

Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters ThinkPad a/b/g/n Wireless BT Combo (2x2 ABGN & BT4.0)

Language pack Publication - AP English


I got it direct form the LenovoAU site - they have run 2 identical sales in August that give about 15% off - which took the price to $935 AUD.

I was a bit bummed that I couldn't get the T430s priced like people in the US can - the spec I was after was around $1800 which was a bit too far over budget.

My limited thoughts so far:
-It looks nice - the lid is particularly good, like the matte finish and it feels solid
-Boots quick - I haven't timed it, I just hope it doesn't slow down too much over time
-First charge took a while - it charged reasonably quick until about 92% then took about 40 minutes to go the rest, not using too many applications or anything. i expect the first couple of charges may not be typical though - will do some timed ones later on since that is at least something I can contribute

I haven't had a chance to play with it much - it did have one error (which I almost had them collect and repair), which is going to seem pretty newb to you guys... The bottom edge of the screen frame was not connected. Basically, the plastic was warped in the middle, so I could see down in between the LCD and the plastic for most of the screens length.

Luckily my bro spotted the thin double sided tape which still had it's covering, so we took that off, and fixed it in place! Was not looking forward to another 3 week wait haha.

Anyway, I'll post some more as I use it - I'm no whiz, but might consider upgrading the optical drive to another SSD HDD in the future. In the meantime, I'm thinking of getting a USB 3 portable hard drive. Any specific recommendations?

I also always struggle with bloatware on any computer I own so a few quick questions to all you Lenovo experts and other S430 owners;
1) Being pretty much a novice & new to Lenovos, what ThinkPad Vantage tools should I use? Any I should avoid?
2) What pre-installed s/ware should I get rid of? e.g. Norton
3) What settings would you recommend to a newb to help make the battery last longer (e.g. no BIOS or switching off NVIDIA graphics card,etc.) I would be using wifi, surfing and using a few office applications most of the time I'm unplugged. (And I think any less than about 8-10 darkness is probably a bit low)
4) Any recommendations for internet security? (I'm probably asking this in the wrong forum - feel free to point me elsewhere if that's the case )

Waiting on a mini HDMI connector/ cable so I can test it out with my monitor - wish I had read the 'mini' in the specs, I could have easily ordered cable in the time it took to deliver the laptop.

Cheers,

 

Does somebody knows where to get the Windows 8 (x64) drivers for the S430???