ThinkPad X220 (i/T) Owners Thread

Although I've not really tried many games, I know that Skyrim was just under playable on the lowest settings, but I can run BF2 on medium settings at 1280x1024. If you're willing to spend £100-200 and want to game, this laptop works well with an eGPU as mentioned above. If you've not come across it yet have a read of this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/e-gpu-external-graphics-discussion/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html

 

hmm..very interesting but it will spend all of my money=p..i am broke after bought x220..

 

Yeah, I've not got mine working yet as I'm waiting for a few parts, but as a basic idea of the cost, it cost me £45 for the adapter, £6 for a power supply, and then I got 2 HD4890 cards for £50, one of which I'm hoping to sell for £40-50 having fixed a broken fan on it, giving a total cost of about £50.

It sort of depends on what you have lying around and what you can pick up second hand. Plenty of people have got a GTX 560ti, at which point you're certainly looking at over £200...

 

I really only play Civ 4 and Half Life, and both run fine without getting too much heat. You have to expect some heat if you are running games. However, although I am not a huge gamer, Diablo 3 is really tempting me to try out a eGPU solution or just getting a cheap desktop.

FYI. I just got a new Dell U2312HM monitor, and it is really nice for the price (I bought mine for under $200 in Seoul, which is a steal considering VAT).

 

well, u makes me very interested with external gpu card.my upgrade list are 1. ssd 2. ram and the last is gpu card..i will sleep on it tonight.=p..
btw anybody use screen protector for ur thinkpad x220? because, the screen is not very common and i have asked many store, they did not have it.

 

I don't use one. It is not necessary. These Machines are made for working, not for preservation or looking at it. You shouldn't worry about scratches or stuff like that.

 

hmm..are u sure about that?i am very scare that someday there are much scratches...i just want to know about the material of the screen..
btw i have a question and the question is out of topic.in Germany, what english do u use?British or American...just it, no more question.thanks

 

In Germany you don't speak English at all. And if you do, then it's German English. Otherwise students learn both at school, BE and AE.

 

The Brits stopped speaking English about 175 years ago... lol

 

Is the coating on the laptop the same as the tablet? I've not got a screen protector and put a superficial scratch in the bottom of the screen a few months after I got it, and whenever I lower the brightness it annoys me and I wish I'd been more careful. I don't know how I got it though. I think it might be from my metal watch strap, and other than that there aren't any scratches I've got after 10 months, so for normal laptop use I'd guess the screen is durable enough?

I've read a few people saying the matte coating on the screen has been brought off at the edges by the process of removing an old screen protector, so maybe they cause more harm than good. Again I don't know if that is specific to the tablet and its digitiser though.

 

okay thank you for ur information...

i do not know the screen material for x220 tablet. i think it is better for me to use screen protector in order to prevent scratches because sometimes if i have a meeting with my friend and use my x220, i like to bring it and showing some presentation document by touching the screen.The things that i scare is if my finger is very dirty.

 

X220 Tablets have usually got a Gorilla Glas Screen which prevents scratches even when you attack it with a knife.

If damage by "touching" is all you are concerned about, then all you need is a micro fiber cloth to clean the screen afterwards. You can get them very cheap pretty much everywhere. It is also suitable for cleaning the Dust off the surface of your X220.

 

well.it means anybody can not break the glass even they use knife..great screen and it is very amazing.
okay i will buy microfiber cloth like cloth to clean my car in order avoiding line scratches in the body...
talk about liquid cleaner, anybody use it?is that useful and can help reduce dust?

 

Video demonstrating Gorilla Glass on X1:
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Gorilla Glass ??????????????? - YouTube

 

Is it not Gorilla Glass only on the non multitouch, i.e. pen-only model? Pretty sure mine isn't Gorilla Glass- as I say it's got a decent scratch in it and I've certainly not taken a knife to it!

 

Yes, Gorilla Glass is only an Option on the Outdoor Panel that supports only the pen as an input Option.

 

back to this forum..it is a tired day in Jakarta. I really enjoying my holiday from thursday until sunday due to red date..
btw what kind of liquid to clean x220 screen?

 

Water works well. Just soak a Kitchen Towel in it and wipe the screen.

 

okay btw talk about SSD. i have tried to find samsung 830 series and crucial m4 (7mm version), but nobody sell it and i do not know where to go.
Can u suggest another brand of ssd that suitable for my x220 without any modification?

 

I would suggest getting a mSATA SSD. You can keep your hard drive in the bay and no modification is required.

 

again and again,nobody sell mSata in jakarta. i felt very useless with my struggle....poor me

 

Can't you buy it from the US and let it ship to you?
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-830-M...GPXE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337368744&sr=8-1

 

There is a big difference between the power draw of teh tablet and laptop models. Is it true the hardware is identical other than the digitiser (apart from the physical differences of course)? If that is true, what I'd really love to have would be a single program or batch file which would effectively turn the x220t into a normal x220, loosing the tablet functionality but gaining exactly the same battery life.

The only problem I've got is that I've got nothing to contribute to this! I've read about turning off the digitiser, which I did in device manager, but there were almost 10 devices to turn off individually. Is it possible to easily turn off the digitiser, and does this actually stop the supply of power to it?

Has anyone got any experience with this/suggestions? All this talk of 7-8 hours normal use from a 6 cell is very frustrating when to the best of my knowledge I've got almost the same hardware and get ~5-6 with incredibly conservative use!

 

What are your specs? Mine with a 2520M and 160 GB G3 SSD can easily pull 9+ hours from the 6 cell battery (no script, ad block, etc). The digitizer is only going to draw power if you use the pen input all the time.

 

9+ hours doing what exactly? What does your machine idle at (out of curiosity)? Mine idles at 5w and generally browsing adds a watt or so.

I can get about 8 strictly just browsing (i5 x220 intel80gb), but when I start doing anything intensive that obviously drops.

 

i7 2620m with 8gb ram on 2 modules. I can never get below 8w and that's with wifi off and the screen at minimum brightness with the maximum battery power plan. I've tried playing with the maximum and minimum processor frequencies which with the 2620m allows only 800mhz.

Does the i7 have a higher power draw? Do SSDs have a significantly lower power draw? I'm not expecting 8 hours as I've now got 10% battery wear, but as I say, I hit a limit of 5 with anything more than 0 brightness and wifi enabled (bluetooth off)
Thanks for the replies

 

Has anyone had gigabit ethernet driver issues? For some reason, whenever I connect to the internet through the ethernet port, the computer starts to stutter every so often. I've tried reinstalling the driver, but no dice.

No issues at all with wireless...

 

Light browsing with LCD turned down to 1-2 brightness. I get about 6.5 watts on light browsing. 63 WHr battery / 6.5 watts per hour = ~10 hours battery life.

 

I've found the intel 80gb msata to draw very little power. Then just spin down the hard drive after 30 seconds. I idle at 5w with brightness at 4 and wifi off. That is booted into my msata drive and the hdd spun down. Usually get around 6-6.5w browsing with wifi on.

Ok, my battery only has 56 WHr at the moment so I guess that is about right. I've only drained my battery down fully once and it was a little over 8 hours. Do the tablet versions have a higher capacity 6 cell?

 

Oh okay you have a normal X220, cause yes the X220 tablet 6 cell has 63 WHr, while the normal X220 has only 56 WHr, and 7 WHr = 1 hour of usage.

 

when i was running my thinkvantage system update, it suggested me to upgrading my connexant(audio) driver.what should i do?because i have installed dolby driver 2 days ago and i am enjoy with dolby driver.

 

Just ignore it, you don't have to run all the updates from System Update if you don't want.

 

Hi Chaps - couple of questions for you:

1) Can you fit both an mSATA drive and a standard 2.5" SATA3 SSD in the main chassis?

2) What does the mSATA run at? Is it SATA2?

3) If you buy the ultrabase then can you put another drive in the ultrabay (ie another 500GB SATA3 SSD) to make 3 drives (mSATA, main chassis SSD and the ultrabase SSD)?

4) If you have an mSATA disk - does it mean you can't have the 3G card? do they use the same slots or can you have both?

5) WHY OH WHY FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY CAN'T WE GET AT LEAST A 1600x900 SCREEN?? I WOULD THROW MONEY AT LENOVO FOR THIS!!!

p.s - sorry about the caps. But they deserved it

 

It's nice to know there is some extra capacity in added bulk of the tablet battery.

1) Yes no problem
2)There are Sata 2 and 6g ones available as here mSATA Solid State Drives | My Digital Discount
3)I don't know for sure, I've never actualy seen an Ultrabase but I see no reason why not
4) The mSATA does fill the slot where the 3g card would go, and the second slot is a half height mini PCIe used by the wifi card. I don't know if there are half height WWAN cards which would fit in there but all the same wifi can be kinda useful...The 3g usb sticks seem to be pretty good, the ones I've seen used actually get decent reception and speeds. Or alternatively if you've got a smartphone have you looked into sharing your data connection through wifi (tethering)?
5) There are rumours that the new x230 (t) will have a 1600x900 12.5" screen. I'm hoping it will be possible to switch it with the current one. If enough people want to retrofit them maybe it would be possible to sort out some sort of bulk buy deal on this forum from Lenovo's suppliers?

I wasn't having any issues 3 months ago, but have been using wifi since then. I don't know if there has been a driver update since then- have you always had this problem or is it a new one?

 

Actually the normal X220 6c has 64Wh.

 

I'm still running at about 8-9W on light browsing with the brightness at 1-2. What power plan do you use? It seems like 'power saver' or 'energy saver' actually gives me more than 'maximum battery life', while Lenovo screen reader gives me the lowest idle wattage but has some large spikes even when I cap the processor to 0%

 

well, anybody talk about msata but nobody sell it in my country..poor me..
i promise i will buy it when i study in australia..hahaha....i think its better for me to buy msata than buy ssd..if i use msata, it means i have 2 drives and will never throw my seagate momentus.

 

I've been looking at getting this MyDigitalSSD 128GB 50mm BP3 Bullet Proof 3 mSATA 6G SSD | My Digital Discount

It's a US website and it quoted me $40 for delivery to UK, which was still cheaper than anything I could find, if you add an item to your basket it will let you calculate the postage. I'm not sure if there would be customs charges on it though.

 

anybody who have tutorial to change thermal paste on x220?.
i can do easily on my previous laptop because the processor cover is directly at the bottom side.when ive seen on x220.i did not saw it...

 

You have to take out the motherboard to access the CPU and heatsink. Refer to the HMM: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/0a60739.pdf

 

it should be very difficult.maybe 1 or 2 years later i will open the keyboard only to clean fan from dusty and also change the thermal paste.

 

You are using a HDD right? When my drive is actually spinning it seems to add a few watts. Anything else going on in the background? Have you messed with disabling things you don't use in BIOS?

Mine isn't... it's only 57 WHr.

 

When mine was new, it had 67Wh. According to the Power Manager, it is rated at 64Wh. After one year it is already down to 61Wh, however.

Perhaps the US Version has only got 56Wh while the European one has 64Wh.

The X200/201 also had 2 different 9 Cells. One with 94Wh and the other one with 87Wh I think.

 

I feel like I discussed this with Tsunade once... on my 6-Cell HWMonitor reports 68WHr, but Power Manager only reports 62WHr.

I have the same discrepancy on my x220t 6-Cell too; HWM reports 69WHr and Power Manager only reports 62WHr.

 

Yeah I did play around with devices in the bios, and I do have a mechanical drive, when I get the money maybe I'll get an SSD instead. Nothing I'm aware of going on in the background, I've just done a fresh install but I will have a run through msconfig.

What power plan do you find best?

 

Frankly I'm usually in max performance unless I know I need as much battery as possible... then it's obviously max battery profile. Those are generally the only two profiles I use.

Consider an Msata and keep the HDD drive inside... then just have it spin down after xx time (whatever you prefer). The Intel 80gb uses basically nothing for power. I haven't checked in a while, but when I bought mine it was the least power hungry msata available. I believe less than a 1/4 watt when active. THen you can have a data/vids/games drive and keep your msata clean. Works nicely.... or of course just go with a bigger SSD.

 

Thanks, I'll check them out, and probably wait till they come down in price a bit

 

@moogleassassin: the X220 can accept 6Gbps/SATA3 mSATA drives, but its interface is limited to 3Gbps/SATA-II. There are only a few notebooks on the market now that support 6Gbps mSATA speeds.

 

It's also very unlikely you'd ever be able to tell the difference.

 

anybody,do u have a guide to recover windows 7 on x220 use recovery disk? am i need windows 7 cd?
thank you