Thinkpad Edge E420 owners.

There you go, you should read over the enitre thread since you own the laptop.

 

got it to work, did a fresh install of windows 7 and found specifically that driver (lenovo's website has a updated intel hd driver as of 8/32/2011, which didn't work for me). Fixed the issue. Now I am happy with my child's thinkpad .

 

I am surprised, no one wanted a T series, everyone would rather have an edge.

 

Hi, E420 owners. Did any of you consider ASUS P series (P43E) as an alternative to E420? What do you think about it?

 

Asus makes some awesome stuff, but I cannot find a price for this laptop in the USA, the keyboard does not look good.

 

Price is slightly higher then the same configuration E420, but for me that difference is not important. I was able to check P53E but still didn't see E420 and P43E. The keyboard on P53E is nice - here I mean the filings from typing - keys are much lighter than on previous Edges, they are very silent, but do not provide such feedback like on Edge. So the keyboards are different, but for me both of them are very nice. What is bad on Asus - keys do not have any spacing between them.

Now I'm mainly thinking about durability, construction sturdiness and want to compare the screens.

 

Hey Guys. First post here.
This E420 is on sale at Office Depot today for $529 ( I5 , 4gb , 500hd )
I picked this E420 up yesterday at Office Depot , and so far so good.
I got another $50 off after talking to them( on a Z370 Idea Pad with same specs at Frys for $479 ) so they worked with me and I walked out the door very happy and paid $479 plus tax.
I saw an older post here where a few like the ThinkPad Edge over the IdeaPad series so I went with this one. Just wish it had WIDI like the IdeaPad.
This is my First Lenovo Brand computer but my wife used one for years at her work and saw some good reviews , so I took the plunge.

 

Lenovo sent out an update for the Intel hd3000, now my screen goes from bright to dark to bright again, like when I first got it, so much for progress.

 

I called Lenovo today about their new gpu update, the person I talked to took down the information I gave him, but who knows if they will get back to me, or release another new update. The screen does like it did before, 0 is brighter than 12345 etc, and so is 1, but 2 to 15 work normally, also, 15 is not as bright as is was before the update. Also I asked him if I could install an Intel 310 ssd, and he said he did not know, but I am sure you can if anyone as bought and installed one please let us know. I also asked if I could put the t420 higher res screen in my laptop, he didn't know either.

 

I helped my little sister pick out a laptop today and we came across this little bugger at Office Depot. Almost bought a $400 i3-SB Toshiba special at Best Buy, but I really liked what this Lenovo offered for only $530.


So far I'm impressed with everything except the harddrive (I know it was only $530, but I'm so used to at least a 7200 rpm HDD).


I'll be posting updates as they come!

 

I would get a T if it were the same price as an E

 

Hell yeah to the T series, My E420 has a 7200 rpm hdd I dont know why yours does not.

Wow has everyone seen the new ultrabooks, Haswell looks insane.

 

Hi again.
I can choose between 2 configurations of E420: one has i3-2330M (2.3 GHz, 0.65-1.1 GHz GPU) CPU and the other - i5-2430M (2.4-3.0 GHz, 0.65-1.2 GHz GPU), all other specs are same. i5 version is $80-90 more expensive.
The main question is - will the i5-2430M produce more noise then i3-2330M?

 

Wow your right! It is a 7200 rpm drive. I wonder why it seems so slow (made some weird click-clack noises when I first booted it up).

I'll do some more research on the issue....

Thanks for the feedback

 

It is probably a bad drive. It may or may not show up on disk scans but these computers should not be making the clack clack noise and I imagine your computer will also experience some random freezes and possible BSOD's as a result of the hard drive going out.

It's not too expensive/difficult to replace and Lenovo is generally pretty good about replacing them. Tell them you'll do it yourself and they'll ship you a drive. Sometimes it takes a couple weeks but call them now and let them know it's going out/making noises.

 

I have the same issue with left hinge. I scratched the paint from it just by finger nail. It seams like the paint on the left hinge doesnt hold on so well like on the right hinge. I can feel the difference on the paint its somehow badly done.

BTW am i the only one E420 owner here with AMD 6630M dedicated graphics? Looks like the model i have 1141-7BG is selling only in Europe. \o/

BTW2 can anyone confirm mSATA support? I can't see any mention about it in User Guide and i can't remember seeing that connector (not sure how it looks tho) in the notebook when i was looking under the hood few months ago.

BTW3 does E420 have SATA 6Gbit support? I am thinking about getting SSD so i am wonder if its gonna work faster or slower.
thanks

 

Is this caddy Ultrabay SATA 2nd Hdd Lenovo ThinkPad T420 12.7mm DV16 | eBay for T420 going to work in E420? I assume that I will change the faceplate with the original one from optical drive but is it compatible?

 

I do not think that one will work for those of us that own the e420. From my understanding, the T420 has the modular optical drive bay. Basically that means there is a little button/lever on the bottom to push that will eject the modular bay in a hot-swappable fashion.

I have been pondering putting a hard drive where the optical drive is as well. I have come up with this:
2nd HDD or SSD Caddy for Lenovo Edge E420 [OBHD-SATA12-SATA-BU] - $44.75 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

I have been trying to read through the pages of this thread in my free time to see if anybody has tried it in their E420 though... it says you can swap out the face plate and it comes with a bracket to do so but I have never bought from or heard of newmodeus.com. I haven't heard of or bought from most of the retailers online though, so that doesn't mean they are a bad company necessarily.

I guess I'll just throw it out there... has anybody used this? I ask because I could snatch a Crucial C300 for around $100 (64GB) if this thing works and put my 500GB drive in the caddy but will have to spend ~$200 for a decent 128GB SSD and then be limited to 128GB for programs/storage. Alternatively I could go with an mSATA SSD but be limited to only-slightly-better-than-hdd speeds.

Of course you could put the HDD in an external enclosure and take it where you need it... but I would need it most of the time if limited to 64GB for my main drive. I'm curious as to other E420 owner's opinions on this subject.

 

Yes I think you are the only one on here with a 6630M. You sure you have the e420? That would be a nice option.

I would say, if you do have the e420 with a 6630M, that there is no way for us to confirm that your laptop has an mSata port. Also, considering there isn't a ton of extra space inside of these machines other than the unusued mSata port on ours, I think it is quite possible that Lenovo got rid of your msata port to make room for the graphics chipset.

I wonder if everything else about it is the same.. pics?

Also, I do not know about the 6Gbps SATA III yet. The chipset that this machine uses, again not sure if this applies to your machine as well, is the H65M I believe. This chipset does support two SATA III channels. I assume the hard drive has a SATA III interface but I have not found a way to confirm this yet.

I might just purchase the Crucial M4 128GB SATA III drive. They have two versions, one of which is not backwards compatible and is cheaper by $20. Then I can give you a definite answer.

I am also seriously curious about these newmodeus.com drive bay caddies that are supposedly compatible. That would be perfect (even with the added weight).

 

I noticed that the t420 and e420 share the same 1366x768 lcd panel, that should mean that the upgraded 1600x900 lcd can be put in both the e420 and e420s.

I would like to see the E420 with the 6630m taken apart so I could see were they put the video card, if they sell them with the video cards that means we could put them in ours if they are using the same mobo.

I think our mobo and intel processors does support sata 6gb, but they function has to be programmed in, which is beyond my skill level.

The E420 supports msata, the slot is right above the hdd toward the back of the laptop.

 

In user guide they are saying its PCIe Mini Card slot. Maybe its the same thing as msata

 

Coming from a computer background I would say that is highly unlikely. Sandybridge uses either an H or a P chipset (which is a part of the motherboard). The H chipset enables the integrated graphics chip within the CPU. The M chipset enables the use of a dedicated graphics card. Perhaps laptops are different but I don't think our H65 chipset would support a graphics card.

They're not the same but some hackers/modders have been able to re-solder leads on certain SSDs to fit PCIe Mini slots. Perhaps the reverse is possible and is what Lenovo did to fit a Radeon card into the e420 in Italy.

 

Good news to anybody who is interested in having two hard drives installed in their E420. Newmodeus.com has sent me one of their optical drive replacement hard drive caddies to test out on my E420. I have agreed to do my part and share my findings with the rest of you. I will post some pictures, opinions, and the weight of the dock vs the weight of the optical drive for your perusal.

Let me know if there is anything else you would like to know. The bay should arrive sometime this week most likely.

 

I don't see the need for two hdd, too bad this laptop won't support msata, or I would have that and the regular hdd installed. Since masata is not supported, I will get a hybrid drive eventually, or maybe not, this laptop is not as great I thought it would be, with Haswell coming, this laptop will be gone in 2 years.

Edit, I think this laptop can take an Msata ssd,

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/ww/pdf/E420_E520_datasheet.pdf

look under HDD it says SSD, mini sata pci e.

Still most likely wont install one not worth it on this laptop

 

Not sure if its just a software issue but after i suspend pc to memory ( sleep mode) the notebook wake ups randomly. And also hibernation doesnt work. When i click on hibernate it just log me out but nothing else happens.
Any idea how to fix it?

 

Sorry madik I'm not sure why it would fail to hibernate you might need to call support. Did hibernation ever work on your machine? My machine will wake from sleep to go into hibernation which is a bit of an annoyance but easily changed in the power settings. It is also odd for it to wake from sleep without being touched/moved. Is the lid closed when it does this? Open? Is this a new laptop or have you had it for a while? Is there a chance you are having issues because of software you have installed?

In short, these symptoms are not typical and you should be able to fix them, if not by yourself then with the help of Lenovo or an exchange with wherever you purchased the machine.

 

My E420 would wake from sleep a lot until I went into the power settings and turned off Instant Resume, IR keeps your laptop connected to the net when you close the lid, I would close the lid and it would look like it was sleeping, but after a second it would wake up even though I had not touched it. I have had no problems since I turned off IR.

My laptop can hibernate with no issues, but I did not use hibernation before I turned off IR, I never really used Hibernation until I got this laptop and only started using it for traveling between classes at college.

 

I thought about mentioning instant resume but I have not used it. Good to know I have another reason (other than battery) to have disabled that option. It is a neat thing for some I suppose.

 

Here you go people real proof that Intel msata drives work in the E420

Intel mSATA 310 SSD in a Lenovo E420 - YouTube

 

Nice. I think it's nice to have the option but I crave more speed than mSATA provides. I will try to provide lots of pictures of the optical bay hard drive dock for you guys and let you know if it works out alright or is no good.

 

Check the website. They have an even newer versioned package with "improved driver stability". All it really does is roll the video driver back to the one before...lol

 

Hey guys. I received the newModeus dock in the mail. It might have been out in my mail box a few days as I do not check it very often and was just expecting UPS. Either way, with a Monday-Wednesday/Thursday turn-around on the shipping they were fairly quick to reply to my inquiry.

Upon opening the package I have found the hard drive dock with quite a few extra screws. The construction of the dock is very good as far as I can tell at this point without having installed it yet. My biggest concerns are/were that the dock would be heavy and that it simply would not work as advertised. My first concern was quickly alleviated as the dock is a featherweight. It will not add any noticeable weight to the notebook and would certainly work for anybody wishing to install it empty simply to lighten the E420 a bit.

My second concern can only be addressed through the installation of a second hard drive in this computer. So, I will be going down to MicroCenter today and picking up a Crucial M4 64GB SSD. This SSD should add a ton of pep to the system while keeping costs in check ($92 + dock) by allowing me to keep my 500GB hard drive. I will start a thread regarding this dock and link to it later.

The optical drive is easily removed by the way, for anybody who is interested in this but concerned about how tedious the installation would be. All you have to do is remove the same screws you remove to access the memory/hard-drive/wireless/msata, pop that plate off, and there is a single screw holding the optical drive in place. Lenovo even has the procedure documented in their manual.

Oh, I forgot to mention that newModeus included a USB to SATA+Power cable so you can still use your optical drive (albeit naked optical drive) with your laptop.

 

i know could this up, but what is speed difference between and msata ssd and a full size ssd, what about the speeds of the new 6 sata connector ssd, its either called 6 sata or 6gb connection, and current ssd are using 3gb or 3sata connections. I think that is right.

 

The Intel MSATA 310 SSD (80GB variant) has the highest MSATA speeds I have seen and those are 200MB/s & 70MB/s (read & write seq.) and you kind of pay through the nose for those speeds at $199.

The Crucial M4 (which is a SATA 6Gb/s Drive which is backwards compatible, though both the optical SATA and the HDD SATA run on 6Gb/s connectors) achieves 415MB/s & 90MB/s at $92 for the 64GB SSD and 415MB/s and 90MB/s. The 128GB variant is $179 and achieves the same read speeds and double the write speeds.

I'm not sure if that is exactly the information you were looking for but the difference is fairly noticeable. I can say this with confidence having moved recently from an early generation SSD (C300) with similar read/write speeds as today's MSATA SSDs to a Crucial M4. Of course the MSATA drives are cool, they are just somewhat expensive compared to regular SSD drives.

I've installed the NewModeus optical drive bay and it is a perfect fit. I have taken detailed photos showing how the process is achieved. I will be posting them soon. All in all, it took less than an hour to install the SSD and Windows 7 even though I was taking pictures whilst doing so. Windows 7 installed in less than 10 minutes, it was pretty amazing.

I'm seeing boot times under 15 seconds after a clean install and installing the Lenovo programs/drivers that I find necessary. I will detail how I achieved these awesome boot times as well.

 

Looking to get his laptop soon.. but need some confirmation regarding couple of new replacement parts will work with E420..
1) Intel-Ultimate-633ANHMW-802-11n-Adapter

2) Corsair-DDR3-Laptop-Memory-CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9
or
Crucial-204-pin-SODIMM-PC3-10600-CT2KIT51264BC1339

ALso what is difference between

Gskill ddr3 8gb(pc3 10600) and Gskill ddr3 8gb(pc3 10666)

 

I just wanted to update. After some benchmarks were performed I have to take back what I said earlier. The Optical Drive SATA port is limited to 3Gb/s. I will be swapping drive locations tomorrow to see if the main SATA port can achieve 6Gb/s speeds.

Just make sure you get 204pin DDR3 and it should be compatible. The difference is very small between 10600 and 10666 and not perceptible. Benchmarks will show slight improvements with higher frequency RAM but those two are hardly much different so go with what is cheaper. I'm not sure about the wireless card unfortunately.

 

msata is 200mb read and 70mb write, but how does this compare to our 500gb 7200 rpm hdd and how does this compare to a 5400 rpm hdd

 

Any update regarding this? Did you find that it was easy to put the factory bezel on the caddy? I am looking into this as a good travel option and once you have done the SSD route as a boot drive it is very hard to go back.

 

Yes sir, I have updates. Sorry I haven't gotten them on these boards sooner.

The optical drive bay is a SATA II (3 Gb/s) port. The hard drive SATA connection is a SATA III (6 Gb/s) port. After installing the SSD into the the hard drive location I achieved an extra 200MB/s (450MB/s) read speed.

As for the bezel. It fit onto the caddy perfectly. It simply pops on in the exact same way that it pops off of the optical drive. If you have this laptop you might notice that when picking it up from the right side (the side with the optical drive) that it doesn't feel as sturdy because the optical drive moves in your hand. With the caddy installed with the factory bezel added it actually feels twice as sturdy on that side of the laptop. There is no movement from the bezel (which makes sense because it is not a tray anymore).

Everything else with the caddy was straight forward and SATA II speeds are more than you need for the 7200RPM HDD that comes with this laptop. By the way, with a clean install I was able to get boot times under 20 seconds. I can resume from hibernation in less than 15. I can open Photoshop, After Effects, and Cinema 4D almost instantly. I don't use both drives heavily, but I do use both, and the best part is I haven't seen any increase in battery consumption. Probably this is because the lower power consumption of the SSD.

Oh, and with 64GB I was able to install Windows 7, Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4d, Steam, CS 1.6, WinRar, all drivers (no utility programs from Lenovo other than the power manager and system update), and a few other odds and ends and I still have 30GB left. The system is fully updated and hibernation is turned on. Overall I could not be happier. I will be posting a comprehensive review and guide for installing the caddy but if you were thinking about purchasing it I would recommend as it works great.

 

Got an E420 .... overall happy with it.

I also have an X220 with the IPS screen which brings me to this post. The E420 with the matte screen is AWFUL in comparison with the X220 (IPS, duh!) but also with all the other laptops I've used, like Dell, etc.

The viewing angle head on isn't great .... you can't get the entire screen to display at the correct angle, so basically you center it and everything else to the corners look off. Is the screen that mediocre?

 

Is the motherboard sata 3 enabled from the factory or did you have to enable it? Can annyone recommend a cheap external enclosure for my 500gb hdd if I were to upgrade to an SSD, I would rather keep my optical drive. I would like to upgrade to a standard ssd and use the hdd that came with the laptop as an external stay at home backup hdd, I would like it be esata compatible but if it was only usb 2.0 that would be fine.

Actually I would rather just get an msata ssd, but for the price a regular ssd is better, more space and more speed. But I do not want to waste the hdd that came with this laptop.

 

@6eSamsung- ty, that was helpful info..

I was going to get it this weekend but the sales rep told me that i would be getting without any OS, so returned home without buying just to do some more research.
So was wondering is Windows 7 really needed or will any of the Linux distro work fine ? if so which would be better ?
Have searching a lot and found that Linux distro have been showing some drivers and boot up issue!?!
What do you guys recommend?

 

There's no way to enable/disable it from being SATA III, just throw a SATA III drive into the port and you will see the 6Gb/s speeds if the drive is capable. An interesting side note, if you install a SATA III drive into the SATA II (optical) port and install Windows then you will not be able to move that drive to the SATA III port. I was not aware of this and ended up having to re-install Windows 7 onto the SSD after moving it to the faster port.

Don't clone your Windows installation, it will not run as quickly on the SSD as if you do a clean install. Windows installation detects the SSD and installs certain features and optimizes others.

I forgot to mention that I still have the optical drive. It is an external optical drive now (simple USB - SATA cable) and it works without the faceplate though you do need a paper clip to open it. You might consider that option over the external HDD. I love having all this space in addition to the super fast SSD but I can't remember the last time I used a CD/DVD in my computer.

 

What do you mean? The Lenovo sales rep or some guy in the store? Personally I got mine with the i5-2410M for $479 with tax after instant rebate. I would not recommend ordering direct from Lenovo unless you get a great deal but I did not find any on their website. Also the first E420 I purchased had a bad drive and I was able to quickly exchange it at my local store ( would have been horrible to send back to Lenovo from what I hear ).

If you're worried about installing the copy of Windows 7 that comes with this laptop onto the SSD I can help you with some links. It is not hard or illegal to download a copy of Windows 7, install it via USB, and activate it with the Product Key that is on the laptop underneath the battery.

On the other hand you might be talking about the laptops Lenovo sells with "No O/S Preloaded". In this case you might be able to get a Linux distro working well but I do not know for sure and it really probably depends more on your level of skill within that OS. Personally, I would stick with Windows 7 unless you are a huge fan of Linux.

 

Many laptop manufacturers disable features from their mobos even if the Intel chipsets were designed to have them. Lenovo may have disabled the sata 3 feature, wanting people to only have sata 2 connections. Even though laptop makers do this sometimes, people can often find a work around to enable those features, so Iwas checking if Lenovo had left the sata 3 capability enabled on these hm65 chipsets.

 

Hi, I am new to the forum and just got my E420 a few days ago. I wanted to know does any of you have problem with bluetooth. My E420 came with bluetooth, and I used to be able to turn it on and off individually from wifi by using the F9 key. But recently, after I have installed some software (suspecting it is either my Microsoft mouse driver or AnyDVD), I lost the bluetooth button in the wireless Radio. So now when I turn on the master control, Bluetooth will turn on automatically. The only way to get the button back is to reinstall "ThinkVantage Bluetooth with Enhanced Data Rate Software II" But if I turn off my computer, the next time I turn it on, I will need to reinstall the Bluetooth driver again. Anyone got a similar problem? or anyone know how to solve the problem?

 

I'd prefer Windows 7. Though I still miss linux on a couple points. IMO it would be too much of a hassle if you install linux yourself, unless you're ready to spend some time to troubleshoot it.
AFAIK you'll need to install latest distro and some tweaking to get the Wireless Card working.

 

Some guy in store.
You got real nice deal.. Well i am getting mine for ~$720,locally(w/o OS)
I have hands-on desktop PC(h/w and s/w), but when it comes to laptops i just dint want to take d risk which is why i planned to get it local(warranty matters) and many other things(eGPU support and build quality).. The one with OS is around ~$1000 ..

I am not new to linux. but new to linux on laptops..
After going through lenovo forums, you might be right.. Win 7 might be the safe bet..

But still give ubuntu/Fedora/Mint a try before i get the Win 7 HP.. Since i am not going to use it for games, Linux- if worked is the best option..

 

Are you in the USA? if so...You can get a better deal than that with/without OS.

As for Linux, if you have some experience I suspect you should be fine. I have not tried it on this machine myself and do not really intend to - but I expect I could get it to work maybe with minor exceptions or maybe 100%. The driver section for this laptop has a Linux drivers section, I just haven't checked them out myself.

 

ty 6eSamsung.. I will give Linux a shot before i get win7..