Thinkpad Edge E420s Review

Just pulled the trigger. Estimated ship date. 5.31.2011

As for bloatware...from my past IBM/Lenovo experience they aren't filled with bloat!!

: )

 

sorry, ignore this.

 

Anyone else who owns the E420S want to put some more pictures up, or give some more battery life times, anyone see what the battery life is, without being online, just using something simple like microsoft word. It would be cool of someone downloaded battery care, from download.com and posted the average watt draw the thinkpad was getting.

 

Hey,
I haven't seen anybody write about it here but the E420s supports msata.

I ordered one of the 40GB intel 310 drives that uses mSATA, pulled off the keyboard and installed it where the cell phone modem is supposed to go and the bios saw it as a second drive.

I installed windows, then opened up regedit and changed where the user account is stored. My user account is on the hard drive and the OS and some programs I want to load quickly are installed on the ssd.

I haven't had time to record benchmarks, but if I do I will post them here.

If you want storage space of a hard drive and a SSD I would recommended getting a 80GB mSATA intel 310 drive.

 

Cool. Was it a difficult procedure for someone who is not used to removing keyboards? And how much space was left on the 40GB after installing windows on it?

Also what is your boot time and were you able to get Lenovo EE to work with it?

 

The battery estimator is spotty and does not always give the corect reading. Many times it even underestimates the time remaining.

I would say from my experience, I am getting 4 to 5 hours with active online browsing. So with WiFi switched off and working on word with 70% brightness should give you more than 5 hours.

 

Installing the SSD requires removing a few screws to remove the keyboard. But you will also need a couple of the rite sized screws to secure the SSD to the motherboard. I happen to have tons of spare screws so it was not a problem for me. It is just as easy as installing a miniPCI-express wireless card. I would recommend getting a professional to do it if you don't feel comfortable working on laptop parts. I would have waited for lenovo to start selling the drives but cdw had a limited time deal on the e420s that could not be beat no matter where I looked.

Windows takes up about 15 gigs. I didn't follow any guides on how to move the user profile, but this one looks similar enough: How to Change User Profile Default Location in Windows 7 | Windows7hacker I did this to save space on the ssd for applications and OS. I turned off the page file on C: and turned off hibernation.

Get the 80GB drive. The 40 is to small to use with windows. It is perfect for a linux install. I am probably going to do just that.

All lenovo software is installed when restoring the system so yes, whatever software is needed for "lenovo enhanced experience 2.0" is there. I am not sure exactly what it does beyond providing big tool bar on my task bar, and a different interface for the same tools you get with windows power management.

 

Yesterday I was looking at the basic Thinkpad Edge at Office Depot, the screen on it was pretty tough, I had to push on it pretty hard for it to deflect, it was stronger than the Dell latitude screen I am using now, the screen on the Dell feels paper thin, even a tiny amount of pressure deflects the screen. I was impressed with Edge screen, so if the E420S is just a regular Edge screen with another piece of plastic over it, it should be pretty durable.

 

Thread killer, tired of killing threads.