Thinkpad X1 Carbon 2012

Looks way more useful/helpful than what I got from them:

 

That's lame. My rep even emailed me. He wants a sale though lol.

"Cameron,

Reach out to me in middle to late August, we can look at your options on the X1 carbon."

 

Could you check with them if 512GB model will be available? And 1.9Ghz i7 cpu.
Otherwise Zenbook UX32VD looks more promising.

 

I don't think they would tell me exact specs. But I believe there will be a 128/256GB offering and an i5 / i7 as well. If the 512GB is absolutely necessary, I wouldn't count on the X1C to offer it. It would be a nice option for those that wanted it but it's rare to see.

I was also considering the UX32VD since it could be customized a bit and is more future proof. But I was a little turned off that it wasn't all aluminum like the UX31A and it had some keyboard flex. So now I'm fixed on the 256GB UX31A if the X1C doesn't live up. But all these quality issues I'm hearing with the Asus, even minor ones, are turning me towards the Lenovo.

I just wish we'd see more info.

 

under realistic conditions, the Samsung S9 does not get more than 4-5h since it only has a 40Wh 4-cell battery. dont trust these reviews too far where they push it beyond 7h. The X1C will at least also last that long so no worries. And at will score with something no other ultrabook can offer: a proper keyboard.

 

As for X1 Carbon battery, do note the Russian test was 3hr under heavy usage. I would expect more than that (5hr range probably) under lighter usage. I'm going to doubt that the X1C is going to beat the S9 in battery life though. It has a bigger screen and probably not a bigger battery to compensate.

Anyways, if battery life is important, just get an X230. No need to bother with ultrabooks and their tiny batteries.

As for Thinkpad production in Japan. I believe its only for Thinkpads sold in Japan. There is a thread on this forum already if you want to discuss more.

 

Still comparing this x1c to the new vaio z (some refer to it as the z3).

As mentioned in a post somewhere above, I currently have an HP Envy15 with a 720qm i7 processor (quad, 6mb cache), 12gb ddr3 1333mhz ram, dual intel 160 ssd hard drives, with a ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card w/ I think 1gb of memory.

I usually don't have any problems with my computer slowing down (I rarely ever download any apps), but I am a heavy browser-tab user. Currently have firefox with 100+ tabs "open" (but w/ the new firefox version the don't actually refresh or "come on" unless you click on it) and a few open on chrome too.

Doesn't slow my laptop down too much...BUT, when I recently started using the "tab groups" feature of Firefox where it displays tabs in different groups my computer is super-slow in loading that view and in rendering each tab within the tab group view. What's the problem there? Just a software issue? Or do I need a stronger video card? Don't think it could be the processor or RAM.

I don't want to move down to a less powerful x1c and have even more issues.

 

100 browser tabs? very interesting.. im curious what you're doing that you need that many open? care to elaborate?

i would suspect that memory is the bottleneck. what does Task Manager show?

 

Ummm, I have 214 open right now including this one

 

as I work for Mozilla this makes me happy

there has been a *lot* of effort put into memory mgmt in the last 2 years. I too usually sit between 100 and 200 open continuously.

I think, nanotech, if you are using a good browser (Firefox or Chrome for example), the X1C will handle just fine w/ the ivy bridge ultrabook cpu and 4-8gb. In fact you will have lots of room to play with on top of that

 

Why do you have 214 tabs? Why aren't you using bookmarks instead?

 

I can never understand why people have so many tabs open. You can't possibly be referring to all 200 tabs continuously. So why not bookmark the pages, or save the tab group (Opera allows this, I'm sure there's similar features or extensions in FF & Chrome)? Having so many tabs open just leads to increased distraction and decreased productivity. I rarely ever have more than 20 tabs open at once.

 

yeah, i dont understand it either, thats why i asked.

so, anyone care to explain?

 

Jumping in out of turn here, but I am one of those people that keep 100-200 tabs open at a time. I have them in various groups in Firefox. The reason I do this is basically the "out of sight, out of mind" principle. If I bookmark them, I'm much less likely to remember to come back to them, but if they're open in groups, I'm reminded of them every time I switch groups. It's also just less work to leave them open than to bother with bookmarking. (Very slightly less, but still.)

Additionally, as a developer, I often need to leave pages in various states to shift to a different project temporarily, states that would be lost if I bookmarked the URL and closed the tab. This is less of a concern for home use, and there I probably average 20 tabs open at once.

As far as system resources are concerned, Firefox's recent change to wait to load tabs on a restart until you view that tab has largely done away with that concern for me.

 

same workflow as Scotchester for me.

I use multiple tabs for a few reasons:

1) I use vimperator, which allows me to use key shortcuts in a powerful way to browse the web and also eliminate all of the UI bar the actual page web content and tabs on top. I rarely use the mouse so moving it to a tab toolbar or menu bar wouldn't suit me

2) I use bookmarks for pages that I don't have time to read or I know that I will want to go back to at a later date.

3) As I never have more then one window open, I need panorama to organize, group and hide the tabs I don't need at a given moment. An example of Panorama would be something like this random persons: Firefox - My Panorama | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Its great for me as I get used to where pages(tabs) are and can jump very quickly.

4)Like Scotchester said, on restarts the tab content only gets rendered when you need them. And tabs you haven't been to in a long time are 'cached'

3) this is the big one and would depend on your need for a browser. Being a developer, I often need 50+ common tabs on a day to day basis. I group them in FF's panorama by 'features/bugs' that consist of wikis, repos, cheatsheets, web apps, etc. Because I jump back and forth through them all, its easier to group and load them all at once and jump accordingly. If I were bookmarking them, I would need to open one at a time or by folders and then close them (or use multiple windows) and each time I do this, they would have to all load again.

5) finally: mgmt and clean ups are easier. after a few days/weeks when I am done with say a 'feature' I can quickly go to panorama, collapse a group and bam they are gone. They are in my history if I need reference but my bookmarks stay only for reason 2). mgmt is easier as I can quickly create a new group of tabs if one group forks or gets too big.

So it depends on your use case and I agree I can accomplish all of this with bookmarks but after a bit of trial and error, this suits me. Might be tl;dr for you but mikew3456 you seemed interested

 

It's called digital hoarding! SMH!

 

Is having a mountain of bookmarks any different?

 

Yes. On one hand, keeping a page indefinitely... On the other, making a notation of where to find a page should one want to go back someday... I'd say they are quite different...

 

I am very sad that the X1 Carbon has a "drop down hinge". To me it is not very aesthetically pleasing and screams of Apple.

 

...and all those reasons are the same for me (except for the programmer reason...Im not a programmer).

With bookmarks I literally will almost never refer back to them so 5-6yrs ago I stopped bookmarking all together...and started tabbing.

Now very few tabs get rendered as is already mentioned, but I quickly go through the tabs to see what I have to do and what needs to get done. It's just a productivity tool for me.

Glad to see I'm not the only one!

I currently have 160 tabs open and probably another hundred on my "too many tabs" toolbar extension for Firefox.

The "firefox panaroma" mentioned above is exactly what I'm talking about when I say the "tab groups page." That page renders EXTREMELY slowly for me....but when i look at my memory usage, only 4-5gb of memory is being used...with another 4gb "ready" to be used and the rest "free." (12gb total).

Even CPU is low at about 20% at the time. Laptop is cooled too (used to not cool it and it started shutting down every other day (blue screen).

Plus I restart the computer almost daily. So what could be causing the panaroma to open/render so slowly? I always thought that my laptop was probably too powerful for just "power browsing." So I think the x1c should be fine, even though it's not as powerful as my computer now.

Sometimes I have excel/word/some pdfs/ and scanner software open at the same time too...still no issues on RAM or cpu though. But as I'm typing this I think I might have figured it out. I have an external monitor hooked up via USB (using the evga usb plus video card device at 1080p resolution, plus my laptop itself is at another 1080p.....used to also have a third monitor at 1600x900 using my laptop's hdmi out, but don't need it now). So maybe all this is too much for the video card with 1gb of RAM (although doesn't the video card also have access to the laptop's regular RAM too?)

I apologize for this thread getting a little off-subject with this, but the overall decision I'm trying to make is whether or not the x1c will be powerful enough for what I'm doing. Maybe for it I could just get a hdmi to vga adapter and not have to bother with this evga device since I'm only using one additional screen now anyway.

 

Could you guys move the tab discussion to another forum? It has nothing to do with the X1 Carbon.

Thanks

 

yup. sorry. I wanted to answer the question without it forking too much.

back to awaiting x1c further development!

 

I think its another stupid compromise for thinness. At least it opens to 180 unlike just about every other drop hinge out there, so the functionality is still there.

 

The designers have said the hinge does open to very nearly 180 degrees, so I don't really see a problem with it in terms of functionality. If it's as durable as traditional Thinkpad hinges, I have no problem at all with it.

 

I think I am going to enjoy toting my X1C around and showing it off to customers.

 

I didn't like the hinge either when I first saw it. Meant that the back would be devoid of ports. I wished the X1C had:

1. Ethernet port (faster than WiFi and more secure)
2. At least 1 more USB port (I like plugging in a mouse)

 

The height of the X1 base simply prohibits building in an ethernet port. It's either that or make it thicker. As with the Macbook Air, Asus Zenbook etc the solution is the use of a USB 3.0 (or for the MBA a Thunderbolt) ethernet adapter. That is something I gladly live with in return for this super-slim form factor.

Given the fact that Lenovo opted for a mini-displayport, I would agree on your 2nd point. If it would have been a Thunderbolt port (allowing for multi-purpose use) 2 USB 3.0 ports would have been enough.

 

i hope the x1c doesnt come with a textured touchpad like it was announced for the t430u. these textured touchpads are the worst things ever and the reason why many people in our company switched to other brands. Along wih he crappy screens (except the ips panels on the x2xx).

if there is a decent screen with a great touchpad, user upgradable ram and 5h of battery life - i will get one...lets hope they'll get it out soon. Guess they lost already quite some customers to the S9 and MBA.

 

The trackpad will be made of glass and magnesium alloy with what looks like a smooth, non-textured surface. The 1600 x 900 TN display will be above average in picture quality, but I wouldn't expect IPS quality.

 

Are there ANY other laptops out there besides Apple's that have thunderbolt?

I thought Apple had a 1yr exclusive on the technology?

 

I might add that my browsing ability isn't exactly smooth with this many tabs open, its running around 2GB or RAM with firefox plugin container. On a 4GB machine, this is death. The newest version has the ability to not load the tabs until you click on them, so a restart helps greatly.

 

Because I don't have time to read everything yahoo news decides to come up with...as far as bookmarks, I have about 200 more bookmarked tabs

 

you never accidentally lose the tabs (e.g., sys crash, someone accidentally closing browser)?

btw, Lenovo sales rep said tentative date for x1c availability on US site is 5 August but could move. Why are they keeping mum so close to release?? This is like the dearth of reviews for their tablet when it came out

 

My guess is that they want to make damn sure it'll run Windows 8 correctly before they release it. Since the GA for Windows 8 is October, they are certainly going out the door ahead of that with Windows 7. But they surely want upgrades to be smooth.

 

Good point. Thanks. I'm just impatient to replace my W500 with something new and lighter. Not even a spec sheet out...

 

No, I run session manager. I've probably done that once myself, and one other time somebody closed probably 100 tabs on me, enough to put you into a depression for a week. With firefox history I couldn't really figure out what was open because the history shows the time tab was opened, so that was no good. I have at least 2-3 months worth of stuff open, bookmarked tabs are approaching 6-12 months. Sometimes the news is a little outdated when it's that old

 

Weird, I was JUST thinking about that today. They are nearing the borderline for Win 7 / 8 launch. On one hand, a Win 8 inclusion would be nice. On the other, with a $15 upgrade price to it along with an included Win 7 key is also not too shabby.

I think the reality will be the latter since it won't make the cut with an August/Sept launch.

 

That exclusivity has expired already. At least the Thinkpad T430s has Thunderbolt in the i7 model. That was my main reason for picking the i7 over the i5.

 

GA and therefore the launch is in October. They aren't going to hold this machine back until then. At least I don't think so.

 

(grumpy mode on)
Can't they release a non-OS version already, for the Linuxers like me???
(grumpy mode off)

Cannot wait...

 

My internal order lists still state August and W7 Pro x64

 

Lenovo sells no-OS Thinkpads, or at least they used to. I forgot how to get to the no-OS configurator, but it was pretty well hidden. You could also just talk to the sales rep (which is suggested anyways because you can get a better discount through them), and ask for no-OS probably.

Also, can't you just refuse the Windows EULA and demand your money back?

 

Yeah, I know.
My organization has a discount on certain models (Rahmenvertrag, frame contract?), which often include models without OS.

I just don't want to wait for some Windows release as I'm not going to use it anyway

 

Heh, if you are referring to Windows 8, yeah, who'd want to use that cr@p on a laptop anyway...

 

I agree. If it's an August release, and Windows 8 is looking at October, I don't see it. I'm sure it will see official Windows 8 driver support though.

With the $15 upgrade path, I'm not sad.

I can't wait for this machine! One more month....hopefully.

 

Agreed. I've been holding out on a laptop purchase mostly because of this machine.

It's frustrating that we still haven't had a formal release even a few weeks prior to August!

 

Same. It's frustrating, but not uncommon. Most notebook releases I've watched have gone through the same thing. Hopefully we see more info soon!

 

I've been sifting through earlier posts and have yet to find whether or not the 1600x900 screen is matte or glossy.

I'm assuming its matte since it's a ThinkPad. Can anyone confirm this?

 

Yep! It's been confirmed by several sources that it will be matte. Though I expect it to be semi-gloss like a lot of the other high end matte displays on the market. It will show a slight reflection, but nowhere near as much as a "glossy" display.

Hope that helps.

 

It seems ridiculous to hold the information back. There doesn't seem to be any competitive advantage. Maybe the X1C sucks and they don't want anyone to see it (like a bad movie).

Just joshing. If I were Lenovo, I'd be taking pre-orders already. Cut off Apple's "Air" supply.