Two issues: Mic, display brightness [E420]

Hello! I recently purchased a Lenovo E420 and I'm really liking it outside of two issues.

First the mic seems like a P.O.S. (and I wasn't expecting much...) I'm not sure if it has to do with drivers or if it's a hardware malfunction, but I was hoping to record little demos (as I had to done with my previous laptop) but they are annoyingly bad sounding, sort of metallic/electronic. Even just plain speech comes out this way. Maybe this has something to do with overly aggressive noise canceling or something? I've tried disabling the keyboard noise suppression to no avail.

Second, the brightness adjustment will sometimes just cease functioning after I relog into my computer (from hibernation or sleep, I have not noticed any distinct pattern). I have to restart my laptop to change the brightness settings again. It is not just the keys on the keyboard either, if I attempt to change the slider in the power manager it still does nothing. Is this some known issue? I can't seem to find much info.

Anyway, I was just wondering anyone might have any insight on either of these problems. Thanks.

 

Bump. No ideas here? I suppose I could try to get in contact with Lenovo...

 

Sorry, I can't help you with your issues.
But it would be interesting to read your impressions about the rest of this laptop. Thanks.