X200 5in1 Cardreader runs off USB BUS!!

Can't believe they actually run the card reader off the USB BUS!!!,
Get like 2MB/s Write on a class 4 Sandisk SD Card.
Considering they price this laptop over $2000, you don't get Esata, HDMI, Firewire 400 let alone 800, not even basic dedicated nvidia graphics, a webcam that does not work in low light and very poor sound..

I have owned many notebooks and found the cheaper ones, have better features, i.e card readers that run off the PCI-E bus not USB, you can get an Acer Under $600 with low light 720P Webcam, and a HP mini note 100 for under $350 with Harmon Karmon Audio, so why do the top manufacturers skimp on many features or substitute them with sub par ones..

I owned a Vaio TZ and the Card Reader was appaling was getting 2MB/s Write where as on an Asus N10J which uses an N270 CPU was getting 15MB/s Write...

The new Vaio S Series and Z lacks Esata/Firwire 800 and USB 3.0, and most of the Vaio's z use 640*480 webcams so what gives!

I doubt updated X200 would feature Esata or USB 3.0/Firewire 800, well actually I prefer a Esata/USB Combo port, as you get esata speed with power via USB with only a single cable, but I see only acer and a few others use this.., they should make all USB 2 Ports esata/usb combo and then have 1 or 2 additional USB 3.0 Ports

 

The bottleneck is your SD card, not the USB bus. A class 4 card is far from a speed demon.

 

My SD card gets written to faster than 2MB/s. I get about 5-6MB/s on a cheapo card.

 

I don't know where you been buying a X200 for $2k.

 

Your post is incoherent. What exactly are you trying to say?

What is so surprising about card readers running off the USB bus? That is how most card readers work. Since Class 4 rating requires only 4MB/s write speed under optimal conditions, I really doubt your claim about 15MB/s write on N10J.

X200 was released in 2008 and is now heavily discounted. If you are still paying $2000 for an X200, I feel sorry for you. It seems that all you care about is specs -- why are you even looking at the X series?

Complaints about Vaio does not belong in the Lenovo forum. You are barking up the wrong tree.

 

did you missed the decimal point between 1 and 5 ........

 

a class 4 SD card running at class 15.

 

Class 4 is the minimun write speed, but can peak much higher than that and lower.. the whole class thing is total BS anyway as you get class 2 cards performing much better than class 6,.. Remember the more USB devices you have connected the slower it will be unlike the PCI-E bus, also USB uses more system resources, the controller is also the issue, could be using a poor performing controller, even 4-6MB/s is not even acceptable...

They could of used a much better controller and interface but they didn't so why not?. the fact I have to get an expresscard reader to read SD cards when the laptop has a built in card reader is absurd, note the exprescard reader runs off the USB bus and is alot faster than the lenovo 5in1, also USB is a limitation because I have 30MB/s HG Duo, write speeds start at 80MB/s then drops to 75 then to 50 then to 30 and then sits at 10MB/s, after it finishes writing you still have to wait as the data is being buffered from the RAM due to the USB bandwidth not capable of keeping up with the HG DUO...

If you get the SONY Expresscard HG DUO reader, it runs off the native PCI-E bus and you would not have to wait for the data to finish writing after it has written...

I guess most of you think a card reader is just a card reader and cannot comprehend what I am talking about, too technical for you I guess although it really isn't..

Also I do not live in the USA, in Europe an X200 costs way more than $2000 US, more like $2500, if you look hard enough you can probably get one for $2100 though, anyway How do you know the $ was even US might of been Canadian or Australian, don't ever assume

I have to give props to the fingerprint reader the hardware lenovo chose to use, the AES2810 is on par with the Touchstrip device in the Vaio TZ, a lot more accurate than ones Acer and Asus Use, the N10J Touchstrip Sensor was very poor, very bad accuracy, although the software Lenovo chose to use is pretty basic, makes you wonder why they chose ot put a fingerprint in there in the first place if you can only log on and off with it.
At least you can get it working with digital persona and use it for a lot more stuff, a lot better than the upek software by the way, as you can log into say this forum from any page or thread, where as with upek and Vitakey you can only login from the main page

 

Most of us here are from the U.S.

And just to clarify things a bit with regards to symbols denoting various currencies around the world,

1) $ denotes dollar, which most of the time denotes the U.S. dollar (unless you specify otherwise)
2) C$ denotes the Canadian dollar
3) € denotes the Euro
4) AU$ denotes the Australian dollar
5) and so on


And regarding assumptions. Humans oftentimes employ assumptions because they make the world easier to comprehend.

 

Well to all of the USA people, I asked a price for an X200s here and the better ones are around U$2,000+, and yes that is heavily discounted. When they were first sold they were over U$3,000. And the writer is right on a few points. The webcam in my T400 is really garbage unless you're under full light. The webcam in my cheapo Samsung NC10 notebook is brilliant under ANY light condition. Also the screen on that Netbook is better than anything I have seen on a Thinkpad. And the keyboard is almost as good. The only thing Lenovo has going for it is a good chassis and a good keyboard. All technology to produce a very fine laptop exists. Take a matte Apple screen, add the chassis of Lenovo, the faster components of HP/SONY etc, the webcam of a Samsung Netbook, and the Altec Lansing speakers they use on some HP models and voila ... perfect. If I were a billionaire I would buy Lenovo and transform it. In this day and age business people need good screens and screen choice (LED, CFFL, AFFS etc.), light laptops, good webcam & speaker since many of us use Skype professionally and well it does not quite look the part when you are sitting in a business conference with headphones on.

 

Thinkpad x200 vs. Samsung netbook. I will take a Thinkpad x200 anytime.

What you want in a laptop does not exist. Sure, I want a supercomputer packed into a pure carbon fiber chassis that is only 1 inch thick, OLED display with 1:10,000,000 contrast ratio, a Canon 1D shrank down to webcam size, and a pair of B&W 800D shrank down to laptop speaker size. That sort of perfect laptop surely can be built with today's technology. But it will cost you a couple of million dollars. But then you will start complaining about the price.

If you like your Samsung netbook more than your x200, then the more power to you.

 

furrycute,
Keep this in mind:
You are replying to a person with a screen name of "perfectionseeker".

 

Thanks for the reminder! I should have known better.