X200 Discussion & Issues/Critique

Well Lenovo sent me an e-mail to purchase extended warranty via online. So I'm going to purchase them via online.

These are the options. I'm looking at the first two options. Which one do you think is best?

Does first two options cover hardware failures (SSD, Motherboard, RAM, etc) as well as like monitor connector and others?

And I ordered X200 under my father's name/business. Is it okay if I switch it to my name and home address?

Lenovo Warranty Service Options
Part # Description Price
41C9170 THKPLUS TP 3YR PICKUP DEPOT 3 YRS PARTS AND LABOR DEPOT $119.00
41C9167 THKPLUS TP 2YR IOR 9X5 NBD 2 YRS ONSITE REPAIR 9X5 NBD $139.00
41C9168 3 YR IOR 9X5 NBD $219.00
41C9172 THKPLUS TP 4YR PICKUP DEPOT 4 YRS PARTS AND LABOR DEPOT $229.00
41C9171 THKPLUS TP 4YR IOR 9X5 NBD 4 YRS ONSITE REPAIR 9X5 NBD $349.00
41C9173 THKPLUS TP 5YR IOR 9X5 NBD 5 YRS ONSITE REPAIR 9X5 NBD $499.00

 

hey guys, does anyone know which setting in power options is required to keep battery stretch on? Every time I enable and then have to close the lid to run into another meeting room, when I resume vista from sleep battery stretch disables itself and enables aero, etc. Is it not possible to have it stay enabled when resuming from sleep or hibernate?

 

The warranty IS for hardware failures and manufacture defects pretty much strangesweet...

On the other hand the accidental is for well accidents. I upgraded to the 3 year depot.

 

So you've purchased $119 plan? Does it take effective as soon as it's purchased?

 

What do you mean take effect? It takes a week or so for them to update it online...but you ALREADY have a warranty for 1 year, so I am not sure what you're asking because that 1 year warranty isn't coming to a close anytime soon.

 

I got my new x200 yesterday; I've never owned a thinkdpad before so I thought I would post a few things about my experience with one after a day. I also have a 17" Sager np5790, so I will use it as a basis for comparison. A few comments:

1. The screen on the x200 isn't bad at all; at full brightness it's really easy to see, even with bright light, and it's still quite viewable at 7/15 setting while on battery. I was a bit concerned about the 12" and 1280x800 resolution, but coming from the 1920x1200 17" on my sager, it's actually not bad at all, the size of things are just about the same, just less space to put things.

2. The laptop feels really solid. My only complaint, which has been echoed in other threads, is that the battery (i have the 6-cell, 9-cell is currently on order) has a little bit of wiggle to it, which makes the whole laptop seem less sturdier than it really is.

3. Keyboard is fantastic. I have a full keyboard on my sager (w/ numpad), and the keyboard on the x200 actually feels -better-. The touchpoint isn't bad at all either, now that I've gotten used to it.

4. I like the LED keyboard light. it is actually useful when in a dark room

5. The pictures really don't do this laptop justice. It's much smaller than the pictures make it seem, and while I'm a bit biased from my 8.5lb+ sager (and the 9lb+ zd8000 I had before that), this thing is light as toast. I carried it to work today along with my sager in my laptop satchel, and barely noticed the extra weight.

6. My sager has a 7200 rpm hd in it; the x200 came with a 5400 (i'll prolly upgrade to ssd later), but it's really not that much slower. In fact, the x200 is pretty dang quick with most of the things I tried it out on so far.

7. Bloatware: I didn't think I would like much of the thinkvantage stuff, and was planning on doing a clean install, but it isn't really all that bad. Just wish I could figure out how to 'hide icon' for the taskbar stuff and not have them reappear the next time I reboot.

8. This is the first laptop I've had with a fingerprint reader; it's pretty petty, but I think it's pretty fun to use

9. I have the ultrabase w/ cd-dvd, it has worked great so far, no problems at all (though the drive runs fairly loud when spinning)

10. Oh, about noise, fans are almost nonexistent (esp compared to my wind tunnel er *cough* sager), the x200 runs silent like the red october

11. Heat isn't a problem either; it's pretty warm around the left vent after being on high performance for a while, but it's not bad at all on your lap or (especially) on your hands. You could cook an egg where your right wrist was on my zd8000, and my sager gets hot too when I'm not using it on the zalman cooling pad.

12. I haven't done much gaming on it yet (it's not really meant for that, that's why I have my sager), but I did install civ4 and play that for a few minutes. It runs really well, even with the high textured blue marble graphics mod, I'm quite happy.

13. I haven't done any huge battery tests yet, but I haven't really had to plug it in in a while, so that's probably not a bad thing

Anyway, I'll post more after I'm done moving and have had a chance to really use it. So far, though, two thumbs up!

 

Have you tried locking the battery? When you attach it, a spring loaded tab secures it but then you can push the latch with your finger to lock it. I also thought that the 6-cell battery was wiggly until I locked it and now it's rock solid.

 

i have the 9 cell spring loaded and locked and I can actually pull the spring loaded part loose by just tugging at it (but the lock tab keeps it from sliding out) :S

-nobody knows the answer to auto-enabling battery stretch when waking up from hibernation?

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but even locked it still jiggles a little. It's nothing too horrible or anything, but everything else about the x200 is rock solid that it sorta detracts from it

 

at the top of the battery stretch screen, it does say 'your previous settings will be restored when you reconnect supply to AC power or when you resume, restart or boot your computer', so my guess is that it's not an option you can change. The reboot or plug in thing makes sense, but to disable when coming out of standby it pretty annoying.

I also dont know why you can't just select battery stretch to be enabled whenever the computer is unplugged. That would solve your problem also.

 

^Do you have this problem too, where you must manually enable it? I guess there is no solution then. also..
-Rainlender v1.0 (free outlook integration, v2.0 makes you pay $) disappears when you enable battery stretch. The screen flickers because it is powering down certain things, and then when it comes back on rainlender is gone. It is still running as a process but you can not select it and you have to manually kill and reopen the program.
-Once you do activate battery stretch there is a balloon that says "battery stretch enabled" and you can not get rid of it unless you click the small X to the right. So that's 2 extra steps instead of just unplugging and having it enabled :S
-I am lazy.
----------------------
I also find lenovo power manager and vista manager to compete with each other for setting control. I go into advanced options in vista and i can select cpu speed in % (you can only select max, low, lowest in lenovo's) so I love that. But you can only enable battery stretch (reduce screen refresh rate, lower video card quality, disable aero automatically) in lenovo power manager! So I have to use both. Any solutions guys? What a pain this is. Still loving the computer though.

 

Yeah, I have to manually enable it also. I think you misunderstood, though; I was saying 'you' in a general sense, as in 'the user', echoing your complaint. I dont understand why lenovo didn't make it so battery stretch is a standard feature that is automatically enabled when the user unplugs. I also use rainlendar, but haven't installed it yet, so it's nice to know i'll have that issue.

Having used several versions of access connections and power manager over the past few years, I've seen the great software become more comprehensive, but along with it, it's become bulkier and more complicated. This newest version is much more complex, and i'm not a big fan. Since vista is also a lot more complicated in regard to ability to customized, theyre now starting to step on each others' toes. It's been driving me crazy, because I can easily set several conflicting options, and then I have to go back and try to figure out which one is causing the computer to act a certain way. And since it seems vista's organization was designed by a drunk 3rd grader, i usually just give up. But my hatred of vista is another issue....hopefully i'll get used to it eventually...

 

thanks for your comments! I knew perfectly what you meant my list was just to vent to the world. If you install rainlender v2.0 (because you don't mind having to pay/not have outlook integration) shoot me a pm on whether battery stretch kills it as well. I was thinking of putting objectdock because I hate icons cluttering the desktop, but seeing it floats like rainlander it will probably not work either.

I too have to go back and forth to check the settings. Just today I noticed vista having set my max battery life cpu state at 50%. I put it at 33%. lenovo manager must have done something when I went over there to change other settings for the same profile. sigh.

 

Not sure if it's Vista or the machine, but hibernate takes a good 3-4 min to complete. Then boot up is easily double a regular cold boot. Anyone run into this?

 

Vista is pretty slow. I have the SSD so I couldn't exactly judge but it certainly takes a while to resume after hibernation. And just booting normally takes a bit.

 

Mine is not quite that long, but it does take a long long time (1.5-2.5 minutes). I have 2GB RAM and the 160 GB 5400 RPM drive. If you have 3-4GB of RAM, and a similarly slow drive, then 3-4 minutes is not out of the question. The one advantage of restoring from hibernate versus a cold boot, is that Vista does not thrash your hard drive for 5 minutes AFTER you boot to fill up the Superfetch cache (it restores the existing cache from the HD after hibernate).

 

Well I have 4GB of RAM and a 7200k drive. I can't imagine hibernate being so slow, it's basically unusable at this point.

 

i just got my x200 and have drained the battery to 0 and then charged it to 100% but only getting roughly 4:40min on full brightness, wifi on and browsing

vista ultimate, clean install

but also undervolted with RM clock down to .9V....still only getting that battery life.

now i ofcourse know i could get a tiny bit more if i lowered the brightness, but thinking i could get about 7 hours with brightness all the way up or atleast 6.

am i missing something? i still like almost 5 hours with max brightness....but who doesn't like more

 

You shouldn't drain your battery all the way...and no you will get A LOT more battery life if you lower your brightness. Why don't you try it and see. We all talk about the battery life with brightness at the energy star level usually.

 

Dude, lower the brightness to half or 50% and you will get huge increase in battery life. Also, never drain battery to 0%, always charge it when it reaches 20%... It will last a lot longer and keep the charge way better. In fact, it won't hurt the battery to charge it at any time before it reaches 20% as well since it is a lithium ion battery..

 

A question for somebody who has the X200 Ultrabase in their hands:

Is there a way to charge a second battery? Is there a limit on what type (4,6 or 9 cell) batter the second battery could be?

I saw one post on another board where you get a second charger, not the ability to charge a second battery. Reading around, the statements are pretty vague, and the photos I've found are not telling.

Thanks for the feedback.

Dave

 

I have the X200 Ultrabase and YES, you can charge two batteries at the same time (I own two 6-cell batteries)

 

Whereabouts does the second battery insert into the ultrabase?

 

you have it on the side...it isnt completely INSERTED...but you can do both. Look for pictures of the base from the various sides and ports and you will understand.

 

I have 2gb ram and a 7200 rpm drive with a clean install of Vista (no partition) 50 sec. to hibernate and 35 seconds to come out.

 

I'm seriously considering ordering this system:

Intel Core2 Duo processor P8600
Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic
2 GB PC3-8500 DDR3
TrackPoint NO Fingerprint Reader
160GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
No Bluetooth
Intel WiFi Link 5300
3-1 Media Card Reader without Modem
Integrated Mobile Broadband upgradable
ThinkPad X200 Series 9 cell Li-Ion Battery

I want my X200 to be light fast and void of unnecessary upgrades.
Do you guys think is there any good reason to buy any of these upgrades?:

Vista Business (Aero and such may slow down system and tax battery)
3 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 (No real speed improvement over 2GB dual channel)
FingerPrint Reader (looks cute but not needed + possible glitches)
Bluetooth (I don't think I have a reason to use it)
Modem eek: )
AT&T WWAN (I'll wait for Sprint WiMAX to come to town with an Unlimited plan)

Thanks

 

I would get the BT for reselling reasons down the line...I have had no issues with the fingerprint reader. 3gigs is worth it if you use the x200 as a workstation but I find 2 gigs adequate for my light work on the laptop

9cell is decently heavy. 3.6lbs is light but the 4 or 6cell would obviously be less.

 

Thanks jaredy, I figured less things I put in it less conflict and less problems with software drivers I will have in case I want to do a clean install.

I have a bit of experience building PC systems but I'm still a noob with Laptops and I have yet to intall Vista on any of my PCs. From what I have been reading on this forums the majority of problems you can have with Laptops seem to be Drivers/Software/OS issues.

As far as battery I'll go for 9 cell even tho I like the 4/6 cell weight and flush looks better because I want to use it on the road mostly and those 8-9 hours sound great to me.

 

Compare that to 5hour:40min of the X200s with the 6-cell battery. The X200s is looking better and better

 

I do not use most of the lenovo software (and have disabled the services) save...the battery management. And the battery life is great. Hope you are happy with whatever you decide.

 

hi there,
wasnt there a clean install guide for the x200 somewhere here? im not sure any more. but i remember a list of drivers you should install after a clean install for the x200. (but i cant find it anymore)
can i follow the guide from the sticky topic or was there a more specific one for the x200?

thx for help

 

I don't believe there was a full-fledged, dedicated guide specifically for the x200. But there was some talk to help strangesweet do a clean install. It is my understanding that the recovery stuff is a little iffy and you might not be able to do 'custom' installs. But all in all it is pretty easy to uninstall what you don't want. That's just what i did. Though if you want to utilize the other hard drive space I suppose that is more problematic. I would just make sure to backup your drivers first!

 

i have an "empty" x200. so i dont need any backups or recovery disks nor can i make such
actually, im just looking for a checklist for all drivers.

i saw a minute ago that theres a ThinkVantage System Update 3.14.
would you recommend this update? does it really "reduce the time, effort, and expense"? and what drivers are missing?

 

Do you still have the original install there? There is a driver folder on the main partition that you can just backup. Pretty much every driver is needed..and it is pretty easy to know which ones you don't need (say if you don't have the fingerprint scanner).

 

there never was an original install on this laptop, i got an empty one.

"Pretty much every driver is needed"
thats what i guessed and why im looking for a driver checklist

 

Okay well i will upload the drivers for you. I will pm you the link so you can easily see all of them that i had on my config.

I have Vista basic, fingerprint reader, wifi5100, ssd...

 

ok, thx a lot!
i, installin winXP so i think the drivers will be the same. thank you very much

 

i would simply get the thinkvantage system update utility and it will download and install every driver and software needed

but you can decide what you want installed, etc - and none of it is bloatware

 

I am not sure if all the drivers will work on XP but you can sort of compare what I have to see what you need to search for.

 

Thanks again for the help jaredy I went on and ordered the fully upgraded Vista Premium - 3 GB - BT - F.P.R. - ATT WWAN system

I was going crazy thinking about the right set up and in the end I maxed out

beside after reading several posts doing a clean install on a Laptop doesn't seem like the same great idea that it is for a PC + IBM/Lenovo software seems to be worthy and not too bloathed.

I'll keep you guys posted with my odissey on shipping and give you a brief review when I get it.

 

Sounds good Ipocrita. There isn't TOO much bloat at all and it is easily uninstalled manually without any headaches. The only issue is if you want to get rid of the recovery partitions to utilize that space. Your upgrades will definitely help the resale value down the line. What battery did you end up getting?

 

I just received my x200 today. I found there's a gap on the right side of the lcd and the frame (I can stick a poker card in between the lcd bezel and the black plastic panel/frame) . Does anyone else have this problem?

 

Some other users mentioned it. I do not have the issue personally.

 

did they mention how they fixed it?

 

No, it is a rather recent postings. They are discussing doing returns. One took it to a technician that lenovo advised (as part of the review) and the tech said it was an engineering flaw vs tech flaw. I don't really know. I am sure it just wasn't put together very carefully as the early laptops (such as myself) had no such issues. I have actually luckily not had ANY issues.

 

I've lived with the x200 for a week now and so far pretty good. 2 issues though, undocking is a MESS! 50% of the time my external monitor doesn't get disabled so I have to do it manually or the mouse will travel. I was using the built in Windows 'undock' so I figured I'd reinstall Easy Eject. WOW is it bad, doesn't even come close to undocking correctly.

Other issue is the SD card slot. I took the SD / no modem option. The slot will not hold a card. It's spring loaded so I'd expect the card to click in, it just wont. I can't get a card to stay no matter what I try. Pain in the ***, but not worth sending it back for repairs ya know...

 

Sorry to hear about your docking issues. I tested the SD card slot and I have no issues with it staying in place.

 

I'm used to building my PCs installing my OS on an unformatted OEM HD so I never get any third party software preinstalled, that's why I was a bit wary at first

I don't mind the partition I heard it's only about 8 GB.

I've got the 9 cell because I will not use this cutie plugged in, I'll just charge it at night just like my cellular phone

Est. Ship Date 10/27/08

 

I love my X200 so far. However, I get the whining noise coming from the left side of the laptop whenever I have it on high settings. It goes away when I switch to Balanced Plan settings or lower. Also, there is a slight hum (CPU fan?) that I can slightly hear. It seems to be coming from the center of the bottom of the laptop. I wish I knew someone witht the same laptop to compare noise levels.

It still quieter than my old MacBook, and it also runs a lot cooler too. I remember that the MacBook would get too hot to place it on my lap.

 

i would call lenovo about that whine or send it in for repairs, only because i hear no such wine, not even the slightest.