X201 or X301

Can anyone help me decide?
It seems the 301 has a camera the 201 does not?
Obvious screen size difference how about the weight

I am using the laptop for general use, internet, light word processing etc.

Thin and light is very important to me since I transport every day, but I would not call myself a heavy business user.

I was afraid of the Idea pad because I need a very durable book.

I have a sony Vio and the hinges have broke three times

Thanks

 

Since you are using the laptop for general use only, you would not notice much of a difference between a X301 and X201 in terms of speed. Both the X301 and the X201 can be customized to have a built in webcam. How important is the optical drive, screen resolution and battery life?

 

On the Lenovo web site it doesn't say anything about a camera available.
Screen resolution is not so important, but battery life is.
Weight is very important.

By the way I assume the Think Pad has a much higher quality than my Sony Z?

 

I would assume the thinkpad is much more rugged compared to the sony Z.

How important is the optical drive and cost?
The X201 will be MUCH cheaper compared to the X301. The weight for the X201 with the 9 cell battery is about ~3.5 lbs whereas the X301 is about ~3 for the 3 lb cell battery

 

The cost is relative but not that important and I really dont need an optical drive.

But right now thinking of going with the lighter X201..
Can you clarify about the camera, and speed wise is ther a big diffrence?
Thanks for your help

 

The X201 uses the standard voltage processors whereas the X301 uses an ultra low voltage processor. If you use the CPU to its full potential, there would be a large difference between the two laptops in favor of the X201.

Are you buying the laptop off the lenovo site or a topseller model? Theres an option to add in the webcam on the lenovo site. Based on your needs, I would get the X201.
Also, the X201 will be much thicker than the X301

 

Wow I checked the web site and the X301 is like $1000.00 more than the X201.


So I am going with the X201, here are my reasons.

1. Don't need an optical drive.
2. Mainly using for internet related functions.
3. need a thin and light
4. Light typeing and word processing.
5. need a strong notebook , I travel a lot.

So what do you guys think, will it work for me.

 

I am buying of the Lenovo site

 

The X201 isn't particularly thin, but I think it hits all your other points well.

 

If you do not need the webcam, I would get the X201s (which I have). Since you are buying off the lenovo website, there is an option to add in a webcam if it's not included already. I believe you should get an X201 instead of a X301 for battery life, cost and CPU power.

 

Oh so the X201 has a better battery life?
Is there a weight difference
Can you explain what you mean by CPU power?


I am real excited this is my first Think Pad!

 

I agree. My X201 came with the 9-cell but I bought a 4-cell for everyday portability. It's light, small (but not too small), rugged and powerful. The 65W AC adapter is light too. I barely know I have it with me with the 4-cell installed. I take the X201 with me everywhere and I'm on the go all day and most of the evening. It's the best laptop purchase I've ever made (and I've had maybe 20 or 25 of them). Mine does not have the webcam but that's not something I would use anyway. I can always plug in a cheap USB external webcam if I need it.

 

The X201 will have better battery life because it has a much larger battery. Its slightly heavier than a X301 with a 3 cell.

The X301 CPU is clocked at 1.4 ghz and the X201 has an i3 at the minimum at 2.13 ghz. But, based on your uses, I don't think you would notice much of a difference between the two processors

 

With the 9-cell I can get anywhere from 6 to 10 hours. A lot depends on your power settings and the type of usage. The 4-cell averages about 2 hours with "normal" usage, meaning no video, gaming or heavy computational use.

As for CPU power, your going to get a different opinion from everyone you ask. I always go for the latest and greatest in order to avoid the dreaded "buyer's remorse" (gee, I shoulda got.....). Yes, I paid more, but I'm glad I got the Core i7-620m processor. I like seeing it ramp up to 3.325 GHz when I put a load on it. But that's just me, I'm weird that way.

 

I might go with the I7-620..can you tell me how much of an extra it was, I hate buying these notebooks and 3 months after you get them the processor is considered slow

 

You can check the price when you are customizing the laptop at the lenovo site. I moved from a hp dv2000 with a dual core 1.66 ghz and do not notice much of a change in performance because what I do requires very little CPU power. Even if the CPU is "fast," if you don't use it to its potential, you will not notice much of a difference in performance

 

b1ueflame is right, it depends on your usage. I can tell you, however, that mine has never choked or stuttered even when playing full high-def video. Also, I do some encrypting, compression, encoding, etc. and the little bit of extra CPU power is nice to have in those instances.

 

Unless you specifically know of a program that you have that is CPU-bottlenecked, I see no reason for you to shell out an additional $100+ for the i7-620M. Go with the i5-520M (or if you really want, the i5-540M) - these processors are by no means slow, and will give you far more performance than you will need for years to come.

 

i7-620m is not going to increase the performance of your laptop by all that much even when you load the cpu to 100% all the time, keep your 100 odd dollars and get the i5-520m. There is only 10% performance difference within the synthetic benchmark, so that is not going to make your day whole lot better, unless you want the i7 sticker on your palmrest and bragging right of owning the i7 cpu.

 

People often way over emphasize the CPU, when it is the hard drive that's usually the bottleneck for typical usage.

 

The first thing I do with any laptop is peel off all those gaudy, annoying stickers and decals. Neither Intel nor Microsoft are going to pay me for advertising for them. That goes for AMD and ATI too, of course. I even cover the "Lenovo" name below the screen with black tape but I leave the "ThinkPad" logo intact because that speaks to overall design and build quality.

 

They ain't paying you either you know! But is difficult to scratch out the logo off the palmrest! So, your point is taken! I too get rid of the decals/ stickers but only because they tend to get shabby after a while.

 

Ditto. Nice and clean.

 

Well, "ThinkPad" goes back to IBM days and is fairly well known but there are still a lot of people out there who've never heard of Lenovo. Considering the quality of some of their other models (yes, I had an IdeaPad) I'm not real impressed with Lenovo but they have to stick to certain guidelines to use the name ThinkPad.

 

ideapad is just JDM/ODM consumer laptop, it is meant to be cheap and feature packed, quality is not the most important attribute for most consumer laptops.

When consumer browse through a store they would usually look at the specs of the machine (i.e. i5, i7), hdmi, size of hdd, touch sensitive control, good looking screen, blu-ray, etc.

They rarely would focus on how fast you can change the keyboard, whether swapping of hdd voids the system warranty, how you claim warranty repair, what is the turnaround time for warranty repair... how hot the machine runs under load.

The people whom asks the above questions would usually just purchase a known business grade laptop from HP, Lenovo, Dell through their websites, resellers, etc.

So basically, the consumer laptops are focused toward different market segment, as compared to the business grade laptop.

Also, it is preciously the fact that many people have low brand awareness of Lenovo that forces them to stick a Thinkpad badge on everything.... people have more brand awareness of Thinkpad than they have of Lenovo. So i am guessing Lenovo is hoping to leverage the Thinkpad brand to sell more of their products, which works in a short run. But if Lenovo don't build the Edge and L series to the exact quality standards that many people was hoping for in a Thinkpad, then Lenovo would make the Thinkpad brand worthless in the eyes of consumers. Basically you can fool people for a short while, by sticking the Cadillac logo on a Chevy car, but people would soon find out that the so called value for money Cadillac is nothing more than an expensive Chevy with a Cadillac Logo....

 

"ThinkPad Edge". Tricky name-shuffling marketing schemes. They get away with it because it's not branded as a ThinkPad, it's a ThinkPad Edge. The "Edge" part is appropriate -- it's way out on the periphery of what a ThinkPad is supposed to be. I saw one in a store and it immediately confused me -- I wondered how they could call it a ThinkPad (anything) with that silly chiclet keyboard. They're treading dangerous waters here. To me, it cheapens and warps the great reputation that "ThinkPad" has built up over many years.

Oh well, as long as they keep the faith with the "T", "X", and "W" series, it really doesn't matter that much to me.