***Yoga 2 Pro Owners Thread***

Unless Lenovo is providing the BIOS previous version, I don't see any other way then to use One Recovery Key (Lenovo app installed in the Yoga) to restore the machine to factory setting and then start over. Hope that helps.

 

I don't suppose you've run tests to show that the battery is life is shorter and I don't suppose you've completely disabled adaptive brightness?

 

Also keep in mind that future BIOS updates, may very well include these change, even is the future BIOS are meant to address something else. So you may be bound to not updating BIOS in the future, or risk getting those changes that you don't like. This is part of the reason I returned the machine, who knows what other crap this BIOS update does to the machine.

 

I'm pretty sure BIOS is unaffected on recovery, since it's firmware.

I have run no tests. I'm using the power of logic to deduce that 60% brightness will drain the battery faster than 40%. Also, I did disable adaptive brightness immediately, with both old and new BIOS, as it seems useless. As someone put it, adaptive brightness puts battery life at a higher priority than the actual brightness the user wants.

 

Battery life is likely determined by actual brightness vs some formula the gauge uses for percentage. I seem to be getting 6+ hours at 60-70% brightness. Doesn't seem any different from what I was getting before using the brightness I like. Good enough for me.

In addition, I don't think the BIOS update does that much. If you uninstall EM and install the old version my guess is you will be basically back to where you started, since the colors don't change until EM loads or you could actually test uninstalling it or killing the process all together.

I have no need to do any of this as I'm happy as is..

 

Thats not correct....if you restore your Yoga using the builtin restore program it will ONLY restore the operating system to the default out of the box OS image. It will NOT undo any BIOS updates that have been made.....

 

Gonna be a difficult nigh, my Y2P i7-8GB-512SSD will arrive tomorrow morning...

Envoyé de mon GT-N7100 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

Oops, my bad, you are right, I mixed things up, I wrote BIOS when I was really thinking about the EM, as it looks that even if you update the BIOS, nothing changes unless you download the new EM. I mention One Key Recovery as the safer option, as I don't know is uninstalling the new EM, and then installing the old EM, would do a good cleanse. Thanks for clarifying!

 

Sigh, all you idiots thinking that with the BIOS update, the screen got dimmer is beyond stupid. The brightness gauge has just been changed in terms of percentage! If before the update, your comfortable brightness % gauge was at 30%, and with the update now at 70%, thats still the same freakin brightness approximately 200+ nits.

Also, you have to turn off ADAPTIVE BRIGHTNESS on 2 fronts: 1) Advanced Power setting 2) Intel Graphic Options


My gosh these nubs...

 

Of course 3200 x 1800 at 200% is better but the point of my post is making the image on your extended monitor look good as well. If you use 200% your extended monitor image will be HUUUGE. These settings make you Y2P look good AND your extended monitor look good - it is a compromise. Please read more carefully next time.

 

True stupidity is not realizing that not everyone is at the same level of technical competency as oneself.

Tone it down or see yourself publicly humiliated.

 

I'm not an idiot, but I appreciate the info. Are you saying that its the number of nits that drain the power? Meaning if pre-update produced 200 nits at 40% and post-update produced 200 nits at 60%, the battery drain would be the same? That makes sense, if that's indeed what is happening. I hope so, that definitely makes me feel better about the new BIOS.

Secondly, I do indeed had adaptive brightness turned off in both places.

 

Yes. you got it right. The display panel made by Samsung is capable of displaying approximately 350 nits of brightness. At 100% gauge, you get the same brightness PRE or POST BIOS update. However, once you set down below that, you will get different NITS level, with 30% being noticeably DIFFERENT from the previous 30%. I didn't use the word dimmer since it might confuse other people in this thread.

 

Of course I know you STATED that you are recommending that resolution for external display. But you ALSO stated this. Go ahead and read that. I posted my reply BASED on that statement. You should read your post first carefully before replying such posts back.

 

I'm not an idiot either and I have been saying what you just said for a while now. I just wrote BIOS instead of EM in my post, and when jamezr, whiteout calling anybody names , corrected my mistake, I immediately posted a clarification.

If you play close attention at bootup, you’ll see that the yellows look greenish like they looked before the EM update, as soon as the EM process starts after bootup, the greenish effect minimizes, and the yellows “improve”, this tells you that the EM is the one with the big influence in all of this. People that perceive that the screen is “dimmer” after the updates are not idiots, they are right, and you just prove it by what you said in your post. The Nits/percentage ratio indeed changes after the updates, put two yogas side by side, one has the BIOS and EM updates and the other one does not, set both machines’ brightness levels at 40%, and one will look “dimmer” then the other, that is all that people you are calling idiots are noticing, and yes, some of them are under the mistaken impression that the BIOS update is the one causing that effect. But if you are such a smart guy, why don’t you clearly explain the situation to everybody instead of calling people’s names?

The one thing we, as humans, fail to do sometimes is recognize that none of us is good at everything.

Each and every one of us travels a life path that is unique to anyone else. Ergo we each reach our views, opinions, conclusions and learned facts via a completely different route through life or pattern of thinking. Unfortunately, people like you cannot always comprehend that others have had a different journey and poses different knowledge.

Grow up!!!

 

Actually, I now have three relatively current-model notebooks:

Acer S7-191, the tiny little 11-inch thing with an IPS 1920 x 1080 screen, i5, 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD.
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro with the i5, 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD.
Sony Fit 15A with the i7, 8GB of RAM, 1TB + 16GB SSD drives

The Acer is utterly amazing, it's so tiny. It's a very satisfying machine, but it just utterly died within 2 months -- wouldn't power up, wouldn't charge, nothing. It was fixed under warranty -- they replaced all of the innards except for the SSD, and it has been working just fine ever since.

Given my purchase of the Sony, the Lenovo pretty much becomes my "insurance" small and light notebook, in case the Acer dies again. It's pretty hard to trust something that just completely dies on you like the Acer did.

And the Sony definitely isn't something I would want to carry around like the other two -- it is big and heavy. But, again, I'll use it alongside my desktop computer to do some pretty hefty work that I've got planned in the near future.

In the end, I would really like a Y2P with a configuration like the Sony, but any configuration higher than the one I've got just seems to be almost unobtainable -- I'm just not interested in ordering online and seeing the ship date getting backed up well into 2014 by now. Perhaps an exaggeration, but right now I'm just not interested in something I can't walk out of a store with. I've actually got a Fry's Electronics store within a comfortable driving distance, but strangely, they have a very limited selection of higher-end ultrabooks -- so Best Buy has been getting my money. At any rate, obviously, I don't depend on any of these as my "primary" computer, but if I had to use one full-time, the Y2P's screen and keyboard would make it the one I would prefer to use.

thoots

 

From my perspective, the Fit has a lot of "bloatware" on it -- though, truly, most of it is genuinely useful multimedia creation and editing stuff, as Sony is always trying to make their stuff a part of a gadget-heavy lifestyle. So, most of the whining comes from folks who have just taken the thing out of the box, and to begin with the computer is just doing tons of stuff in the background. I haven't uninstalled very much at all at this point, though I've gone through and stopped some automatic indexing and searching and updating stuff -- and I get very little fan running unless I'm causing constant disk activity.

So, I think the "loud fan noise" whining is overblown -- with just a bit of tweaking, it's really no worse than any other notebook. Go through and get rid of all of the bloatware stuff and tweak a few startup settings, and I expect there wouldn't be any discussions about the fan at all.

thoots

 

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions!

Very much appreciated!

 

If you want to experiment with different screen resolutions, check out MultiRes, it's been around since WinXP. Very quick and easy.

 

Any hot tips on migrating software from a Win Vista system? I'd upgrade hardware a lot more often if it wasn't such a nightmare reinstalling all the software...

 

Sony imo from what I've seen puts on the most bloatware of any manufacturers. I got my brother a Sony laptop last summer and out of the box it ran slower than my 5 year old hp notebook. And the boot up time was just ridiculous, just remember thinking how the hell could they be shipping a laptop like this??

 

ninite.com makes at least installing all the standard tools a lot quicker...

 

Yep, it's all the other stuff, and particularly the zillions of options and settings. By the way, any idea how Ninite handles options during installation? For instance, all the programs that want to install McAfee unless the box is unchecked - does Ninite uncheck those boxes?

 

May I ask when you ordered? Mine showed a ship date of 12/15 the last time the order site was working! I ordered 10/21. Kind of tired of waiting... Thanks.

 

I'm currently running my 22" desktop monitor at 1024x768, very comfortable resolution for me. Needless to say, the Y2P will require quite an adjustment. With all the struggles people go thru to find a resolution that works for them, I'm wondering if maybe this is the wrong laptop for me. On the other hand, I don't know what else might be better, there are so many tradeoffs...

 

Hey guys, which config on Lenovo site has the best bang for buck?

 

Another option is to run the Yoga 2 Pro with a 1800x900 resolution for a while, until most applications are updated with high DPI support. This way, you can function with current software while being future proof. I am currently using 3600x1800 but might switch from time to time when I want to use Linux in a virtual machine. The interface of Linux Mint (Cinnamon) is really far from being usable with high DPI. Also, Chrome is not officially there yet, and I don't feel like having to play with internal flags to make it work properly.

 

Not sure what is the best at Lenovo's site, but I think the Best Buy i7 is the best value. The RAM isn't upgradable, so whatever you get I'd make sure it has at least 8GB on it. Also the SSD is upgradable, but they are still pretty pricey. So it's probably cheaper to start with the 256GB now, especially if you install a lot of software. Between MS office, some developer tools and some misc other programs I'm already using 94GB on my C drive. Lenovo also carved out 4GB for a recovery drive.

I'm not sure that there's great benefit in the i7 over the i5, but at $1,200 with all the upgrades the BB deal beat everything else.

 

I bought the Yoga 2 (from Best Buy) and so far I don't like it. The yellow is just as bad after the BIOS and energy management update,

Internet Explorer is slow as hell drawing the page. Everytime I scroll down, the web page is blank until the pixels can be drawn. I updated the wifi as well and the internet speed still seems to suck.

This laptop was scarcely available (unless ordering from lenovo.com) so I jumped on it as soon as I saw it in Best Buy, however I'm really close to returning it.

 

I'm sorry you are having a bad experience. My yellows look like, well, yellow and everything this computer does is lightening fast. There is simply no way an i5 running 4 gigs of ram on wifi lags drawing a simple web page unless it is somehow defective. A CPU 1/4 this powerful could do that. I believe it is either user error of some sort or it is defective.

 

I actually noticed something similar last night with the Win8 app version of IE -- I typically am more in the desktop, but I was trying the Win8 version for a change, and noticed a decided delay before pages would load, was rather annoying. The desktop IE was fine.

For your yellows, btw, make sure in the Energy Manager that you don't have one of the ultra battery saver modes selected. Try e.g. Daily Mode, which is pretty much the same as the native windows Balanced mode. Yellows isn't exactly superb, but it doesn't look all that bad once the change has been effected. You can also tweak the color settings slightly in the Intel HD display tool per some recommendations earlier in this thread.

 

Has anyone measured the performance of 256GB SSD that Yoga comes with? All I can find is reviews of the 128GB model, and its SSD performance is not stellar...

Also, how bad the noise is under load?

And finally - is the keyboard spill-proof, or that is reserved for Thinkpad line?

Thanks in advance!

 

I have a question for all the other Y2P owners that are OK with the color rendering in their machines, and please don't take it the wrong way, I’m just trying to get a very realistic perspective on this issue.

First let me tell you that I bought the yoga, I updated the BIOS and the EM, then I turned "adaptive brightness" off in the advanced settings of the power management and the "Display power saving technology" in the Intel HD graphics area. Then I put brightness to the max, and I tried all the modes, including “Daily” which seems to be the one that works best for most people. Unfortunately, after all that, the yellow color rendering was still unsatisfactory to me, the Simpsons look like they share DNA with the incredible Hulk. Base on this experience and all the post I have read, I see 2 possibilities:

1) Not all the yogas are equal and/or the BIOS and the EM updates, together with the settings mention above, have a different effect on different machines.

2) The effects are the same, but some people find the “improvements” acceptable and others don’t. In other words you can leave without “perfect” yellows, especially since the Yoga has so many good things to offer, but others won’t accept what they see as “bad” yellows.

So for real guys, objectively speaking, if you compare the yellows in your yoga, with the ones in a different laptop, do they really look similar, or the ones in the yoga don’t look as good and still have a greenish tint, but still good enough for you?

Is this a purely subjective manner or there is something else going on?

I returned my Y2P mainly because it would get very hot after 20 minutes of use, but because I didn’t have luck with the colors either, at the moment I didn’t want to get a different unit, but if there is a chance that the colors can really improve in some machine, I may order again.

Thanks in advance for the responses.

 

I have a problem with the Microsoft store. At the beginning of getting the Yoga pro 2, it will rarely download any apps. About a week ago, for a few minutes, I could download apps...but quickly lost the ability to do so. If I do get to green the install button, it usually times out before it loads.

So frustrating not to be able to load apps. Any suggestions?

Diane

 

It's definitely subjective. And if I didn't read all the complaints about yellow, I probably wouldn't have noticed it because I dont use paint.

I haven't updated my bios yet, mainly because I've seen a few reports of it causing more fan noise. I plan to update after reading up on it more. But when setting em to high performance mode (aka the temp fix) yellow looks fine to me, even in paint.

Even during the first week before the temp fix was dropped I didn't even think about returning it for the yellow issue, and I was shocked to see that a lot of people were, especially considering the specs u get for the price.

It's simply an issue with this panel, seeing as they have the same problem with the Samsung av9s. It's the first affordable super high res screen and it's not perfect. But I could never go back to 1080p so the trade off is totally worth it for me.

 

It really depends upon what you are looking for from yellow on your laptop/tablet. If your goal is surface of the sun blazing burn your retinas yellow, then no, maybe the Y2P isn't for you. But if you are happy with (perhaps ever so slightly) muted yellow, then you should be fine with this machine after the fix. I personally do not notice any green in the yellows currently as before the BIOS fix.

I tend to run my computers with the gamma turned all the way down because I like my blacks as black as possible and this results in muted colors anyway - probably the reason the non-blazing yellow doesn't bother me - I actually prefer it.

 

The difference is still noticeable to me, but I don't mind. The only place I regularly notice it is the Chrome logo and the Chrome to Phone icon, both of which have bright yellow and are on my screen a lot of the time. I honestly do not notice it anywhere else (pictures, web pages, movies, other apps). Other people may run into solid yellow more and may notice it, though.

The rest of the features of the laptop are just too good to worry about the yellows. It's not a problem for me.

 

It's totally subjective. I'm a semi-pro photographer on the side so I know a thing or two about color, but I didn't buy the Y2P to do photo editing. Anyone who knows anything about photo editing knows you need a carefully calibrated monitor, and I've never heard of a laptop, including the sacred rMBP, that has a screen that can be calibrated to the standard necessary for serious editing.

I was all set to buy the rMBP and run it as a Windows machine, since for work I am required to use Windows and Office. But when I saw the Y2P and the features for the price (I got the BB i7/8GB/256 model) I was sold. If I hadn't read about the "yellow problem" online I likely would never have noticed it.

If you're buying a laptop to watch the Simpsons (and I don't watch the Simpsons so I don't know what the reference to yellow is for the Simpsons) then maybe this is the wrong computer. If you are looking for what is undoubtedly the best overall ultra portable out there then buy the Y2P.

 

I already did the BIOS update together with the power management and have zero issues with fans or battery life. I got about 7hrs of battery life yesterday while on WIFI, and studying my online course on power balance mode and 60% brightness.

 

OK, I got my undervolting to stick, so I got 7hrs of light use yesterday(web use while I was studying for my online class). Settings: brightness at 60%, power balance mode and everything set to maximum battery life under the advance settings tab for balance mode.

 

I doubt it's user error since this was the experience straight out of the box. The first thing I did was update the BIOS, energy manager, and wifi driver.

I then tested the internet explorer experience on other laptops connected to the same router.

Also, it's an i7 with 8GB of RAM (as opposed to an i5 with 4GB).

I'm now trying it on a completely different network and noticing the same thing.

I uninstalled McAfee completely.

The rendering is just slow.

 

Thanks. I disabled adaptive brightness and tried daily mode. The only setting in which the "yoga 2 yellow" looks any better is high performance mode. I can imagine how much battery power it sacrifices. Just simply frustrating.

Also a lot of taps (clicks) and key presses aren't registering.

 

Do you think it's worth waiting for the next generation of super high res screens to come out...?

 

You can always wait for better/faster/cheaper/lighter/longer battery life/etc./etc. Go to Best Buy and look at the display. Play with the computer. See if the "yellow problem" is really a problem to you. Then decide if the Y2P is for you. I was all set to buy the rMBP until I saw the Y2P at BB. Took 2 weeks looking back and forth and bought the Y2P and have zero regrets. I don't even notice the "yellow problem" in my use. But I don't watch the Simpsons.

 

I think that someone mentioned this before: that when they put the Y2P to charge, they could hear a noise? well this is just what happened to me. I put my machine to charge while it was off and started hearing a faint noise, like when a monitor is on, but the screen was off together with the rest of the components. So I powered it on and the noise went away, then turned it off and the noise didn't come back. It was coming from underneath the keyboard and the bottom. That was weird.

 

I just received this card in the mail from a seller on eBay. Sticker is slightly different, but it is the Intel Dual Band Wireless AC Card, 7260NGW. I installed it, and it seems like the one I installed isn't whitelisted, as immediately on turning the laptop on, I received a message saying that an unauthorized wireless card was installed, and to turn off the laptop and remove it. Any clue as to why this has happened? Also, I'm wondering if it's due to the recent BIOS update to fix the yellow color issues (wondering if they blacklisted this card in the BIOS update). Any input on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

One of the first things I did after receipt was to get rid of McAfee. Now I notice that the D drive has a 500mb app folder which contains only McAfee - any reason to retain that?

 

Looking for brief descriptions of all the apps and other assorted crapware in the default installation - is that available anywhere? I'm sure most of it can go, but would be nice to know what the heck it does...

 

There's a dialog box (fullscreen) that keeps popping up randomly: RTDriver_FaceTracking

Anybody know what this is? It has buttons for Start, Stop, Exit. And a ToDo box that says: Place dialog controls here.