***Yoga 2 Pro Owners Thread***

I'm a professional. I use it in my profession. I want an active digitizer. The only thing worse than a bad machine is a machine that could have truly been great, but isn't. It could have been the "one ring to rule them all", but it's not. I still love this computer but it could have been more and that's a shame.

 

$130 on eBay? Where? What coupon? Which outlet? Don't want used or a refurb.

Anyway, awesome solution to my problem. In a way actually better because I can have the V8P off to the side for writing while my Y2P is still all hooked up in laptop mode. The OneNote cloud syncing really helps.

 

They are refurbs I think. Dell refurbs are good though and you get 1 year warranty.

This is unlike my experience with lenovo outlet where I probably won't be going back...and a month after purchasing it I still don't have it.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

My dream Yoga 3 Pro:

M Processor with an active digitizer (and it releases a day before my 45 day return period at BB is up on this unit). Hey, I can dream, right?

 

I'd rather just drop $200 on a new one from Walmart. I'm not broke, just cheap.

 

Anyone found a good sleeve type case for the Y2P? Been looking locally, but it seems like the 13.3" sleeves are too small and the 14s are too big. I've been looking at the neoprene zipper type, but I'm open to other options.

 

Check out this 6 month old post of mine
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=9574196

My Note 2 to you

 

A couple of quick updates as I continue to wait for a deal on the Y2P:

- sadly the BB student $150 coupon looks like it expired Aug 2 -- couldn't convince them to extend it

- picked up the movers' kit from local USPS and the 10% BB discount is good until Nov 15 -- ironically that mostly offsets the ~8% sales tax I'll pay!

- strangely, they only had a regular Yoga 2 on the floor, and were unwilling to open up a display Y2P for me -- leaves me with the only option of buying-and-returning to get some hands-on time

- price update: the i7-4510/8GB/256GB is currently $1,199 (or $1,079 with movers' coupon) at BB vs. $1,149 on Lenovo's student portal (excluding sales tax at either place)

@mitchellvii, still aiming for the sub-$1,000 that you managed to get. BTW, I'm now around a third of the way through the thread (around post 1000) and I'm wondering how many you've owned??? How did you have one last November, and it's not yet your 45-day return deadline?

While I'm on the topic of "reading the entire thread" here's a word of warning to anyone new: WATCH OUT FOR the area around posts 800-1000! The discussion starts to get bogged down with issues of battery life and display color, thanks to a forum member who doesn't quite seem to get forum culture (e.g., repeating the same question every 7-8 posts). In any case it looks like they never ended up buying the Y2P and moved their business elsewhere! :hi2: I'm sure hoping that posts 1000-2000 are a bit more...forum-like! LOL

-Matt

 

@Matt,

I had an i5 Y2P which I previously returned to try out the Acer R7 with a stylus. The Acer was great but I missed the awesome screen and it's a bit heavy. Tried out the Surface Pro 3 and liked it but it has a yellowing down the left side that is a very common defect for that model. Really liked the pen use with that but found 12 inches to be a bit cramped for business use. When I went to exchange my SP3 for another SP3, I saw that both display models also had the screen yellowing and I got discouraged. Then I saw I could get an i7 Y2P for under $1000 (just have to live without the pen) and I went for it.

So now I'm sticking with the i7 Y2P and will pick up a Dell Venue 8 Pro to use for taking written notes and sync with OneNote to my Y2P.

As a sidenote, stopped by BB today and looked at their floor model as well as some open box models they had. None had the light bleed mine has so it made me think I may try to exchange this one. Hate to say it but I light bleed, even when minor, bugs me.

 

^ Thanks! I have to say -- bar none -- that up to post #1093 you are for sure the most helpful and informative poster on the owners' forum. Of course all of that could change in the next 2000 posts -- the last 10 months of this thread are still an unfolding mystery novel to me!!! Really looking forward to catching up and joining the Y2P club.

-Matt

 

Well, people argue and disagree in forums occasionally. As they say, the Internet, where all the men are handsome, the women beautiful and I'm always right.

 

That's awesome -- gonna print it on business cards and keep them in my wallet! While we're on the topic, just wanted to note that good moderators can make a world of difference. John Ratsey and Dannemand are my idols over on the Samsung side of NBR -- from them I've learned what forum good manners and etiquette look like!

-Matt

 

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Idea-W...d/Yoga-2-Pro-Case-Sleeve-Options/td-p/1319957

Check out my post I ran through a few options.

But by far the Asus sleeve is the winner and cheap.

Zenbook Sleeve Case (UX31)

 

$8.99??? Wow, nice find! I like your definition of cheap. :thumbsup: Any chance you have some photos with the Y2P partially inserted? (oops, maybe not the best choice of words!)

-Matt

 

If I may test your collective patience some more, I have a few more questions about the Y2P. I'm trying it in different environments, and recently had the chance to use it a bit more in tablet mode.

Issue #1:

SOLVED! I can't find a way to strikethrough the text, so I've greyed it out. I was running in Performance Mode in Energy Manager, so that's why I was running 2.8-3.1Ghz with temps in the low 60's for while simply browsing. I've switched to Daily Mode and now the processor lingers around 800Mhz when browsing and temps are in the mid- to upper-40s. Much better! Which brings up another question (to replace the original Issue #1): Is there a description somewhere of just what the settings in Energy Manager are and what they do? e.g. When would I use Stable Mode? Presumably Cinema Mode is used for watching videos, but just what does it do?

It runs hotter with higher CPU usage than I expected in tablet mode. I thought that the DPTF was supposed to throttle system resources somewhat when in non-notebook modes, but my Y2P CPU tends to run around 2.7Ghz with occasional bursts to 3.1Ghz, and *occasionally* down to 1.8Ghz and *rarely* down to 1.4Ghz, even at idle with no apps open in tablet mode (and on battery, FWIW). Is this normal?

See this screenshot of my Y2P with Opera browser running with seven tabs open, and Task Manager, CPU-Z and HWMonitor open to show stats. CPU usage is at 5%, so why does the CPU stay at such a high speed? I had reset the Min/Max values while it tablet mode, so it reached 70° just browsing the web. I know that's not a dangerously high temp, but it seems high for such low usage. Or, is that normal for the i7 Y2P?

Issue #2:

SOLVED as well. As explained a few posts down, it's my particular browser that's causing the pinch zoom nonsense. Nothing inherent with the Y2P.

Is there someplace to adjust touchscreen sensitivity? When I try to pinch to reduce browser size a little I have to repeatedly squeeze and expand my pinch before the zoom size starts to change, and once it does it does so almost in an exaggerated fashion. e.g. It shrinks to tiny size quickly with small movements, and zooms up giant size with small movements just as quickly. I'm like a frustrated Goldilocks trying to get the ideal size as it moves so quickly. That is, it moves so quickly once it finally decides to start working. I can pinch/expand several times before it kicks in. I *think* what I'd like is to increase sensitivity so that from the first pinch something happens, but to change the speed so that when I pinch the zoom changes more slowly so I can stop when it's where I want it. Is that possible?

Issue #3:

Occasionally, when coming out of sleep mode, the Intel AC modem fails. Going to Device Manager and disable/re-enable it, gets things back to normal. Any way to avoid that fandango, or is it "just one of those things" that we learn to live with?

Again, not life and death, rant and rave issues. I just want to know how the Y2P works and if I can make it a better working partner.

 

Was in BestBuy the other day and found myself looking at the Surface Pro 3 again and kind of missing the pen. But when going with something like the SP3 you make so many sacrifices compared to the Y2P. For the same money you get a lesser CPU, less ram, less SSD and a smaller, lower res screen. You also get less lapability and a more fragile device. Bottom line, unless that pen is REALLY important to your work and it cannot be replaced by something like a Venue 8 Pro as an accessory, it would be just plain dumb to go SP3 over Y2P.

The Y2P has almost 1/3 again higher PPI than the SP3 and yeah, you can notice. Surprisingly, the SP3 and SP2 have roughly the same PPI due to the SP3's larger screen.

Besides all of the rest, the greatest advantage the Y2P has over the SP3 is simply typing. Just better in every way on the Y2P. No contest. Basically, if you are HIGHLY mobile with heavy reliance upon the stylus (doctor, student, shop foreman, outside sales) the SP3 may be a better choice. If not, Y2P all the way.

 

@wpcoe,

Which browser are you having pinch issues with? I find pinch on the Desktop IE browser is flawless. Firefox and Chrome are dicey. That is a browser issue, not a Y2P issue. Firefox has always lagged on scrolling and pinch - it is the worst of the 3. Chrome checkerboards badly when scrolling (which is nuts because with a device this powerful, that should NOT happen).

 

One of the downsides of having an amazing screen like the Y2P is that you realize just how crappy and jagged fonts look on that old 1080p 23" inch monitor you are trying to project to. This is especially true since M$ intentionally broke how their ClearType font smoothing works in Windows 8. However, there are some solutions:

1) When setting zoom, choose from the slider options as opposed to setting a standard zoom %. This will make things size better on the external monitor.
2) If you can, use an HDMI to VGA adapter for your external monitor. Many modern monitors will give you the option to adjust focus, but on VGA connections only. By using VGA and about 50% focus settings, you will smooth fonts.
3) Download a 3rd party font-smoothing algorythm, like gdipp, which works very well. You can get it here:

https://code.google.com/p/gdipp/

I recommend the gdipp_x64_0.7.6.msi one as that seems to run the best and is the most stable. Just run it and click yes through all options. This will work especially well with Office Apps, Firefox Browser (must turn off hardware acceleration to activate it there) and Chrome. Fonts will be much smoother on your big monitors.

** Surprisingly, the only major browser which this hack does not help and scales the absolute worst on external monitors is IE. Lol, so Microsoft's own browser is the one that can't scale with Windows 8.1. You honestly can't make this crap up.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. My default browser is Opera 12 (not the current Chromium-based version). I just tested on Internet Explorer, and the pinch zooming is much better. The first second or so of moving fingers does nothing, but when the zoom in/zoom out starts, it's a slow, gradual process which is what I want.

I've heard that the Metro/Modern version of IE is better in some ways, but in order to access it you need to set IE as your default browser? I really like a lot of the features on Opera 12, but as time goes on more and more sites are not really compatible with it any more. The pinch zoom thing is one more thing in IE's favor, if I do decide to abandon Opera.

 

I did just did that very thing. My settings are: 1920x1080 and set my text and other items to a Custom 140%. I set IE11 desktop to 143%. So far everything seems to be displaying very well.

 

Well I just couldn't bear the light bleed along the bottom of my screen any longer and the laser beam under my "N" key was annoying me. Went back to Best Buy to make the exchange and I saw they had some open box units available. One looked like it had barely been touched (prior to being returned) and it had zero (or extremely low) light bleed and the backlight on the keys was uniform. As much as I hate buying "used" (in this case barely used) I went for the open box unit which was $120 bucks off retail. Gotta say, so far very pleased. I've owned a lot of LCD screen tablets and laptops before and this one by far has the least light bleed. Also, the key backlighting is very even with no bright spots like on the unit I returned. Very happy so far.

Yeah I coulda gone new but I tried 3 new units. One had a busted SSD and two had terrible light bleed.

 

Congrats! You're a serial Y2P owner. Just curious if your earlier discounts carried over? I'm guessing they expired...or weren't valid for an open-box unit? Either way how frustrating...your BB is growing them on on the walls and mine has them all stashed in the store room. Maybe I should start checking mine daily for open-box returns.

-Matt

 

No I got no new discounts. Just traded me straight up for the one I was returning. Only took the open box unit because the keyboard looked great and light bleed was less (still there a little but much much better). BestBuy doesn't offer additional discounts on open box items.

 

My Best Buy usually does offer additional diss on Open Box, you just have to ask. I've had them knock off an additional 10% off just for asking.

 

Yep, always good to ask. But the discounts I already had on the original purchase still made my price of $924 less than the OB price of $1079 less 10%. Just took it and was glad. Even though it is open box, everything about this unit is better than my first one.

 

Since we've been discussing Yoga 3 Pro rumors a bit:

Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Almost Here, Powered By Broadwell

I think the threats/promises of greater battery life sound great, but seriously...a Core M @1.1GHz would feel like an Atom to me.

EDIT: OK, actually quite a bit faster than an Atom, but slower than a Core i3 -- some benchmark data here, here, and here. Hmm, that last link is especially encouraging: " Although we’ll need to test the new Intel Core M series more thoroughly, it looks like the new fanless chip works almost as fast as the Core i5 chip inside the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 while consuming much less power, and a lot faster than the previous low-voltage processors."

-Matt

 

Well here's another interesting update, and I definitely hope the "suspicion that there will be other options with more powerful processors" proves true.

Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro with Broadwell Intel Core M-5Y70 detailed

 

Thanks for the info!

That Asus sleeve looked great, but when I tried to order it, the only shipping option was FedEx 2nd day @ $44.70 !!! Seriously, $45 to ship a lightweight sleeve??? I live in Hawaii, not on the moon! LOL!! Guess I won't be getting one of those. Oh well... the search continues.

 

Lol, always something new to give us buyer's remorse. I wish the Y3P would include a digitizer but I know that is probably a pipe dream. For some reason Lenovo just seems dead set against letting that happen. :-( It's really too bad. I don't like the form factor of the SP3 which has the digitizer but I love the form factor of the Y2P which does not. Dammit. When will I ever be able to buy one device that has EVERYTHING I want?

Dream machine. Y3P with a digitizer and no light bleed. Hell for that matter, I wouldn't even care if SOMEONE would make a bluetooth stylus with palm rejection for Windows. Really hard to believe that it is 2014 and NO ONE makes a bluetooth stylus for Windows. There are like 12 of them for Apple. :-( Microsoft was talking about it 2 years ago but just ended up being vaporwear.

 

Ack, sorry guys. I just realized (DUH!) we already have a Y3P release thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ideapad-essential/761207-official-yoga-3-pro-release-thread.html

I'll do my Y3P business over there!

-Matt

 

Wonder what we can expect on a release date for the Y3P? I hate how companies keep all of this stuff so secret.

 

You know, at first I agreed...but on second thought I'm not so sure. If the Y2P price drops, say 15%-20%, after the Y3P announcement, the Core i7 Y2P would still be the better choice for me. It would be a hard pill to swallow that I'd never see over 6 hours of battery life on it, but the embarrassing truth is I'M PLUGGED IN ALL DAY LONG. LOL So really the idea of "all-day-battery-life" in fact translates for me to "3 full-length movies on an airplane." It's an awful lot like the machine I currently have -- spent MONTHS searching for one with a discrete GPU, and guess what, I basically use the integrated GPU 100% of the time. Guess I'm a sucker for good marketing.

In my quick bit of research on the M-5Y70, I also didn't see jaw-dropping claims of battery life...I think my last read was that it's 50% faster than previous-gen mobile fanless chips, but only offers 1-2 additional hours of battery. If that's so (and note to self: did Lenovo squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of Haswell?), then the new Core M is really just an evolutionary step up (with a big possible loss in processing speed compared to Haswell U). Bottom line: given I keep my machines 2 years on average I'd jump on a Y2P at the right price tomorrow.

If you haven't checked out ikjadoon's thread on the Y3P release, I strongly recommend it. It's short but he's doing an outstanding job gathering clues and rumors. Some good speculation there about release dates.

-Matt

 

I saw a thread saying the M-5Y70 was 40% faster than the i5. Might have read that wrong. Who knows. They say they are going to make it "more useful". To me that hints at an active digitizer. I mean, they are going to be competing against the Surface Pro 4 after all.

 

Be careful what you wish for! You might be right -- but what the rumor thread is suggesting is that it's possibly going to be a detachable tablet:

-Matt

 

A detachable tablet would violate the entire Yoga concept and would not really be more useful. Seriously doubt that is it.

Speaking of styli, am looking at the Dart by Precision Touch. Seems to be pretty much exactly what I am looking for (except for the palm rejection - but I have a glove for that so I can live with it). Not 100% sure this will work well with Windows 8.1 (they say it works with 'Windows Mobile Devices') but sent them an email to find out. Always wonder why these companies aren't more crystal clear on the web pages about such things. They always hint around the edges but never come out and say, "Yes, this works perfectly with touch enabled Windows 8.1 tablets."

The Best Active Stylus Dart by Precision Touchâ„¢

Would love palm rejection too but if I can get precision writing I'll take it.

 

I'm at a bit of a loss here. This computer has an i7 CPU, 8 Gb of ram and a 256 SSD drive barely half full. By all measures it should BLAZE through the kind of things I do - Office, Web Browsing, etc. Yet sometimes it lags and lags badly, especially after recently rebooting (I've disabled most everything that runs at startup except the essentials).

For instance. Sometimes I will launch MS Access. This should and typically launches instantly, but after a fresh reboot can take 15 to 20 seconds to launch. Same thing with Word. I check Task Manager and nothing is grinding the CPU, stuff just won't launch. It's almost as if there is some sort of memory leak? Same applies to web browsing. Web pages should appear almost instantly given my bandwidth and this hardware, and yet web pages take 5 and 10 seconds to load at times. That's just nuts.

I'm really at a loss where the bottleneck is. Right now, this doesn't feel like an i3 much less an i7.

 

I installed an app called CleanMem that does a real nice job of optimizing ram. Let's see if this helps.

 

First two thoughts are (1) can you do a clean 8.1 reinstall, and (2) have you looked at disk activity? In the latter case, you might have something like disk caching or indexing turned on, which I assume most people turn off with an SSD. I am also a big fan of utilities like HWInfo and ProcessExplorer, which can tell you a lot about what's happening under the hood. Oh and a third option is to head into Computer Management and check the Event logs -- maybe something funny going on there.

-Matt

 

This reminds me of a heads up for folks -- I doubt it has much impact on perf, but at some point a long while back while setting up various details in my Y2P, I noticed that my system Event Log was flooded with a constant stream of warnings (every 10 seconds I think it was) from (what proved to be) the motion control service, PGService, not being able to access a pg_user.ini file. Being unable to find the file in question or anything about it, and having no short term intention of trying out the visual gesture features, I ended up just disabling the service to stop it.

Recently I updated drivers etc., and updated the motion control sw as well, wondering if the issue might be resolved. It was not, but this time I found a reference to someone resolving the issue by doing what now seems like the obvious thing (doh) -- opening the motion control software and changing one of the settings. And that generates the previously missing .ini file and stops the warnings.

So other folks might want to take a look at their Event Viewer system log for that, though again I'm not sure what the impact could be (might slowly fill up ssd memory at least, but I imagine the event log queues out old events at some point..).

 

I've been seeing this same issue recently, inconsistently but fairly frequently. It seems to have started sometime after I updated to the latest Intel wifi drivers, so I suspect the new drivers could be the culprit.

I haven't investigated too much further because I have an AC-7260 module that I've been putting off installing for months and months, and figure it's time to just do it already -- and when I do, I'll update to the AC dual band driver version, and will no doubt find out soon enough if the problem still occurs with that setup. Do you have the original wireless card, or did you swap in an AC version? (Or alternatively, did you get one of those newer revisions that came with the AC version included?)

 

The one thing I'd love most to improve on this machine would be to expand the vertical res to 16:10, i.e. make it an even 3200x2000. The screen is really nice, just a bit more vertical room would be so useful; and there's so much unused bezel at the bottom (and enough on top) that the form factor wouldn't have to change at all. (The advent of 16:9 screens for entertainment was a horrible development for computer displays, IMO.. I have 16:10 on my desktop, but miss it on the laptop -- probably the most appealing thing about Macs to me, as someone who's never owned one.)

Improving the color situation would be nice too. But expanding 16:10 with this same hi-res display would be a killer feature for me.

 

Yes that's one nice feature of the Surface Pro 3 with it's 3:2 aspect ratio. Makes for very nice web viewing in portrait. As a matter of fact, at 12 inches the Surface Pro 3 in portrait is about as wide as the Y2P in portrait. Good suggestion.

 

Ok, I just went in a deleted all of the Lenovo bloatware (motion control, etc) that I never use and let's see if things aren't a bit snappier here. I really want to experience the POWER of an i7 CPU with 8 GB of ram but so far, this feels no quicker than my SP3 i5 with 4 GB ram.

 

I ordered the Dart stylus today and I'll report how it handles with the Y2P and some tablets.

 

Are you running an anti-virus with scan on access option turned on?

 

The display size would have to change from 16:9 to 16:10... the bezel is not enough to compensate for that difference, so a physical size change will take place.

I prefer 16:10 myself, but there's a zero chance that will happen...

 

A rep for DART just responded to me in the Yoga 3 Pro thread. He said they tested extensively on Surface 2 with great success and that it should work very well on Windows 8.1. Great news. He mentioned Zoom-Notes as a great app for palm rejection, but as far as I can tell it is an APPLE only app.

 

Nope. Things seem smoother since deleting the bloatware and running CleanMem in the background.

 

I'm still trying to get over the $70 (shipping + tax included) price for the darn thing...

 

For an active stylus that can work without a digitizer? Quite reasonable actually. Just wish it came with universal palm rejection but I guess that would be a lot to ask for.