x120e Owner's Thread

Usually Turbo Core works the other way round, when just one core is used it ups its frequency, so that tasks which are single threaded can get a boost. However, it's possible that the E-450 could also provide a boost when the GPU isn't used. We'll have to wait and see.

I think that the big boost will come next year, when AMD Krishna APU's arrive, with up to 4 cores (or is that Wichita?). That should really make this form factor interesting.

 

I played old school DOD and it was very playable ~40 fps; when a nade goes off it dips to around 14fps. I had everything at low but only at 1280x800. I guess Steam doesn't support 1366x768.

Also played Halo 1 at native resolution with everything at low or medium and it is excellent.

 

My package has been stuck at Louisville, KY for two days now without any update. It just says arrival scan . Delivery date is tomorrow so I hope that they don't push that back!

EDIT: Just got off the phone with Lenovo and they said they can't price match my quote because I paid with Amazon with my previous order. What a stupid reason. I thought all payment options were the same so I just Amazon for convenience.

 

Just a follow up with anyone else who also ordered the BT

I finally called lenovo back today and spoke to a supervisor about my missing credit and to his knowledge, "it shows a credit on April 1st" .... WOWW really? So I call my bank's dispute department and THEY credit me with no questions asked.

In all in, I'm so glad I ordered with my visa signature card because lenovo basically gave me the run around and was useless. I love my laptop but I'm never doing business(directly) with them again.

 

hmm something weird i noticed at this minute.

Had some white lines dash across my screen. I was opening up a PDF (most likely unrelated) and saw it to the right of the window. Quick little white dashes. When I moved the mouse up and down towards the right of the screen it happened just a bit more. It was NOT the entire screen flickering, just a bit of the white lines.

So, the big question, anyone else a witness?

EDIT: not entire screen, just the right side.

 

Does it look like either of these videos?
YouTube - X120e Screen Flicker issue

YouTube - x120e screen flickering lines

EDIT: There's a bit of discussion about that problem in this thread over at Lenovo's forum: http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x120e-Flickering/td-p/389523

 

Not as prevalent as the first vid, YET. Ah as I read some of the things on the Lenovo forum and disabled Varibright (whatever is on Catalyst Control Center) screen went crazy! DAMN. I'll keep reading. Getting ahead of myself, will come back in a bit.

 

Hmm so after reading everything it looks as if they think its a driver issue, which I think is BS. So I guess I'll have to wait it out.

Also I would love to post directly on their site about the buzzing issue with my external microphone, but apparently I, "do not have sufficient privileges for that action."

oh what a day.

 

I think it's either firmware or drivers -- there was one person that exchanged their x120e and had the same problem, and it happens on the HP dm1z too (see the http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-pavilion-notebooks/501683-hp-dm1z-204.html#post7262970 thread) which uses the same platform.

 

Well thats good and bad news, but mostly good. I mean this is the most common time where things should mess up, so hopefully it all gets resolved with either drivers or sending the lappy back in. Woo for Warranties. Funny how I think I have to re-register with Lenovo forums in order to post. Maybe my old sn was banned because I yelled about my r61i? Hmm, i dont remember yelling...

 

Is it worth waiting for the E-450 addition around July? The turbo is the only part of that that seems to be interesting (and possibly the GPU shader bump). I was considering ordering it with the E-350, but if it's only 2-3 months away, the upgrade could be worth it easily.

Any ideas of Lenovo will offer the E-450, and whether it will bump the price up? I'm looking at $410 for the E-450 model with 2GB of RAM and stock otherwise. I want to call them and see if I can get it without Windows to save some money too- around $350 and I'd buy it now.

As much as I love my Sager, it's not as portable as my older Asus eeePC- but that same netbook is long in the tooth and the 120e seems to be a great replacement.

 

The E450 has a higher output wattage compared to the E350. Not sure if a minor re-design to the unit is involved but because the 450 was released just recently, I dont think they will be out for at least another 6 months. Save up some monies and go for the x220!

 

Where did you see that the E-450 was released? It's still scheduled for Q3 (July). It's supposed to be the same 18 watt TDP as the E-350, so it shouldn't need more power or a different chipset. (It is shipping to be tested now I think though, but not for consumers- unless that's what you meant).

I'm not interested in the x220, since I've already got a sandy bridge laptop to do anything intensive. The 120e will just be replacing an 8.9" atom netbook from a few years back (to take notes and carry to class with my Kindle)

 

Quick update on my x120e with an intermittently-functional UltraNav. It ended up going in for repair to Lenovo. They replaced the motherboard and keyboard, and it seems to be working so far.

Thanks for the suggestions here, and also I wanted to say that I'm very impressed with Lenovo's service. When I called them last Friday, they quickly recognized there was a problem and put in a repair order. The box to send the computer in for repair arrived Monday morning, and they had the repaired computer back to me by Wednesday afternoon. I hated to get a new toy that was broken, but Lenovo took care of the problem and that's what counts.

 

My x120e finally got delivered today. I ordered on 4/14 and it was shipped on 4/23. I haven't picked it up yet since I have to wait for the front desk to "process" it =\

 

Anybody try the new AMD 11.4 drivers yet?

ATI Radeon? Video Card Drivers

 

I've had them installed for the better part of the day. So far, no differences in normal usage as far as I can tell. Haven't tried gaming on it, though.

 

Guys, i have been following the forum for a while now but there is something that is bothering me..

I have been reading about UEFI lately, and i wanted to go ahead and install Win 7 in UEFI. But my problem is, i can't find a way to get the Win 7 installation media to boot once i select UEFI only from BIOS. Did anyone try UEFI Only installation with x120e?

I am aware USB installation is not possible, i have an external USB DVD-RW.

 

USB installation is actually possible; I did the UEFI install on my x120e that way. I prepared a USB flash drive using these instructions: [How To] Installing Windows 7 x64 To Your CR-48 (UEFI)

The x120e should boot from the flash drive if you put it in UEFI only mode.

 

Thank you for the quick response..Trying it as we speak.. Did you notice any advantages over BIOS?..

 

It's hard to tell... I didn't have Windows in BIOS mode for very long, so I didn't finish all the optimizations, so I can't directly compare.

 

x120e is my first Lenovo.. And i am extremely happy with this little thing.. I have 8GB memory with Vertex 2 120GB.. This wasn't a necessity move, but i read about "restoring" EE 2.0, and this was one of the things listed as a recommended move.. What optimizations do you do to this system?

 

What is everyone using to track power usage(watts its using) and cpu %?

 

To track the power usage I use Lenovo Power Manager for the CPU, I use CPU-Z to track frequency and task manager to track the CPU % usage.

 

I have the upgraded Lenovo 2x2 ABGN Wi-Fi card that uses Broadcom... I also have Intel 6200N sitting outside.. I can't find a good comparison between the two to decide on which one to use.. Anyone has suggestions?

 

I am anxious to buy the x120e and I am hoping some questions can be answered.

I am currently deciding between the x120e and the acer timelinex 1830tx

the main difference between the two laptop internally is that the 1830tz has the intel u5600 cpu and intel hd while the x120e has better video capabilities.

Some questions I have:

a) According to cpubenchmark, the e-350 cpu has a score of 744 while the u5600, a 1.33 cpu, has a score of 1164. These are benchmark though, what is the differences between them in real life?

b) reviews say that the acer isn't playing 1080p video smoothly, is it ture? (i know i could have a better answer in the acer forum)

c) anther review, i think the one from laptop mag, saying that the x120e gets quite warm(close to 100 degrees) when streaming 20mins of video. Any current users have that issue?

fyi, I will be doing web browsing, email, and streaming. Nothing intensive.
And I am coming off a satellite a200 with a c2d 1.6ghz t5450 cpu with 2gb ram on window 7 and I will be happy to get the same performance in a smaller form factor.

Another factor that comes into play is that the acer is only $468 locally n a similar speced acer on amazon is $378(only a gb of ram
Less) and the lenovo needs to wait for 17 business before shipping via the canadian lento site.

Thank you in advance

 

The Acer brand alone reeks bad reputation and quality even if they improved. Get the ThinkPad because it is sleek/professional, better keyboard and matte screen.

 

Agreed. My friend had the hard drive in his Acer fail on him three times in one year. Could be bad luck though.

I also hope you don't mean 100 degrees Celsius. That'd be way out of line for an X120e.

 

The x120e should be equivalent to an c2d 1.0ghz but having an built in graphic core, program and file format that support hardware acceleration should run comparable to your Toshiba. The temperature posted my laptopmag is not inline with my experience and other reviews. May I ask what program are you using to play your media and what type of format do you use for your media?

 

I try the AMD 11.4 driver, the color seem to render more pleasant to the eye than the older driver. I might just be imagining it.

 

this is from the review

After streaming a video for 20 minutes, we measured the middle of the X120e's keyboard at 100 degrees, the touchpad at 96 degrees, and the middle bottom at 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

We consider temperatures over 95 degrees uncomfortable and over 100 degrees unacceptable. However, perhaps because the 100-degree area on the keyboard was only in the base below the center keys or because the plastic key material was not highly conductive, we didn't feel much heat on our fingers while typing. The small label area on the bottom near the battery was a different story, reaching a very noticeable 108 degrees.


It is that part of the review that discourages me. Having said that, what is the most common temp among laptops with that kinda of cpu power?

Sorry, should have made myself more clear about my intended use.

For browsing, I am using google chrome and I use it to stream videos on Youtube and megavideo. Rarely will I run any video off of the hdd and when I do, which is mostly .avi or mkv, I use VLC; I have read some where to use media player classic as it supports hardware acceleration. Other than that, there is the occasional word, excel. No gaming or video/photo editing.

On a side note, during my research I have found out that the su5600 has a wei score of 4.2 and the t5450 has a score of 4.6. But cpubenchmark has the su5600 at 1164 and the t5450 at 941.

 

Have you seen the NBR review? The temperatures listed in that review are 10F lower. As a comparison, here are some reviews of other AMD E-350 laptops:
HP Pavilion dm1 Battery Life, Heat and Conclusion
Sony VAIO YB Battery Life, Heat and Conclusion
Sony VAIO YB Series Review

Personally, the heat has not been an issue. While the keyboard and bottom get a little warm, it runs a good bit cooler than my old Macbook, for example. I think the x120e just has higher fan thresholds than the competing E-350 laptops; most people with the DM1z, for example, change the fan settings to run less often (people do that with the x120e too).

This is basically how I use my x120e. My Macbook (whose T7200 has a passmark score of 1146 and no video HW acceleration at all) could not handle streams above 480p without stuttering, and even at 480p, it would get extremely hot. In that respect, I've been extremely pleased with the x120e -- it's handled 1080p youtube videos (when the youtube player decides to actually use HW acceleration) and 720p videos everywhere else.

I couldn't find too many specs on the Acer 1830tx, but judging from the CPU, I'm going to guess it comes with an Intel 4 series GPU... which should have HW acceleration for video... but the x120e probably has better build quality.

 

I am having an issue with UEFI Only installation. After i install the Windows, whenever i install the WiFi driver, i cannot get WiFi to work. On the Device manager, it says "This device cannot start". I have the Lenovo 2x2 ABGN..

 

I don't have that wireless card, but did you install the PM driver and Hotkeys features first, and then make sure the wireless radios are enabled?

This problem has been mentioned on Lenovo's forums: X120e ABGN Driver issue in Windows 7 Pro x64 - Lenovo Community

They seem to think you need to do a windows update first, but not install any of the drivers from windows update...

EDIT: As a side note... seems like there's a new BIOS out! http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-76666 The change log doesn't seem to indicate there was much of a change... I might try it later tonight.

 

I was just reading that link.. I am performing all the driver updates from TVSU. I am going to try installing WiFi after all this is done.. If it does not work, then i will update the BIOS.. If all fails, I will find a modified BIOS, and put my 6200N in.. I am not going to do another Secure Erase on my SSD and re-install OS. Hopefully everything will work.. I will update my results here..

I hate it when they don't provide Release Notes.

 

sigh... I did all the updates from TVSU, then installed the WiFi driver.. Checked the radios, everything was on.. Turned them off, did a reboot and turned it back on.. No dice. This is very frustrating.

I have performed the BIOS update.. In order to perform it, i actually had to burn it to DVD.. It said, it could not read load the Driver... Why do i feel that i might have a bad install? .. I have made my own Win7 SP1 disc from original MSDN download.

Edit: SO i gave up on trying to resolve this.. So i put my 6200N.. Working perfectly..

 

The BIOS update issue happens to a lot of people, myself included, though Lenovo claims they can't duplicate it. I feel safer updating it outside of windows anyway.

 

I am going to have to start modifying the stock image file that they put on the website.. I won't be able to install a stock BIOS from now on..

Do you burn a disc, or use a flash drive to flash the bios?

 

I use a USB flash drive, which I create with YUMI. I don't actually have a USB DVD drive, and I luckily haven't needed one yet .

 

How long does your boot up take from power button to usable desktop? It took 2:41 for me which is LONGGGGGGGG and it feels like something is wrong with my Windows.

 

If we go by Microsoft's definition, which is that the system is done booting once the CPU is 80% idle or more for 10 seconds, then my system boots in about 50 seconds (the desktop comes up in 37 seconds), timed using the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT). Add say another 3 seconds to account for the time from the power button to loading windows. (I'm using the 250gb 5400 rpm HD that came with it.)

If you really care about the boot time, I'd suggest using the WPT to figure out what's slowing down the boot process (see Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues - MSFN Forum and How to speed up boot process under Windows Vista or Windows 7 - MSFN Forum.

 

I was using my iPhone to calculate the boot time and ended it after I was able to open my computer properties. I ended up doing a clean install and reinstalling the drivers. It boots up around 1:30-1:50 now which isn't too bad. The only thing I miss is the Thinkpad start-up screen and wallpapers. Is there any way I can get those back?

 

I have a brand new x120e (E-350) here and have issues with it playing back 1080p Youtube content.

x264 works just fine with PowerDVD10, so hardware acceleration definitely kicks in. However on youtube it's just plain choppy. I tried IE9, Firefox and Chrome with 10.2 Flash Player and 10.3 Beta 2 Flash Player. Still same result.

Do I need to install anything specific? I have the latest ATI driver from the Lenovo website.

 

Was just reading about the screen flickering issues on page 51. I have a new Asus 1215b with the E350 and the ATI graphics and have those darn screen flickering lines!!! It started the first day and I need to decide soon if it is a hardware issue and needs to be returned, or an issue that can be resolved. Those of you that had the flickering, what did you do?

 

There were some posted way back in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...thinkpad-x120e-user-review-5.html#post7326765

You could probably reduce the boot time further by disabling some services (the ATI external events utility and FUEL service can be disabled).

Youtube's player has some issues using HW acceleration. If you right click the video and go to "Show video info", it should say "accelerated video rendering" on the last line. It probably says "undefined video rendering" for you.

There are two ways that I know of to get it to use HW accel.
1. Hit the full screen button ASAP. You have to hit it before the video starts playing though, so this is somewhat tricky.
2. Install some plugin into firefox: Accelerated video rendering is no longer working - YouTube Help

I don't think anybody's been able to consistently reproduce it. Rebooting usually fixes it... other than that, there's no real solution because it's difficult to test. I suspect an ATI driver bug, based on some of the issues in this thread: The AMD Driver Bug Thread - [H]ard|Forum

If you're getting flickering lines on the screen all the time, or fairly consistently it may be a hardware issue.

 

Ok I'll try that today and report back.

 

WARNING !!!!

I just killed my 3 weeks old X120e. Just let you guys know that I installed the new BIOS 1.12 and followed exactly the directions. And at the last step, the screen and system froze. I wait for about 20 min. reboot and cannot even see the bios setting either with enter key or F1, Fn_+F9.

I then prepare and CD with the ISO file to repair the bios. NO dice, cannot see bios setting nothing but black screen.

So you guys have been warned !!!!

PS I am an experienced pc and laptop user.

 

I use the BootTimer to measure my timings, and it takes about 45 seconds for my system to boot up completely. I didn't optimize the system much.. I don't have time to go through all the services. I have 8GB Memory along with OCZ Vertex 2 120GB.

I just updated my BIOS few hours ago to 1.12. I try to avoid updating the BIOS from Windows..I am sorry to hear about your x120e.

 

Just RMA it. Last time I had to send a Lenovo unit with a bad bios flash, turnaround was 6 days, that includes:

3 day Shipping from me to their depot.
1 day changing the motherboard
2 days shipping from their depot to me.


Great service. The only thing I didn't get from the agent was a Free Shipping Label (Prepaid) when sending the unit in.


Anybody got free shipping (prepaid label) when sending stuff in for repair?

 

Using that BootTimer in your post, my system boots in 53 seconds. I did do some service and startup item cleanup, but I still have some things loading at boot, like Dropbox... and I have the slow 5400 rpm HD too .

EDIT: I can't get Boottimer to stop coming up at every boot! I guess the problem is that it doesn't ask for privilege escalation to undo what it did . I tried turning off UAC and it didn't help

EDIT: Never mind, I forgot to reboot after disabling UAC.