x120e Owner's Thread

Thanks, and I plan on it. I'm 54, and life's too short not to ride!

 

Well great news, after 45 days waiting for a logicboard, finally lenovo told me that the replacement part isn't going to be delivered (due to some legal issues on my country).

Long story short, my only option is to send with some friend my x120e to Miami and ship it to lenovo hoping they dont take too long for the repair..

So can you give me some advice? step by step what shoud i (or my friend) do in Miami?

 

???

In what country are you located? Did you purchase the computer there? Has Lenovo offered to have you ship the machine to them for repairs?

 

Im from argentina, and i bought it in Miami, the lenovo representative told me that my best chance was to take it to EEUU and it would be repaired in 72hs max. Is it true? which is the procedure in miami ? coudl someone tell me step by step?

 

Is it normal for the x120e with the e240 to feel slow as a turtle? Im using one at work, and my older x100e with the turion dual core was a lot faster than the slightly newer single core.

 

for some reason when I use the FN brightness keys nothing is happening expect for a beep, the other keys are working fine. Any suggestions?

update: fixed

 

Well...I've never needed repairs, but it's possible. If you want, you could send me the incident info (any numbers, contact info, SN of the machine) and I could call Lenovo and ask them "what if..." and post the answer to you.

I keep a junk account for email that I'm willing to post here: commercespace (at) live.com. Send to that email (with subject X120e Assist)and I'll find out what I can, and then if you like Lenovo's response, you can get the machine to your friend in the US.

Sound reasonable?

 

I've already sent you an email thanks a lot!

 

I have the same problem of the screen going black but I am able to connect it to an external monitor and it works fine. If I look very closely at the laptop screen, I can see a VERRYY faint outline of the actual desktop screen but I can't adjust anything to bring it up. I'm wondering why lenovo had to replace your motherboard?? Unfortunately I'm out of warranty and looking to do the repairs myself but I was hoping it was just a lose LCD cable. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

 

Here's a dumb question--does the screen light up at all when you turn the machine on? From what you describe, it sounds like the LED(s) that illuminate the screen (or even more likely, their power supply) are dead. Everything is working, but without the LED illumination, you can't see the screen. To test this, you can try shining a very bright light onto the screen at various angles.

 

I think if it were a wiring harness it would have given you some warning symptoms. you would have had some erratic display when flexing the lid, upon opening, etc for awhile.
if it simply 'turned off' its more likely to be the display panel itself, I think. I claim no special expertise other than having to work on them when they go bad [not just these models, lots of various ones].

what you might do, if you have not thus far, is open the notebook enough to hit the power-on, then as its booting, close the lid down to about 10mm... in other words almost shut, slowly, and watch for any flickers of life on the screen.

I have not looked at the arrangement of the connectors on this model. even though display panels can be had fairly cheaply, I would bet that your better route would be to sell it for parts on ebay, and buy a used one in good condition.
if the buyers seems that it works fine on an external monitor, it will bring some money.. some of those guys have stashes of display panels etc from cadavers and can fix them cheaply, put it back on ebay for sale

 

one more thought on the flaky display: you should post a new thread in the "Hardware" section here, re something like "help with replacing display panel" and describe it. Some of those folks are very knowledgeable and can help a lot.

ALL - if you haven't tried it: the ATI Catalyst 12.8 is out and works really well. solved issues with 12.6 and 12.7

 

It doesn't light up at all. I can just see a VERY faint image of the actual desktop and can move around a window and see the movement. So if I shine a very bright light onto the screen, what am I looking for? Thanks for the help!

 

Thanks for the heads up. I'll post in the hardware section. I'm just thinking I should check to make sure all the connections are fine before I look into replacing anything. However, I've never fully opened a laptop so I'm a little hesitant. I'll have to check which version of the ATI Catalyst I have. I'll also have to try that partially open lid technique to see if there is any light. thanks again!

 

What you're looking for with a light is to verify that the computer is in fact working; normally, the LCD panel is edge-lit by LEDs (in the case of the X120e) or a fluorescent tube (in the case of older notebooks).

If the light goes out, that means that the screen is still working--displaying the information sent to it by the computer--but that you can't see it, or can only see it faintly.

In the bad old days (before illuminated LCDs), display panels for watches and that sort of thing used a reflective LCD display (even early computers did this) and so depended on room light to illuminate the display, by passing through the panel and bouncing off a white (or silver) surface on the back side of the LCD. I doubt the X120e has anything that reflective on the back of the LCD panel, but even so you maybe able to see the screen a little...

Now, I said earlier that the LEDs or their power supply might be dead. It could also be the case that either firmware or software is disabling illumination. If when you first boot the machine you can see things on the screen clearly (like the Thinkpad logo) but subsequently the screen goes black, that would likely mean that the problem isn't in the hardware per se. On the other hand, if you can't, then you have a defective machine.

Here's one way to tell: put the machine, powered down, in a dark room. Then turn it on. If you see any light coming from the screen, at least some of the LEDs are working. If not, the problem is in the LED lamps or their power supply (or, theoretically, in a wire that carries current to the LEDs).

Did the screen work correctly when you first acquired the machine?

 

Windows 8 update:

Installed Windows 8 the day it became available to MSDN subscribers. I must say the UEFI boot in Windows 8 is blazing fast even when I tried it with an old 5400RPM drive. The Installation, the configuration & performance is amazing. Too bad AMD has no graphics driver for x120e till now & nor does Lenovo. My machine is running on the default Windows driver ( WDDM 1.20). Besides that there is no Bluetooth driver yet.

While talking a bit more about experience, 1080p videos play like a charm on the default drivers & I did not experience any lag or slowdown in any programs. I tried stressing the system by running Visual Studio, opening 20 tabs in internet explorer, playing a 1080p video, also playing a video 720p in youtube, opening word 2013 & a few more applications.

I am impressed with how the system handled everything with processor never reaching 100% usage. I am loving the experience till now. Will post a more detailed review after a few days.

Shantanu

 

wrong.
if you are running the RTM the graphics driver you are running is AMD/ATI's.
and 12.8 is FOR windows 8 [and 7]
d/l and give it a try. you might want to uninstall the other first.

how do your fonts look?

 

Indeed the default drivers were provided by AMD. Attached is the screenshot for your reference. The Dedicated display drivers with control panel ( 12.8 as in Windows 7 ) are not available for e-350 (6310) on the AMD website. There is a 951kb or something patch that prevents windows 8 from installing incompatible driver software.

Same is the case with Lenovo support.

The drivers that came with windows feel stable and has no problems expect there is no control center.

So, When there is a dedicated driver release from AMD it will certainly increase the performance as well. I haven't tried the windows 7 12.8 as 12.8 were available for specific models on AMD.com & the chipset/APU support list did not contain E-350 in it.

Regards

Shantanu

 

on a diff system, I actually thought the driver win8 installed, same as what your png shows, "looked" better 'out of the box'. I had trouble adjusting things, gamma especially, after installing 12.8.
as to 12.8 itself, don't fool with the M version, just d/l the main x64 12.8 package [assuming you have x64 win 8].
Both 12.6 and 12.7 [less so] were buggy on E350. 12.8 got it right as far as I can tell. whether there is a good distinction between the vid driver w/12.8 and the one you're running, I'd be interested.
I'm going to swap a drive and load 12.8 on the x120 later today.
how do you like the speed?

edit: probably you know this but for others: if you choose the "Custom" install option of Catalyst 12.8 [or any], you get to observe whether the vid display driver is being blocked or not.

 

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Yeah, I have the x64 windows. Downloading 12.8 right now. I installed Windows 8 on a 5400RPM drive that came with this machine & then again on my SSD. If I leave out the part where SSD is much faster then the conventional HDD, Windows 8 felt blazing fast to me ( if compared to windows 7 ). Will check what performance gain I get with 12.8 & report back.

Edit: Installed 12.8 & yeah it does add some kick.

 

ok. So I never though UEFI would be that great with Windows 8. Another explanation can be that something is wrong with my x120e or maybe with me to 4 second cold boot with UEFI ? damn that's fast

 

ok, so finally got around to popping secondary drive in and loading Windows 8 CP x64. after all done I then simply d/l'd and installed the easy way Catalyst 12.8. I did not even bother to uninstall either the default driver or device & driver [usually a fine idea] since I'm just trying to break it. Went perfectly. Looks swell. I've not used the Lenovo display-fine-tune utility nor the windows cleartype tuner yet. looks grand so far.
I do not see the Gamma oversaturation issues on this that I was seeing on my lab mule desktop with a radeon 5700 series card [adjusted it mostly ok...].
I am fiddling with fonts and such a bit to get it suited to my eyes.

its fast. I'm using it on the original mechanical drive, whereas my main squeeze Windows 7 drive is a crucial c300 ssd. 8 is just plain fast...

I'm still learning 8 itself and don't know yet how to turn things off in the background - will work on that a bit, but I'm interested in hearing from any of you chaps that game on this little machine,, using Windows 8 are you seeing any better/worse performance??

 

Just Installed a Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD & Installed Windows 8 on it. Can any of you share your Crystal Disk Mark scores on the x120e ?

While at Random data and CDM3 I am getting 180 MB/s Read and 190 MB/s write . Isn't this is bit low ?

 

Just Installed a Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD & Installed Windows 8 on it. Can any of you share your Crystal Disk Mark scores on the x120e ?

While at Random data and CDM3 I am getting 180 MB/s Read and 190 MB/s write . Isn't this is bit low ?

 

it does look low on a glance. alignment? SSD - Fix Misalignment - Page 2 - Windows 7 Forums

 

One Small question. I read the generally available SSD Optimization guides. According to my understanding, disabling preftech, superfetch will not add to SSD's performance. What do you guys think ?

 

Hey guys,

I've been running Win 8 64 RTM on my x120e for a while now with no problems. Recently I put in a Crucial M4 SSD and did another clean install. Now when the computer wakes up from hibernate I've been getting interesting problems. One time all the keys on my keyboard input different characters (the win key was s, the s key was ], etc.) until I restarted. This morning the computer woke up, but all the keys, the trackpoint and pad, and even the power key were completely unresponsive. I had to remove the battery to get the computer to turn off.

Any ideas about what's happening? My BIOS is unmodified from the defaults, and I did no SSD optimizations, as Win 8 seems to do a pretty good job by itself.

Thanks for any help!

 

I would go grab the ultranav driver off the driver list at lenovo.
you might just run it, but I bet windows 8 will stop it midstream.
if so, unpack it all and note the location of the folder with the driver files, then go to the device manager, select the keyboard or touchpad [I think its one driver set... could be wrong] and "update driver" point it to that folder.

if that fails, I would disable the network ports [go offline, basically so it can't run fetch things], uninstall the devices. if it does not force a reboot, go back and try to point keyboard and pad to the folder with the good drivers. that should do it.

I didn't have the problem, but I didn't use it too long either since I have so much useful stuff on my 7 drive.

 

Hey everyone,

Today I noticed a faint damp patch on my screen ( screenshot attached ) . Is this a bunch of dead pixels ? or is my screen going bad ? kindly suggest.

 

Thanks cognus,

Win8 had automatically installed 15.something drivers, but the Lenovo site had 16.somethings. I installed those and the problem didn't happen this morning or afternoon. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

But the big thing is that trying these new drivers made me temporarily switch to the trackpad (I usually use the trackpoint red button thing). Even on a poor trackpad like the x120e's the Win8 integration in the mousepad is amazing! It really transformed the way I use my laptop and it feels like a tablet. The two-finger scrolling can be reversed (that was the Windows default), so you just drag up or down or left and right like a tablet. Similarly, you can swipe in from the left, top, or right of the trackpad to switch apps, open the app menu, or open the charms bar, respectively.

I now see what Microsoft was trying to do with Windows 8, and it's really nice to use. When controlling my laptop it feels like I'm using a touchscreen tablet, plus I have all the normal Win7 computing power of my laptop. I hope people realize this and it catches on!

 

Also, make sure you turn on "coasting" under the touchpad "two-finger scrolling" options. I'm really amazed at how smooth everything feels.

 

So I just purchase a barely used x120e E-240 single core processor, with 8 Gigabytes of DDR3 and a 128 Gigabyte Solid State Drive. Will the E-240 do me just fine or did I make a mistake?

 

People seem to like Windows 8 in this thread. How would people say it compares to a minimal linux distro in terms of speed and battery life?

 

does windows 8 supports undervolting? found no info @ google

 

yeah, I followed the guide by Midnightsun & it's works without a glitch on Windows 8 as well.

 

I installed Windows 8. OK, it works (it works best with ClassicShell, but).

So I have 32-bit Win8. And I notice that the setting in the AMD interface that let me turn off the variable screen brightness is gone. Now I have that annoying variation again.

Does anyone here have any idea how to fix this??

 

its still there.

 

It wasn't once I installed Win8. A very limited AMD interface. However, I dug up 12.10 and that fixed the problem.

While we're (sort of) on the topic--Win8 really doesn't do much for me, interface-wise. I did get a chance to play with a Thinkpad convertible tablet earlier today, and it worked well there (and it had an excellent keyboard as well). But if I had to do it all over again, I'd likely stick witn Win7.

 

yep 12.10 works well on 8. fixed an issue I was having with color control on a desktop system w/radeon card

 

Thanks for the update :thumbsup:

 

I am considering the upgrade to windows 8...

does somebody with the x120e know if the x120e has all the functionality with windows 8 as with 7?

I am interested in potential increased performance, and also to learn the new OS, but not if some of the buttons do not work on my laptop.

 

Yes, win8 is great on the x120e. I'm typing this on one. I go with a very minimal install (definitely do a clean install for best results) and it works much better than installing all the thinkpad stuff; most of those programs are redundant as Windows does everything natively. The only driver I actually installed from the Lenovo site was the power management driver (if you don't install this you'll have an unidentified device in device manager). Other than that, everything was taken care of through Windows update (either important or optional updates).

Definitely recommended.

 

I moved from win 7 to xubuntu 12.10 (kernel: 3.5.0-20-generic/x86_64) since I need developer system which use sistem resources at min level. Did a lot googling to customize xubuntu system with my x120e's HW, but now it works fine. have no issues with compling/running java. Also with undervolting and CPU scalling, the laptop's temperature decreased: 51 C for idle and 59C with video playing. (I use bios's fan controller, not "thinkfan"). The sound shuttered at the first 2-3 seconds by playing a video. But there is no issue for playing music files. Also, flash can crash firefox; I hate flash.

So, I am fine with the this OS.

 

that's an interesting subtlety. how would a windows user effect the same?

i think the x120e is one of the "sleeper" laptops of the past few years. I can pretty much buy what I want, but I haven't found a replacement for it. yes I would love a better display, but not at the sacrifice of the build quality, reliability, functionality, portability, keyboard, etc. there are faster systems, there are better gpu's, there are vastly better displays out there to be had, but I can't find the marriage of function and form etc that soundly thrashes the x120e just yet... and, I'm a bit of a Radeon gpu afficianado. I do tech work and thought initially that I would have to carry something else [well, besides my android devices] for "real work", but this little guy can pull mule duty.

i have another, spin-drive, with 8 on it, but I have 7 on my ssd and its the "devil I know".... I don't want to go through loading all my tools and configs just yet...

 

"Yes, win8 is great on the x120e."

ah, cool. I am going to try to install an upgrade and use it to dual-boot between the windows 7 install and windows 8.

I just need to make a recovery media, wipe out the recovery partition to open up a primary partition...

We'll see if the recovery media works USB 3.0... that's all I got... it's kind of a pain running into compatibility issues with usb 3.0. I need to do some more searching to figure out if this jump drive will work as recovery media..

 

in my view, recovery media per se is not of value.
what is it that you are trying to retain or save?
for windows 7/8, the tools are simply a file for the version of the os that you are licensed for [can be burned onto sd card if and when it is needed], and a repair disc image. these iso's are out there on the web [microsoft/digitalriver] so somebody else is doing the archiving for you. the drivers are mostly from windows update plus amd for the core components.
really there is nothing on the recovery partition of value, which is why so many of us kill the whole drive, do a clean install, use every speck of space avail.:thumbsup:

 

Oh, I'm just trying to be diligent, and I am not very familiar with available archives of .iso, or recovering with them.

I will see if I can find what you mention. Thanks for the advice!

hmm, considering the performance improvements with W8... maybe I will just do a clean install. I'm convinced!

I'll just use Macrium to put my windows7 into storage.. just in case.
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update 2
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so W8 is pretty fun on the x120e. So far the built-in mic no longer functions; some of the fn keys no longer seem to do anything, like the fn radio toggle. Sound and contrast, sleep fn key combos still work, but are a little different now.

it was crashing a little bit, but I guess it wasn't fully patched.

oh another thing is the touchpad. It can get a little glitchy with the gestures, but that was a little bit of a problem before. Now with more gesture capability it can do funny things, but it's not a big deal to get back to where you want to be.

 

I did the same thing, and didn't really liked it and went back to Win 7.

I am wondering about one thign though... How's the trackpad with the deep edge though, since the Win 8 sort of need the flat trackpad for the 4 hot corners thing, or are you using it in pure TrackPoint mode?

 

That is a bit annoying sometimes, but I usually just stick with the shortcut key combinations (Win + C to bring up the charms menu). Overall, Windows 8 works quite well on the X120e. Battery life is about the same, and the whole experience is just as smooth as in W7.

 

Hi,

Recently (after some Windows updates and a Lenovo System Update) I've been experiencing choppy playback on YouTube. First I thought it was caused by the YouTube player not picking up hardware acceleration, but by right clicking in the player window and choosing "Show video info" I can see that it says "accelerated video rendering" and "accelerated video decoding".

The strange thing is that it seems to be connected to network activity. If I let the YouTube player buffer a whole 1080p movie, it can then play it back without any dropped frames at all. If I play it back the normal way (with buffering taking place during the playback) everything plays back smoothly as long as it it not buffering. As soon as it starts to buffer (there is network activity), the CPU-activity goes up and the chopping begins. When this happens it even drops frames in 360p.

I am using the most recent version of Flash Player, Firefox and the Catalyst drivers. Does anyone have any idea what can be causing this. If I had a restore point in system restore I would have restored it by now, but unfortunately it is gone. This is an x120e with Windows 7.