x120e Owner's Thread

If you're in the United States then just buy from here: PROVANTAGE: Lenovo 05962PU X120E E-350 2GB/320 BT C W7-64

Pretty darn good pricing at those specifications, but the good deal is limited to American customers as always.

 

I tried for a calibration using a slightly cooler color temp (7500K instead of 6500K), so it should be a little less red.

 

Thanks, I'll test it out in a bit. I really just wanna make the screen look less washed out while on full brightness, and I've heard you can do that by messing with some settings in CCC, but I cannot get CCC to open, even after multiple reinstalls. Messing with the color options got rid of the washed out look for me, but all of them ended up with a reddish tint, which I'd like to avoid.

 

Ah, yea, CCC is a bit buggy. Have you tried running driversweeper ( Guru3D - Driver Sweeper) after uninstalling the catalyst drivers to make sure everything is gone?

 

Nah, haven't tried that yet. Was planning on doing it at some point, but I ended up being lazy instead

 

Finally, after 3 weeks , machine has arrived. First impressions, this thing is pretty solid. Keyboard feels excellent.

Quick question: Is there anything in the thinkvantage toolbox worth? I like a lean kernel, and I'm thinking about uninstalling this.

 

I called Lenovo Tech. Support about my intermittent noisy fan. sometimes it is normal, and other times it sounds like a helicopter landing. They sent me a box to have it fixed, but I have a feeling they are just going to send it back stating no problem found. Has any one else had this problem.

 

Personally, I'd say no: the only ThinkVantage programs I find useful are Power Manager and System Update (and if you use a conventional HDD, Active Protection).

The fan can be loud at times with the stock BIOS fan profile, but I'd never describe it as a "helicopter." Try installing TPFanControl and seeing how that works out for you. I tweaked some settings in the fan profile to make sure temperatures still stay cool, but also have the fan stay off for most of the time. When it does turn on, it uses speed "1," which is relatively quiet.

If speed "1" is still loud on your X120e, then your fan might have issues.

 

I am not really talking about the speed of the fan, but it more or less sounds like something is rubbing or a bad bearing.

 

Is it pretty typical for an X120e to idle between 4-16% cpu use? I deleted and shut down a ton of services, but I still see peaks at idle of around 16.

Oh, and FYI to those that care, the CAS Latency of the stock RAM in mine was CL-9. That's not the quickest, is it?

 

Usually mine idles between 1-5% or so. I've seen it at 0% a few times. However, random spikes up to 16-20% are fairly common. I wouldn't worry about them, unless you can find something that is quite obviously using the CPU excessively.

 

My X120e idles between 1-10% CPU, as does my T500. It's quite normal to see higher CPU usage, particularly when new, as the OS is doing various tasks (ie, indexing the drive, compiling .NET framework stuff, etc) during idle time.

The stock RAM is DDR3 1333MHz CL-9 RAM, which is the standard--you can find faster RAM, but that's usually enthusiast-grade RAM designed for overclockers. The 2GB stick I added is DDR3 1066MHz CL-7, which is more or less the same (and is standard for that speed).

 

This problem has ocurred in a few other x120e, there's a guy on youtube who reported the same problem as yours on his machine. He had to return it to Lenovo, don't know if they fixed it or not.

Here his exact quote from his review at YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Unforunately it'll have to wait. I'm sending mine back to Lenovo because my fan is making really loud noises, like it's almost hitting something as it rotates. They offered a full refund, but I'm actually more interested in just getting a replacement. It's the fastest netbook available, and IMHO the best built and sexiest looking too.

 

Has anyone had any luck finding software that will undervolt the E-350? RMClock doesn't recognize it

Since I run it passive until 72C, I'd like to bring down the temps further so that I can run it fully passive when the GPU is idle (hopefully).

 

Is anyone else having wireless problems?

I have the stock wireless card b/g/n and it keeps dropping when I try to stream hulu on both battery and plugged in. I tried everything (I think) and nothing is helping.

Any solutions?

 

Did anyone get a complete problem free x120e? or are they all coming with some sort of issues? was in the lenovo forum and reading all the problems made me nervous lol

mine should be coming in 2-3 days

 

Finally came in on monday after a minor delay from lenovo, this little guy is pretty impressive to me so far. Could use a bit more cpu and better screen but I can't complain. I got it for 475 including the usb hub/65watt power supply with 1 day shipping. The most important part for me was the option for 32-bit win7. Gives me legacy support for a few output devices that areant 64bit supported.

One thing I did notice was the audio stutter others are talking about. It hardly was noticeable to me. Just a split second of 'audio lag' or a slight scratch on a cd is how I would explain it. Its not worth having to uninstall or to do a clean install. I like the power mgr program. It does what it needs to do in a even better than windows7 default does. Plus its my first lenovo/thinkpad so I think it'll be a good novelty to leave it installed.

I think you will be happy with it unless your waiting it to perform like sub-1000 machines.

 

I haven't had any issues outside of the stutter, but that will be resolved (hopefully very soon) by a Power Manager update from Lenovo. JameZ on Lenovo Forums (a Lenovo employee) has already recognized the issue, and said the engineering team has replicated the issue and is working on it.

 

I'm getting an issue in 3d games where I'll get like 30-50 solid FPS but every 45 seconds or so the game will temporarily and completely freeze for a second or so. The games are perfectly playable until I hit these awful hiccup spikes.

 

To anyone who's opened their x120e: does it come with other Mini-PCIe headers/connectors? I assume yes, since you can get the 3G/GPS card added on, but sometimes companies don't solder the connector on unless you order it at time of purchase.

I ask because I'd consider putting in one after buying, to save on the initial purchase. If the headers and connectors are there, then that would be huge.

 

That's probably also related to the Power Manager stutter issue. Try disabling Power Manager's startup .dll, and it should probably be resolved.

The Mini-PCIe connector for the WWAN card is there in my X120e.

 

I see an empty slot adjacent to the wifi. I assume its PCI-E.

 

Would be interesting to see if anyone can get a Mini-PCIe SSD in the second slot...

 

I haven't had any noticeable problems at all, but haven't watched/listened to enough media to say for sure that I don't have audio stutter. Definitely haven't noticed it while playing games anyway.

One nice thing is that in the bios you can switch the Fn and Ctrl keys which made me very happy.

Also I installed mscroll from some other thread which allows the middle trackpoint button to function both as middle click and allow for scroll wheel-ish functionality. Most likely it's just an mscroll problem, but sometimes my cursor will just vanish. aka I can click on stuff and tell it's around, just I can't see it. It's only happened twice now in like two weeks, so it's hard to do definitive testing on it.

 

They all come with the connector, all the x120e configs I have seen are "wwan upgrade ready". My CTO ordered without wwan definitely has both the connector and antennas ready for a card. Along with zero glossy crap this was a big plus that steered me to a thinkpad.

The SIM slot is also installed and traces to the wwan slot, this is often just as important. I checked into doing this on my gateway/acer culv-book along with the other minicard slot and it looked like a giant pain in the butt to do aftermarket.

However, I do not know if both the usb and pci-e headers are used on the pcb itself. Whatever the gobi 2000 card option uses, that is definitely there. As for whichever interface remains, no idea. My best guess is the gobi uses usb.

Its also possible they split a single minicard "node" into pci-e traces to slot1 for the wifi and usb to slot2 for wwan, I have seen this configuration in other laptops.

Keep in mind you have to get the lenovo branded gobi 2000 (or write your own bios mod) so you may not really save any cost if that was the plan.

If you mean mSATA or any of the previous incarnations of sata-over-minicard-formfactor then definitely not.

If the card has its own embedded sata controller (theres one coming soon) then it depends on whether or not the wwan slot has the pci-e traces run to the controller on the motherboard.

The mSATA/wwan combo slots with the upcoming lenovo models are basically the usb lane of minicard connected along with some of the reserved wires (I think) used for a regular SATA channel instead.

 

Mine arrived yesterday but I'm just getting a chance to use it for a while tonight. First impressions are quite good, the trackpad issue that others have mentioned is definitely there but I figure that I'll just teach myself how to scroll using other methods and avoid the headache and wait for a new drive. One other thing that I've noticed, and is somewhat annoying, is that the screen seems to dim occasionally when I browse to a dark website. If anything I'd expect the screen to brighten to make the site easier to read, not darken. Either way I'd like to shut this "feature" off but I can't find anything in the native window settings or in Lenovo's power manager that seems like it'll do the trick. Anyone have any ideas?

Also, installing the second stick of RAM was very easy. 3 screws, less than 5 minutes, no issues. I may get around to replacing the hard drive this weekend which also appeared to be a simple process once the bottom cover was off.

 

nothing going on mine that i noticed

 

lol i have mixed my ram up. my 4gb is cl9 and my 2gb is cl7

 

MidnightSun, I see in your sig that will soon review the x120e. Any chance it'll be a youtube vid?

 

That's AMD's VariBright power saving feature, which is admittedly quite annoying. I disabled it as well--you can change the setting in CCC.

Open up Catalyst Control Center, go to the Power section and select PowerPlay, then uncheck Varibright. That should do it!

Nope, it'll be a written-up review with pictures--most likely, it'll be up either tonight or tomorrow. The writeup was actually done earlier, but I haven't gotten around to getting the pictures up since I've been quite busy.

 

So what is this uncontrollable screen dimming issue that others are talking about?

 

See my previous post

 

Looks like the base price of x120e comes with 6 cell battery and a 320gb hd at Lenovo. Also the abgn wifi $20 upgrade is no longer available.

 

Mine is problem free.

No dead pixels, no stuttering after removing the Lenovo power manager.
It is a great Ultra Portable Laptop with the best keyboard ever made.

In fact, it made me want to get a new Lenovo of more size and power.
At the same time I love it so much I want to just keep it and upgrade a bit.

 

Don't know whether to feel disappointed or now. I have an X120e just sitting in the US, and if I had waited I would have gotten more for the same price. On the other hand, the 3 cell was actually one of the attractions for me, since I care more about size and weight than battery life.

Still, nice move from Lenovo, and this will certainly make it compete better with the HP.

 

Don't know if you guys saw this, a compilation of problems and solutions on Lenovo's forum:
Compilation of Lenovo X120e issues and solutions

Want to get one of these, but I might wait until things get ironed out, and see if it fits my needs. Looking to replace my T61 with this.

 

hey Midnight,

I'm getting a Samsung 470 64gb for my x120e as well (80gb for Intel didn't seem worth it for my usages). It's also my first SSD. Can I get some advice on how to take care of the ssd?

Also does anyone know how to fix the wifi drops when streaming youtube/hulu? I've been getting it every couple minutes

 

Im starting to reall want this, just curious if Lenovo will update it with more powerfull Fusion chips this year, especially something more powerfull than E350, around 2Gz or up...

 

I've read that the E-350 is overclockable, but I don't think anyone's gotten the x120e past 1.6 GHz due to the BIOS not supporting an OC.

 

What should be the standard CPU temp. of this x120e?

 

Same here, I wonder if anyone has found a solution to undervolting as well. Unlike akwok, I have mine set passively only to 66C, am worried about other components if the system itself runs too hot. I have tried crystalcpuid and rmclock and sadly both are too old and do not cover Zacate .

 

I'm using the tpfancontrol program but whenever I switch to bios fan control, I notice that the temperature with the fan on all the time is in the high 50s unless running something cpu/gpu intensive, then it can go up to around 72-74C. That was for my system though and I'm not sure how it is for others.

 

Does anyone have the X100e sleeve that Lenovo sells? Will it fit the X120e with 6-cell?

I ask because the Lenovo website lists it as an accessory for the 120e, but the dimensions strike me as being reeeeeeaaaaal close to the actual dimensions of the 120e with 6-cell.

 

I don't have the lenovo sleeve, but the Case Logic LNEO-12 fits the x120e with a 6 cell pretty nicely, and it's probably about the same price as the lenovo sleeve: Amazon.com: Case Logic LNEO-12 12.1-Inch Neoprene Netbook Sleeve (Black): Electronics

 

Anyone know any/all ThinkPads are supported by TPFanControl?

 

yep as midnightsun said. basically does this on battery mode to preserve the battery life but you can actually change this setting to stay one brightness instead of disabling it. but of course then you do not get to maximie the battery life then. so somethings got to give.

 

Oooh, thank you for the link. That admittedly looks just perfect for my wife's needs. How comfortably does the power brick fit inside??

 

Yeah, I really want to undervolt this thing. Even a 10% vcore drop will probably cool things down quite a bit (Zacate has been known to undervolt pretty well on itx boards)

 

In the front pocket, the power adapter fits fairly snugly, though it makes a lump.

 

According to a news item at X-bit labs, there E-450 is expected in Q3. It will run at 1.65GHz but will have Turbo Core so should reach higher. Whether it will get to 2GHz I don't know.