x120e Owner's Thread

how about a different one altogether??

 

This is also happening to me. The OS believes that the battery has reached a critical level state and triggers its set response. My default Win7 Pro system hibernates.

 

I'm not sure if it would work, but you could try going into Power Manager, go to the battery tab, then do a battery reset. I think it charges the battery to 100%, then runs it down to 0%. It'll probably take many hours to do, so you should do it overnight.

Though, I don't think you should have to do this on a new battery.

 

Without doing a 'remove and replace' battery option I did charge and run the battery down a few times after receiving the laptop.

Will try to reset the battery and try again.

 

sent it back...

 

anyone know any macbook air style simple sleeves available for this baby? can it fit in a macbook air sleeve? x120e is only about half inch thicker than the mba, no? can I buy a mba sleeve?

I have the 6-cell battery

 

Got around to speak with someone higher up in Lenovo, they're taking care of my case right now, so hopefully my SLIC issue will be resolved soon.

Other than that, my X120e is running very happily with my SSD. Very peppy and solid.

Interestingly, the X120e is removed from the catalogues in Canada. Must be something to do with the pricing error fiasco and all the shipping delays.

 

I have the latest versions of Windows Media Center, Media Player Classic, and KMPlayer. Out of the three, only Windows Media Center can handle local 1080p video clips on my X120e without stuttering and hiccups. Anybody has idea why the other programs don't work as well? Thanks.

 

The most likely reason is that the other two program does not do hardware acceleration and WMP does take advantage of it.

 

I do a lot of work in matlab, as well as with emacs, and it's fine for 2 side-by-side screens, as long as your layout isn't filled with toolbar clutter.

 

X120E would be a perfect tertiary laptop for me if not for its weak cpu. I love its look and design, its simple lines and its invitingly austere sensitivity. It would be a laptop that I could carry around, to the kitchen, to the weight room, or leave it on the nightstand to catch the latest volleyball matches streamed over the net. There is even a 3-cell battery that stays flush with the laptop! (In comparison, HP's dm1Z is ghastly ugly.) But the cpu (E-350, Passmark:747) used for X120E is even weaker than the cpu (L625, Passmark:835) used for X100E. E-350 is barely stronger than the yesteryear's Intel Pentium M (Pentium M 2.26GHz, Passmark:588).

I certainly want my new laptop (at any price point) to survive the next Operating System upgrade (Windows 8). As it is, I am not sure this X120E can survive Windows 7 when the service pack 3 (or 4) comes around in the not too distant future.

I am eagerly waiting for a cpu upgrade for this otherwise heavenly X120E.

 

I'm afraid you'll never get a great CPU at a laptop this size at this price point. Zacate just came out, it's the latest and best tech AFAIK for Netbooks / UP. And from comparisons I've seen from professional reviews (not that it means anything), E-350 is quite a bit faster and more power efficient than AMD's Neo that was in the x100e.

E-450 is supposed to come out sometime before the end of the year, but according to Two new AMD Zacate E processors coming in Q3 | Netbooknews - Netbooks, Netbook Reviews, Smartbooks and more the only difference is 50MHz faster, you won't notice that at all. Although it will have Turbo Boost, wonder how much it will OC itself.

If you're willing to wait up to 8 months for that, that might be the way to go. But no promises there will be a ThinkPad based on that. But that's as good as it's going to get for a while. I doubt anyone will release an i3 for a Netbook, it will defeat the purpose (low price point) and overkill for the vast majority of intended uses of a netbook.

Edit: err, well X220 I guess, but as you can see that's starting at $899/979 depending who you believe. More than 2x the price of x120e and x120e has better GPU

 

Perhaps my standards aren't all that high, but the X120e seems plenty fast to me, although obviously slower than my T500's P8700. It's about as powerful as two of the desktops that I have (one with a Pentium D 2.66GHz, and one with an Intel Celeron 430 1.8GHz single core), both of which are running Windows 7 with no issues. I'd expect the X120e to handle W7 SPs and W8 with no problems, provided that driver support is good.

 

Can you elaborate in what way it's "obviously slower"? I'm not criticizing. Still waiting on x120e shipment and still trying to pinpoint its performance.

 

E-350 is indeed more efficient than L625 (with ATI Radeon HD2200). The gpu part of E-350 (Radeon HD6310) is much more powerful than the Radeon HD2200 used for X100E, but the cpu part of E-350 is no better than L625.

 

Sure. It is noticeable that the CPU is definitely the bottleneck of the X120e for many tasks, which is not the case on my T500 (which is usually bottlenecked by GPU). For example, scrolling a very high-res-image-heavy PDF is definitely slower than on my T500 (both are equipped with comparable SSDs), and high-res video output stresses the machine more than my T500. I made additional remarks regarding performance in my review (link in my signature), if you're interested.

True, I believe they're roughly equivalent in terms of raw performance, as benchmarks demonstrate (although performance per watt is definitely improved). My point, though, is that although it's not a powerful CPU by any means, it's plenty capable of running W7.

 

Thank you for the owner's perspective. Thank you for the lovely review that you wrote for X120E, very informative.

I am not expecting any high-powered cpu. Just something that can survive 3 years as a tertiary laptop without too much struggle. Anything close to the lower-middle level C2D will do, such as C2D T7800 (passmark: 1479), or the more efficient C2D P8400 (passmark: 1549). Hopefully AMD will be able to do that in their next iteration of APU.

 

I think that Microsoft learned its lesson with Vista and will not release another OS that can't function well on low end hardware. If Windows 8 is what you care about, you likely have nothing to worry about with the X120e.

Just set the height to 768 on your current PC and test it. You won't get the same pixel density, but getting the vertical resolution shouldn't be a problem on any desktop or laptop (choose 1024x768 if 1366x768 isn't available).

If you don't mind very small letters, it should always be possible to reduce font size in the IDE's. I used to program in Visual Studio and Code::Blocks on a 1024x600 subnotebook display. Set the font size small and it really helped make it usable.

 

.....to give some background on my systems......a Dell C400 with a Pentium M 1.2GHz and 768MB of RAM running XP was my mainstay portable from 2003-2009. It was then replaced by a Gateway EC1803H (thnk Acer 1410 with extras) with a single core SU3500 1.4GHz, 3GB of RAM. My desktops have been continuously upgraded over the years into a current Phenom II x4 at 3.69GHz, 8GB of RAM, and an ATI 6850. I can recognize variations in performance when running the same apps between systems. Except for final few years with the C400 and its lmited memory, my portables have satisfied at the time for what they are used for.

Buy what works for you now. If it satisfies you at the moment then it ought to continue doing the same tasks a few years down the road.

For any internet browsing and single tasked media playback at all current levels an E-350 system is enough to satisfy. It is not a netbook because such systems have been defined by the lack of processing/GPU strength and relatively low maximum memory support to handle all such basics.

For office tasks and most pdf editing/support? An E-350 is certainly acceptable and even to the point of being overkill. How much does one truly need for the mundane?

3D gaming? A few years old games can run acceptably, though even with older titles don't expect raving framerates ay max details and resolutions. That said, the current Zacate systems are better than past and most current ULV portables.

State what you want to run on your system. If your satisfaction is of comparing sandboxed synthetic benchmarks against cores of systems that currently often costs hundreds of dollars more or even double?? Then look elsewhere beyond the x120e -- as it will not satisfy your demands.

As my portable device this system is meeting mine.

 

Anyone else loving their x120e's?

I love my baby. I'm pretty sure I'll stick with the thinkpad x or maybe even t line a looong time for my future laptops.

Btw I had a macbook air 11 (nicest looking laptop I've ever had, loved the touchpad as well) and the x120e destroys it in performance even though the air has ssd. Also love having the 7hrs I get now vs the 4.5hrs I got with the air. Also built like a tank. I LOVE YOU THINKPADS.

 

I absolutely love my baby. I am also considering getting a edge or an classic Thinkpad to replace my current laptop.

 

How is that possible? The air's core 2 duo, geforce 320m and ssd outperform the x120e in all areas, according to benchmarks.

 

No offense or anything but I smell troll or just BS, I also have the x120e and my half sister owns a mba 11 and I know that you are lying when you said the x120e is faster than the mba 11.

MBA has a geforce 320m, a core2duo cpu faster than the su7300 c2d from m11x r1, and an ssd.

I know that you love your x120e and i also love it but you are either trolling or you just don't know what you are talking about.

Not just benchmarks, just common sense will tell people with decent knowledge of computers based on the spec of the mba that it is faster in performance than X120e. He is either a troll or just plain you know... lol

 

maybe I had a lemon mba...

oh and I'm talking about performance for me, not benchmarks, should've made that clear to. sorry guys

the way I usually do anything a laptop is have multiple tabs open on chrome so I can switch between them, maybe 7-8 tabs. some of them have videos paused or playing. I also have 3-4 word documents from school and 3-4 powerpoints open for school as well. and I just jump around while music is playing in one of the chrome tabs. that's usually how my work gets done, I know it's messy but it works for me. the air would lag a lot a lot a lot as I would do this and I would have to close windows left and right. annoyed the hell out of me. the x120e does all this without a hiccup and hasn't lagged or frozen once. For me, that would be better performance, I didn't mean benchmarks guys.


lol I'm also really sick and my doc gave me very strong medicine so excuse my grammer

 

lol no problem. Regarding your multitasking horror with mba vs the x120e, it is probably the OS that is giving you a weird experience since the fluidity and snappyness is different between windows and OS X, or perhaps your mba had 2gb of ram while you probably had 4gb on x120e.

But regardless of which you think is snappier, the MBA has faster components/hardware than the x120e, the power of MBA actually competes with the m11x r1 except Gt 335> non GT 320m on gpu.

 

OSX are not good with flash video, if you installed Window 7 on that sexy thing, it beat lenovo in almost in everything.

 

Ahhh you're probably right. Using that thing truly was frustrating though, almost send it flying like a frisbee.
I think a more appropriate price for it would be $599 honestly.

Possibly, but wouldn't the battery life suffer further?

 

Hey guys, how long does it take after the shipping notification, before the x120e arrives to your door ?

Looking for an approximate time frame. I realize that depending on where you are, that varies quite a bit. I am in Connecticut.

 

Just another comment on the speed of this system. Much of what I will use it for isn't overly CPU intensive. One of my computers is an HP with a Core Duo T2250 CPU. It gets a passmark score of 791. This is about 50 higher than the E-350. However, when I installed the Halo 1 demo the difference was night and day. The old computer could hardly play Halo at anything but low settings thanks to the Intel 945 GPU. The Lenovo was playable at XGA resolution and rather high detail and effect settings. If you really are going to do CPU intensive jobs I can see this things weak CPU causing headaches. However, the graphics seem to be sufficient to take on many tasks that kill my older computer.
BTW, the older computer may have an equal CPU but it does suffer from a slower 5200 RPM drive, and only 1.5G of ram. It also cost me slightly less than the Lenovo when I bought it new in 2007.
Anyway, I expect the baby TP will be a great secondary computer for years. I will never ask it to do my main computer work. I have a Dell Precision laptop for that. This is just an easy to carry toy that will mostly be used for web work but is strong enough to be my only computer when I travel. For that job I expect it will last for years.

 

Mine was about 1 week.

 

I'm having the same issue. Did you find a fix?

I noticed that after the laptop wakes from sleep, the brightness control stops working. But when I put it in hibernation and resumes it, the brightness control works. It's a lot better than having to reboot, but I put my laptop to sleep quite a bit and it's annoying not to be able to control the brightness levels.

My BIOS version is also 1.11

 

As of now, there's no solution -- Lenovo's working on it though, but we'll see if they can duplicate the problem.

There is the workaround MidnightSun suggested, which is to just make sure you change the power state while the machine is awake (i.e. unplug then put it to sleep, wake it up then plug it in)... but I often forget .

 

I am experiencing the same with 1.11.

 

Are you in contact with Lenovo? If you are, can you please update us on their findings? Many thanks.

For me, instead of putting the laptop to sleep, I let it go straight to hibernation (i.e. when i close the lid). It's weird, at least that way, I can preserve my control on the brightness level.

See if that works for you. I'm not too keen on this business of plugging and unplugging as suggested by MidnightSun - I don't always have the AC adapter with me.

 

I have only encounter the problem twice and haven't been able to reproduce it when I wanted to.

 

I just posted over at the Lenovo forums (the thread is here: http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series...-keys-for-brightness-not-working/td-p/408377), which is monitored by Lenovo staff -- last word is that the issue has been sent to their engineering team to look into.

I don't use hibernation because resuming is a lot slower than resuming from sleep.

MidnightSun's solution doesn't require any more unplugging or plugging in than usual -- from what he and I observed, the brightness controls break only if you change the power source when it's sleeping. As long as the computer is awake when you plug it in or remove power, it's fine.

I've never had it happen to me when staying on battery or staying on AC.

You have the 1.11 BIOS, and you can't duplicate it by following my video? I can replicate it about 80% of the time (in fact, I forgot to wake my x120e before plugging it in when I came to work today, and now my brightness controls are gone ).

 

OK. I'll monitor that forum to see if they come back with some answers. Thanks.

 

I also have the problem with brightness controls disappearing, but cannot reliably replicate it as you seem to be able to. Seems like it could be a possible cause, but it doesn't cause it all the time for me. As I mentioned previously, I also have an issue where for no reason whatsoever while running on battery, my x120e will decide that it has critical battery level and take whatever action I have told it to do when it hits critical level.

 

Have you tried the brightness control hotfix yet? Lenovo Support - Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit) Update Module KB2397190 (WW) - ThinkPad

(It doesn't solve the problem I'm having, but I do remember it made the problem less random).

Sounds like a bad battery. You could try resetting your battery by:
Go into the Lenovo Power Manager
Click the Advanced button
Go to the Battery tab
Click Battery Maintenance
Then click the button that says perform reset

This basically drains your battery all the way to calibrate the gauge, so you should either run it overnight or do it when you can afford to have the computer shutdown unexpectedly.

 

QQ:

So I've noticed the laptop is just a little sluggish. Not as snappy as my old R61i but still noticeably more awesome and sleek (and friggin light i might add). While I'm still holding onto some programs to see if I will ever use them, mostly Lenovo stuff, I do have 2GB of ram.

So I know some of the owners here instantly upgraded their stuff to 6 or 8. I did read that 6 is usually enough, but I haven't read anything about any noticeable jump from 6 to 8. I think I would still be down to open it up and put 8.

SO to the guys and gals with more ram, You think it's snappy? How's the installation process (easy as pie, or a bit of a )? and of course, best 6 or 8GB of ram? Price/quality? I know newegg has some stuff up to $100 so I may wait for a memorial day sale. But any info would really help.

Thanks Y'all.

 

Ram will definitely help but 6 or 8gb is a waste. 4gb is the sweet spot but it still won't be as snappy because the cpu is the bottleneck.

 

Upon a full charge I have now reset the battery under Power Manager and then let drain to nill, but sporadically the system will still return a battery critical alarm and then hibernate upon reaching a ~60% charge... After waking the system back up all it'll continue on running until reaching the expected OS critical point.

I may have to call Lenovo...

 

I got an extra 2gb stick off the egg for around 20 bucks. Helps with multitasking, for sure. Still not as smooth as my desktop quad core phenom, but makes a great little ultraportable.

 

Regarding the loss of brightness controls, a temporary fix is as I mentioned earlier. Either make sure the X120e is on, off, or hibernated while changing from plugged-in to battery and vice versa, and you should not be losing the battery controls. I've been able to consistently reproduce the issue and consistently avoid it with either of the three above options.

I did a test trying to pin down the screen flicker issue per a Lenovo staff's instructions by removing one of my memory modules a while back, bringing my total from 4GB to 2GB. I didn't notice any difference in how responsive or snappy the system was in my general usage during that test. However, given the low price of DDR3 RAM right now (I got my second 2GB stick from the Lenovo Outlet for $14 shipped), it's not too bad upgrading anyway.

 

Get a 2gb ram and a ssd, total cost around $150.

 

I think the x120e is pretty snappy with the 6gb of RAM, as long as it doesn't have to read from the HD. Installing RAM is easy -- three screws and you have access to the memory, HD, and wifi card (here's a video of somebody upgrading the HD and RAM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X00j-qEaY98).

As for the RAM, your choices are:
1. Buy a 2GB stick to add to the existing 2GB for a total of 4GB
2. Buy a 4GB stick for a total of 6 GB
3. Buy 2 4GB sticks for a total of 8 GB

Now as for the RAM speed, the E-350 only runs memory at 1066 mhz. You can buy 1333 mhz RAM, but the x120e will just run it at 1066 mhz.

Looking on Newegg, the approximate prices are:
~$22 for a 2GB stick
~$40 for 4GB
~$80 for 8GB (though, there's a rebate on a PNY pair right now, so you could get 8GB for $60: Newegg.com - PNY Optima 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model MN8192KD3-1066)

You could certainly wait for a sale. Given the non-sale prices, I'm not sure the 2GB of additional RAM, going from 6gb to 8gb, is worth the extra $40, but I did think going from 2gb to 6gb was worth it for me.

If you're only running one or two apps at once, and you don't tend to use a lot of tabs in your browser, you probably would be OK with 4gb. As for me, I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open, which uses a good amount of RAM -- I have ~25 tabs open in Chrome with iTunes running in the background, and I'm using 3.5gb of RAM without doing any real work.

 

You guys are ! thanks for the responses, it really helps out! I am debating an SSD to get this thing even snappy-er. This is typically out of my element, but I would love to do this. I read up and saw a lot of people did have driver issues with some SSDs, and some had no issues. But before I dive into which one to get and all that jazz...I have no idea how to do this...do i backup my system then boot the whole thing through rescue and recovery? I'm really sorry I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to opening stuff - I've done reformats and installed ram in my other thinkpad (which was annoying). But SSD...nothing like that yet. Instead of annoying you guys, is there a specific link i could look up (youtube, elsewhere)?

 

Installing ram is easy, just watch the video on this site

video of interest:
DIMM and maybe HDD

Service Videos

Never use Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery, can't help you there. If you want SSD get Intel, they are the mostly issue-free, but they are not as fast and more expensive than the others. My second choice will be the Samsung 470.

 

thanks, yea ssd maybe in the future when prices are a bit lower for something nice and big. I'll work my way up from RAM to maybe a faster HDD. Again, thanks for the replies! I'll let y'all know bout that ram.

 

Update on x120e ownership:

While I still like this laptop and haven't given up on it, I am running into lots of little troubles.

Solved:
1. Loose keyboard button, had to order and install a whole new one from Lenovo (customer service is quite good). Replaced with littler problem, although I noticed the KB is different from the original x120e, slightly softer membrane contacts which I prefer.
2. Stripped screw from manufacturing (for those of you familiar with the design it was underneath battery, the small flat screws locking KB into place) Made out of a ridiculously soft metal with shallow slots. Had to wrench it out with needle nose pliers and order a screw kit from Lenovo. Replaced with little problem.
3. Multitouch issues solved by turning off smartsense in touchpad driver.

Unsolved:
1. Dead Pixel: Noticed this once I turned my bg all black. Not as annoying due to high pixel density...but annoying nonetheless. So far undead pixel is not working on this display (ran for 8 hrs.)
2. Frequent driver annoyances: Windows explorer is crashing consistently.

Conclusion: I am really not happy with the QA of Chinese brands. I will buy from American/Taiwanese/Japanese companies in the future. Really the only thing I'm happy with is the form factor (American IBM design) and the chipset (American AMD) and Intel SSD (American). My technological racism has been validated with the purchase of this laptop. Hopefully this thing will last as long as my 6 year old Dell.