y5 questions

hi guys/ladies,
can someone please tell me if the y5:
1. has a wavy texture on the palm rest?
2. has keys with different colors?
3. how well trimmed is the screen from the edges?
4. color of the power switch?
5. any covers for the side ports?
i keep looking at pictures and ...their always different
thanks a bunch

 

well, if anyone cares...

1. no wavy anything on the palm rests. in fact, the left & right one are covered with giant gray stickers...... i dont get it. they are not very impressive, at all.

2. all keys have only one color

3. monitor trim is less than half an inch (7/16")

4. the color of the power switch is practically green

5. no covers for any of the side ports

disapointing
but i still like it

 

boring design but pretty tough!!!

 

That would vary. Yours is the first of I have heard of such stickers. Is it US spec? I have seen the EU spec Y5 and it has no such stickers. Mine is Japan spec and no stickers either.

As for the looks overall, I wouldnt say it is boring or unimpressive at all. In fact it is a fantastic design - the type that I wouldnt be surprised to see in a design exhibit at MOMA or some place like that. It has classic, modern and functional look to it. Its not a flavor of the month toy - and isnt marketed to such folks at all. Its a business tool, and a fine one.

 

How is your y5 coming along?

Did you end up paying heavy duties?

thanks

 

Review coming shortly.

On the duties, I had the laptop itself sent to the US then a friend on a business trip brought it back for me - not tax or duty. At the same time I had the seller (Conics) send the AC Adapter direclty to me, with zero shock case. For some reason Conics gave the adapter a nominal value of about 80,000 yen and I had to pay £25 of VAT on it, not duty. Half of that was an "adminstrative fee" to the UK Parcel force. What a rip off. Same thing happened when I bought $70 of RAM last fall - I ended up paying almost half as much in fees.

But a business man in a suit can carry $2500 laptop through Heathrow - he doesnt get stopped and he doest get taxed? Same business man can live in London and pay no tax on any of his income if he claims to be "non-domiciled" in the UK - but lives and owns a house here? And yet the govt is busy chasing and delaying the "everyman" parcels in the mail?

This country is screwed up. Really.....

 

I have 2 questions for any y5 owner(I have a y2).
1) How is the LCD's viewing angle on the y5? on my y2, it's quite narrow.
2) does the screen seem very dark in a brightly lit room?

thanks in advance for your feedback.

 

I also had a y2, then went for the y5. The screen is definitely better. Brighter. I can use it in my office (with overhead fluoresecents) without any problem. The viewing angles are wider than the y2, although not THAT much wider. The thing that caught me off guard was the fan (and kudos to Skagen for knowing that there is a fan on the y5, since my queries to both Panasonic and CDW--from whom I purchased--led to assurances that this was a fanless computer; the Panasonic site even says it's a fanless computer). But I digress...the fan caught me off guard. I'm still trying to figure out if I can adapt to it. Granted, I'm a bit odd in this regard, but after a couple of years of fanless operation with the y2, any noise at all is disconcerting. I'll let you know in a few days how it is working out.

 

You should be okay. Its really not a typical fan setup.

I came from the W5, which was fanless and I was worried but it was no problem. I think the key is that this being a low-voltage processor in the Y5, it doesnt heat up as much as a comparable laptop, which is what the fan is for.

In typical usage the fan on my Y5 is on a whisper-low setting. I really dont hear it. It kicks in every now and then and I do mean occasionally - not literally everytime I ask for horsepower.

As fans go, I am okay with it. But we just have to see if the fan is built to toughbook standards and holds up in the long run - or if it is one of the cheap ones from typical laptops that sound like a jet engine after 6 months!

 

Skagen,

Thanks for the reply. Couple of questions: do you have 512MB or 1GB RAM? Does it matter with the fan? Also, what are you running with respect to power management? Are you using the Panasonic Power Management option, or are you tweaking it somehow? The few times that I've had it on AC power, the fan has stayed off for awhile, but then kicked on at a level that I can hear it, and not gone off. Granted , when web surfing/downloading the fan kicks up higher, and then backs off, but in 'normal' processing (MS Word), once it came on, it stayed on. I don't mind it staying on, I would just like to have it at its (the fan's) minimal spin. Again, I recognize my idiosyncrasies here (my desktop is a Hush ATX fanless--great machine, by-the-way). The y5, for me, is an absolute joy to use on battery with max. battery. I like the screen, the slightly greater heft (compared to the y2), and the incomparable keyboard. I would just like to minimize that AC fan a bit. (And, to be honest, I don't use the name 'deepsouth' lightly; here in the southeastern US we've hit 90F+ already, which makes the interior room temperatures higher unless you are willing to up your AC a good bit.) Thanks.......

 

I am referring here to a Y5M ie Vista OS with 512MB on the motherbaord. I added another 512MB stick, making 1GB in total.

I just use the Panny standard options and have not tweaked at all.

I will tell you something that I beliebve has reduced my CPU usage - which is what turns that fan on. On my previous two laptops I noticed in the past two years that when surfing my CPU usage would spike a lot. I checked for viruses and malware, never found any.

The I realise that those flash add all over the place migth have something to do with it. Its not like the old days of internet where you can just ignore adds. Now you have adds that will make annoying noises, talk to you, jump all over your screen etc. All with use of flash. FLash is like and ad-trojan on a way - and somethimes (not all) it uses CPU heavily to do this.

Issue was same on Firefox, Maxthon and IE browsers.

But it made no sense - if I am just browsing with no other action why should my CPU usage be so high? Its gotta be the flash.

So when I got the Y5 recently, I tried and experiment: I didnt install flash on the PC. And guess what - CPU spikes gone. Freezing gone. And when my CPU isnt running at 90%, well my fan doesnt have any need to kick in.

Downside is that some web pages I cant brows and obviously I dont use Youtube anymore. But you know what -that is a small price to pay.

But that was my experience. It may also be that you are operating at higher ambient temperature and that forces the fan to kick in to maintain a specific cap on temperature.

 

Pondering the Y5 here myself. A few questions:

Fan
Just now noticeable is the fan noise? At normal computing distance? Across a room? Is it a low whirr or high pitched?

Heat
Does the Y5 get hot, and where?

 

Just a quick comment regarding not installing flash. There's a better way to get rid of adds (and the associated cpu spikes), and still be able to browse sites like youtube. All you need is Firefox + addblock plus + easylist and easyelements.

To get easyelements and easylist, just go to http://easylist.adblockplus.org/ . There's also a link to addblock plus on that page. I tell you, this will make your browsing so much nicer, and you'll never see any adds again (or the spaces that they occupy).

 

I’ve been using my Y5 for a few weeks now under varying conditions, so I have a little more perspective. First, let me emphasize that I am hypersensitive to fan noise, but I only want to own my neurosis, not export it. My desktop is fanless (one of those 45 lb. behemoths made from cast aluminum with triceratops fins for passive cooling), and that’s the way I like it. I loved my Y2 for its silence, but thought I should go forward with a faster processor as programs I frequently use are getting bigger and demanding more oomph; also, in my experience, the Y2 could get pretty toasty on the bottom, uncomfortably so. The longer battery life of the Y5 also attracted me, to get away from being anchored to one spot, even at home. So, I made the plunge.

Under normal power management (a Panasonic-supplied option), I don’t think the typical person is going to be bothered by the fan noise. It’s a nice, soft, whoosh—no whining or intimations of jet engines. You won't hear it across the room under conditions of silence. I can use it happily that way when there is ambient noise. Under light processing it doesn’t come on for 30 minutes or so, but when it does come on, it stays on. It will ramp up a bit under a heavier load, but then settles back down.

Under conditions of complete silence, I notice it. Under those conditions, on AC I use the Max. battery setting in power management, which cuts that noise considerably. My favorite for complete silence, however, is battery power (of course with max. battery). I think the fan still runs when on battery power, but I’m really not sure. With screen brightness a notch above half and the wireless on, I’m reliably getting 6 hours on the battery doing normal office type stuff.

So, that’s my take on the noise side. But one thing the Y5 has done is to completely take care of the heat on the bottom of the unit. There is no problem at all having it on your lap. What heat there is, is on the upper left side of the bottom of the computer, just above the RAM module, where I guess the processor must be. But it just gets warm, not hot. Hope this helps.

 

Hey, can you tell a little bit about this (Brand/model number)? I need to get a QUIET desktop to install as a home audio/video server?

 

Not sure what deepsouth is using, but two of the quietest desktops I'm aware of (that aren't limited to integrated graphics or water-cooled) are from Hush ( http://www.hushtechnologies.net/) and Zalman TNN-500AF based systems (DIY or see http://www.endpcnoise.com/ for some pre-built systems). And as always, for all things quiet computing, I recommend SPCR.

 

Pangloss is right, I'm using a HUSH ATX that I purchased about three years ago. Works like a charm. Also, since I think you're in the UK, Skagen, you will have a few more options in terms of purchasing one, should you decide to go that way (there's only a single reseller here in the US). Persons more savvy than I have looked at the innards of it and say it's a standard motherboard modified to have heat sinks linked into the cast aluminum case where there normally would be case fans. In any event, given my geographic location and house construction, I regularly use it in an office that, in the afternoon, gets to be about 82F during the summer, and it has no problem staying nice and cool. The drawback, of course, is $$ whenever you go outside of more mainstream consumer stuff. In that regard, however, you might check these guys: http://www.logicsupply.com/. They have a whole series of fanless desktop units at a more modest price (although the HUSH is going to be great as a media center).

A different question: anybody using NHC on the Y5? I'm thinking about trying it to undervolt the processor a little (I know it's nutty to undervolt a low voltage processor, but I am a little nutty) as a way of making the fans even quieter. Just wondering if there is any danger there.

 

Thanks a million guys!