Thinkpads Forum

Probably my last thinkpad. I had x120e and it was okay to work with but it's a bit worn out now, loose hinges, feet came out, battery completly dead and processor outdated has some difficulty playing flash.
What should I expect from 140e?

The x140e is based on the x131e chassis. Compared to the x120e, it will be faster and should be more durable, as it is thicker and has rubber bumpers around the case. Generally solid build, but not as good as the mainstream thinkpad T/X/W series, and the screen is quite lacking in contrast and detail.

My old high school used x131e machines and they took quite a beating without breaking. The worst I saw on the units was medium scratches on the lid and screen. However, the touchpad was AWFUL. Jumpy, inaccurate, and cumbersome even with proper drivers. Worse than the touchpad I used on an old Lenovo G series value line laptop. If it weren't for the trackpoint, it would be very difficult to get work done.

That's good news. I found X120e to be much better built than x230 in terms of quality control and hinge strenght.

I found my X220 to be very sturdy. The X140e is a durable notebook, but it's a bit chunky for an 11" notebook, at almost four pounds. My 14" Dell weighs less. I don't know which version you're getting, but the low end AMD machines won't be much better than your X120e

Yeah I just checked. It's the slow version E1 2500 AMD. It's adventage over E240 from x120e is that it will be two cores instead of one. Which should hopefully give no trouble playing flash.
I really liked x120e minus the slow processor which now has trouble playing flash. Hopefully this one will be a tad faster.

I got one off of Amazon the other day when they were going for $250:

AMD APU A4-5000 Quad Core Processor (2M Cache, 1.5GHz) 15W
11.6" HD WXGA (1366x768) LED Backlight
4GB DDR3 1600MHz; 500GB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
AMD Radeon HD 8330 SDRAM; Optical Drive: None
Built-in HD 720 Webcam; Windows 7 Professional 64 (comes with Win8 also)

It is designed for children- education contracts and whatnot. As was mentioned above, it literally has a rubber bumper around it. It is fat and heavy for its class. Almost 4lbs I think.

I actually ran across it while looking at other Thinkpads. Figured it was probably a decent deal so I bought it. I wanted the real HDMI port. I thought I would use it as my new travel/living room/beater laptop (current one is a X60s).

It actually has a lot of nice features for the money- a fatty HDD, 4 RAM, a camera. Processor seems more than fine as I don't do much other than internet with my PCs. It runs very cool and quiet, and the battery lasts forever. Has great ports, particularly that HDMI that works perfectly. I like the SD card slot too. Functionally it has most everything I could ask for in a basic laptop other than an optical.

Now, the not so good: it isn't anything like the classic Thinkpads. Fit and finish is crap, keyboard sucks, Trackpoint is just OK (pointer fair, buttons suck), display is garbage. I am well aware it is not a high-end machine, and I am impressed with the features for the money, but the ergo & visual experience is just awful by comparison. Also, this is my first ever computer without a 4:3 display and I am not OK with that. I guess it is about what I thought it would be but I am still pretty disappointed. I have used exclusively TPs for 20 years because of the superior displays, keyboards and of course the beloved Trackpoint. So I find X140e pretty lacking. But if you can deal with all that, I think it is probably a pretty good little machine.

mbarker wrote:Trackpoint is just OK (pointer fair, buttons suck)

Is this not the same keyboard used in the X230 and T430? I thought those were pretty good, though one could make a good argument about the shortcut keys. At least you've got buttons unlike newer ThinkPads.

ZaZ wrote: Is this not the same keyboard used in the X230 and T430?

No idea. I've been out of the loop since I got my T60p a few years ago.

ZaZ wrote:At least you've got buttons unlike newer ThinkPads.

Yeah, no kidding.

mbarker wrote:I got one off of Amazon the other day when they were going for $250:

AMD APU A4-5000 Quad Core Processor (2M Cache, 1.5GHz) 15W
11.6" HD WXGA (1366x768) LED Backlight
4GB DDR3 1600MHz; 500GB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
AMD Radeon HD 8330 SDRAM; Optical Drive: None
Built-in HD 720 Webcam; Windows 7 Professional 64 (comes with Win8 also)

It is designed for children- education contracts and whatnot. As was mentioned above, it literally has a rubber bumper around it. It is fat and heavy for its class. Almost 4lbs I think.

I actually ran across it while looking at other Thinkpads. Figured it was probably a decent deal so I bought it. I wanted the real HDMI port. I thought I would use it as my new travel/living room/beater laptop (current one is a X60s).

It actually has a lot of nice features for the money- a fatty HDD, 4 RAM, a camera. Processor seems more than fine as I don't do much other than internet with my PCs. It runs very cool and quiet, and the battery lasts forever. Has great ports, particularly that HDMI that works perfectly. I like the SD card slot too. Functionally it has most everything I could ask for in a basic laptop other than an optical.

Now, the not so good: it isn't anything like the classic Thinkpads. Fit and finish is crap, keyboard sucks, Trackpoint is just OK (pointer fair, buttons suck), display is garbage. I am well aware it is not a high-end machine, and I am impressed with the features for the money, but the ergo & visual experience is just awful by comparison. Also, this is my first ever computer without a 4:3 display and I am not OK with that. I guess it is about what I thought it would be but I am still pretty disappointed. I have used exclusively TPs for 20 years because of the superior displays, keyboards and of course the beloved Trackpoint. So I find X140e pretty lacking. But if you can deal with all that, I think it is probably a pretty good little machine.

Good synopsis. I almost couldn't believe your comment about Thinkpad screens being good quality, but then noticed your gear had a T60p. The vast majority of Thinkpad screens are pure trash. Their justification is that these are business laptops and why do you need an attractive display panel?

The T42(s) and later the T60/T61(s) thave I've used have all been low resolution, bad colouring, etc. The Nvidia T420 I use is a bit better, but a far cry from displays available on even the cheapest competitor.

I am mostly familar with the X series, having owned a X20/21/22/23/24, X30/1, X60/X61T/X61s.... Out of all of these, the screens equally sucked on all of them except for the finger-touch X61T that had a high quality Samsung panel (beautiful colours, excellent viewing angles) but low resolution. I have both a high resolution X61T and a frankenpad high resolution X61s. Beautiful screens and resolutions, but still have flaws, such as leaking glue and air bubbles (known issue with way these screens were bonded together).

The X131e I have has a screen I would classify in the X60 class.

I made sure to get the best screen they could offer on the X1 Carbon, but I know that I'll have support nightmares WHEN I start running into issues with it.