Out: X60s In: X100e (long)

[think2wice]

As my first post ...that's probably a misleading subject choice. Let me make it more clear:

I have been using Thinkpads for work (as does my whole company) for 6 years. In that time I have used a handed-down T41 and my current X60s (since new). I just bought my first Thinkpad for home/travel use today: the X100e (Turion dual-core 1MB L2). It ships 27-May.

I considered an X200 refurb or ebay X61 but decided on the X100e.

Why? My priorities seem to fit:

1. Form factor, with decent screen resolution, and appearance:
I fell in love with the portability of my X60s after lugging around standard laptops for years. I wanted a netbook-sized portable with more power, and with business looks - rather than something for the Facebook crowd (no offense, maybe I'm the only one under 40 not on FB).

2. "Good enough" performance:
It appears performance will be relatively similar to the 1.66 Core Duo (L2300) in my X60s. My home/travel activities will be Office apps, web-surfing, 720p video playback, photo and music storage/syncing, and some light Photoshop work with 10 megapixel photos - so not intense. Generally the same as I actually use my X60s for (I have a C2Q workstation I sync with while docked at the office that handles the heavy work).

3. Durability: Magnesium Alloy vs. PC-ABS
After coddling the X60s more than most users would, I have to say it has not held up so well. While carrying from office to office, I have bumped the left and right corners of the case bottom on doorways (not hard enough for me to even check for damage) and the metal just cracked and broke off! As a result, the PC-card door eventually fell out, and the IR cover was lost shortly after. Most recently, I noticed that the area around the latch slider has a tiny crack as well. I have not looked, but can guess others have reported this in these forums. Say what you will, but I am betting the ABS would have taken those hits and fared much better. Even if struck hard enough to crack, it would not just chip off as the alloy did. I have some big holes there now.

Otherwise, it appears that all the seams where metal meets plastic and plastic meets plastic around all the ports and covers on the X60s are also fragile. The X100e just does not have them - fewer ports, holes, etc. and must be generally more durable as a result. Look the the profile view of a X60s compared to the X100e to see what I mean by "seams."

4. Battery life?
I bought mine with a 3-cell extra (mostly to make it max portable) but that should give me 3+1.5 hrs according to others stated results - I'm fine with that. I had an 8-cell on my X60 until it was worn out. Replaced with a 4-cell and never looked back because I enjoyed the lower weight and smaller footprint. I get about 3.5hrs on that 4-cell. Since this seems to be the major complaint about this 'pad, I don't see why others don't do the same and just get a 2nd battery if it's a concern. Hibernate, swap it, keep working... All said, if lenovo makes a 8-9-cell for the X100e, I'll buy just for long trips.

5. Heat?
Coming from the X60s that regularly cooks my right palm while lightly web browsing, and also scalds my thighs when on performance settings, I guess the X100e is not much worse. I also have a nice "lap desk" that fits the X60 nicely while at home.

6. I like simple, less complex designs:
Just so you don't think I am completely rational, I have to say that I was first attracted to the X100e for its appearance compared to other Thinkpads and laptops in general for the past 10 years. With the lid open, you see a simplified keyboard in a perfect rectangle layout, pointing device, and a power button - that's it! It just screams SIMPLE! It reminds me a lot of my first laptop - a PowerBook 100 (Google that for a pic and you'll see what I mean). It seems the past five years, lots of other vendors try to one-up each other on lights, bells and whistles, when the "notebook" fundamentals are lost - a good keyboard, a readable screen, simple port layout, low weight, easy to carry. For me, the X100e is a welcome step towards a simpler platform focused on mobility and durability, rather than replacing the desktop computer.

What I wish I could have in an X100...
A) No trackpad - just like my X60s. I will likely turn the thing off.
B) Fingerprint reader and security chip.
C) Thinklight (used rarely on my X60s, but would be nice).
D) If it had an Ultrabase option I would pick the X100 as my next work laptop.

The first thing I expect to do is benchmark the X100e vs the X60s, so I'll post what I find...

[The Solutor]

My home is usually "intel free" so I can't compare the performances with the x60, but before the delivery of my X100, I tried for a week it's natural competitor: the timeline 1810tz.

The processing power is about the same (I'm comparing L625 V.S. SU4100, both dual core), the HD3200 is obviously more powerful than the GMA4500HD, although the latter is not too bad at all. But, as usual for an AMD powered PC, the AMD one's speed feeling is much better if compared with an Intel one with the same benchmark rating, is something that the benchmarks can't tell, but usually I spot an Amd processor w/o looking at the device manager.

So I'm very happy with the performances.

I use the notebook almost always wwan connected so the battery drain is influenced a lot by the connection.

With my average use (bt on, wwan connected, wifi off, screen brightenes at 50%) the battery dies after 2.5/3 hours, but with the radios off 4 or more hours can be easily reached. This is far from the results of a pinetrail netbook or an ULV powerd notebook as the mentioned Acer, but is very close to the results of any ION powered netbook .

As usual, if we compare oranges with oranges, we can see that the heat and the battery drain are not bad at all.

Obviously who needs to stay on battery for a full day has to look elsewhere.

The keyboard is awesome, for my taste is better than the ones present on the older or pricier thinkpads. The only complaint is the lack of retro-illumination.

Very nice the bios option to swap the FN and CTRL keys, the two keys can be also easily physically swapped to reflect the bios setting.

The construction, in general, is perfect: the plastic case has a fantastic feeling, and transmits robustness from each side, and is not a fingerprint magnet as almost any other little notebook or netbook.

The screen has also a nice finish, is not a virtual mirror and is also less matte than the usual display of this kind, the colors are good enough and the brigtness too, only the vertical viewing angle and the black level aren't at the top levels.

The heat is really not a problem, the upper side is reasonably fresh even after long periods of heavy use, the lower side becomes a bit warmer, I think that only the left handed people that are used with the mouse can found uncomfortable the heated air flow on the left side of the X100.

Installing linux can be very easy (PClinuxOS, Kubuntu 10) or problematic (for a newbie) with some other distros (Fedora 12 or 13 for example) because the non standard thinkpad ACPI extensions that are simply not managed by some distros like Kubuntu or can lead to a kernel hang on others.

With the mentioned distros all works out of the box only the wwan card requires a bit of hacking, the proprietary ATI drivers and the realtek wlan drivers are strongly suggested.

My x100e comes with Win 7 preinstalled but I also installed XP, and (obviously) if the performances with seven are absolutely good, using XP the X100 really flies.

Given that I'm perfectly happy with this notebook, and I think that the long wait for a decent AMD powered one was absolutely worth. I was tempted by the acer Ferrari one, but luckily I decided to wait for the dual core version of the X100.

Regards and sorry for the poor English.

[control]

On a note about the heat, there's a new bios update that is supposed to improve thermal controls. The fan's actually not spinning right now with a couple of browser tabs open and a youtube vid playiing. That's a first and the temps are actually on the cool side.

[GrandMasterKhan]

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/20 ... ssors.html

45 nano. I think Lenovo goes with this after a few months.