X100e after two months use - wish I had never bought it!

[sagara]

After using TPs over the years, I sold my T42 early in the year as I had retired, and thought I would stick to my Dell PC as I had no need of a laptop. But then I thought I'd get a small netbook, and saw that Lenovo had the X100e, which I thought was just what met my present needs.

Main problems so far.

1. Find it quite slow - slower than my old T42.

2. Gets very hot with fan running all the time (but TPfan control helped a bit with the fan) .

3. Max battery life with all the included tweeks such as Extended Battery Life, etc. is 2hr 45 mins.

This last is my main gripe. I rang up Support and ended up talking to a guy in Romania, who registered my 'complaint'. Then an email from Support asking me about the battery life problem, but I just received copy book answers probably read from a screen. When I asked him if he would mind actually answering my questions, and give me some advice, he then dried up. I tried Support again on the phone, and again received rehearsed answers, so they put me on hold to find someone else to help me, but after 25 mins 'cost-waithing' I gave up. I then tried Customer Services, but again the same senario - first person went off to get someone to help, but after 20 mins waiting I gave up. It must be easier to rob a bank that get someone who can help with a simple question.

I've updated to the latest bios update, and the battery firmware update, but no change. Now when I power up the Power Manager, it locks the machine up!

I like the look and build of the X100e, but ... Some of my friends have these little Samsung NC10s, and they are faster than my X100e, and have 7 hours battery life, and are very pleased with them.

Before I sell this X100e on ebay, I thought I'd try and restore the system to its original state - how it came out of the box - and start again (or reformat and put on XP Pro), but I can't find anyway to do this (no Thinkpad Button, and the info says nothing about how to do this!).

If anyone has any advice I'd greatly appriciate it. Otherwise, I might just throw the darn thing out of the window - yes, that might give some kind of satisfaction!

Thanks,

Robert

[larango]

Before I sell this X100e on ebay, I thought I'd try and restore the system to its original state - how it came out of the box - and start again (or reformat and put on XP Pro), but I can't find anyway to do this (no Thinkpad Button, and the info says nothing about how to do this!).

Restart and press F11 to invoke the Rescue and Recovery Software.
or
Restart and press enter. It will show you a list of options, select then F11 for Rescue and Recovery

-----
I am sorry to hear about your situation. I feel almost the same way regarding temperature and battery life. However to be fair, battery life improved a lot (from 2:45 hours to 3 and almost 4 hours) after resetting my X100e using Rescue and Recovery. Something was draining the battery out of the box and was fixed after applying Rescue and Recovery. Nevertheless, 3 or 4 hours is not competitive when compared to other size equivalent laptops.

Regarding speed, mine is quite capable (double core probably makes a difference).

Lenovo Support, when answered from a country different than the USA, is deplorable and mediocre. They only follow a script. It is very funny when they repeat after you what you just say to make sure that what you just said is what they just hear and want to confirm it. In my point of view they are not knowledgeable at all when referring to technical specific questions out of their script.

Only real and good support is when you are lucky enough to be transferred to USA technical support or when they send you via email a message with a phone number that connects to a USA agent.

Forums like this one are far more helpful than Lenovo technical support. Thank you all forum posters.

However I believe that it is important to complain and report to Lenovo the issues mentioned in your post, so it starts to make it to the top of their list in order to be seriously addressed by Lenovo engineers.

[sagara]

Thanks for that. I've just pressed the F11 button, and the process has begun! I'm glad to hear about our UK so-called 'Support'. I'm going to write to Lenovo with my compaints, and a copy of the emails I received from Support, and send the letter by registered mail. So it will be a while before I get a response. In the meantime, I'll see over the next couple of days how the 'Recovery' went, and whether it makes a difference. I didn't get the dual-core version as I thought it would run hotter, therefore less battery time!

Thanks,

Robert

[sagara]

Well I've done the re-install, and with only one app loaded - Perfectdisk11 - I now get 3hr 15 mins with all the battery saving tweeks on, according to the Power Manager - the Battery Meter shows 3hr 30 min! So an improvement. But this still seems a bit low - the spec says up to 5 hours, so with such a minimal setup and all the battery saving tweeks set, I'd expect at least 4 hours. I'm sure if I load all my apps the battery time will dip down. So I'll send off my letter to Lenovo in a day or two.

Robert

[ZaZ]

Manufacturer battery life estimate tend to be optimistic at best. The cause of the slowness in your machine is probably the hard drive, not the CPU. A quality SSD would probably speed things up considerably. Yup AMDs run hotter, but they're less expensive. It's the trade off Lenovo made to keep the price of the machine low.

[yhp2009]

@sagara
Hi, a new member here in the forum. I got my x100e about a month ago.

A humble advice regarding Battery Life...
I was getting about 2.5 to 3 hours of life initially. Also, my x100e was freezing quite frequently. I took an advice of a forum member on a different site, and uninstalled POWER MANAGER and ACCESS CONNECTIONS. And immediately my x100e stopped freezing and I started getting 30+ minutes of battery life. Now I consistently get 3.5 to 4 hours!

Try uninstalling the power manager and see if that affects your battery life in a positive way.
Generally speaking, I've come to a conclusion that the ThinkVantage tools are causing alot of issues in many x100e's.
Good luck!

[sagara]

Manufacturer battery life estimate tend to be optimistic at best. The cause of the slowness in your machine is probably the hard drive, not the CPU. A quality SSD would probably speed things up considerably. Yup AMDs run hotter, but they're less expensive. It's the trade off Lenovo made to keep the price of the machine low.

Yes, an SSD would give me a little more battery life, but that wouild mean spending more money; and manufactures may made optimistic claims, but that has to be challenged. And that's what I'm going to do. I've only ever done that with a Nikon lense I bought a few years ago - I had the same 'it's within the spec' answer - so I wrote to the managing director of Nikon UK, and received a new lense, and a £25 voucher! So one can have some effect!

[sagara]

@sagara
Hi, a new member here in the forum. I got my x100e about a month ago.

Try uninstalling the power manager and see if that affects your battery life in a positive way.
Generally speaking, I've come to a conclusion that the ThinkVantage tools are causing alot of issues in many x100e's.
Good luck!

I've taken your advice, and just uninstalled Power Manager and Access Connections, but not much change - now 3hr 30 mins. I'm now going to uninstall Toolbox and see what happens then!

So after uninstalling Toolbox, I'm now at 2hr 51 mins according to Power Meter- all this uninstalling, which as taken about 15 mins, has eaten away 39 mins! Perhaps the HHD is a power eater.

I'll now recarge the battery to 100% and see what Power Meter says.

Thanks

[yhp2009]

I'm not sure if this is true but I think that the battery life times predictions are based on past usage times. So when your system tells you "3.5 hours remaining", it is merely saying that "in the past, your battery lasted 3.5 hours under the same conditions"
But when your conditions change (ie uninstall problematic app, hardware etc), your battery has to recalibrate itself.

So the point is that your x100e battery may need to be cycled through a few times to get a reliable battery life reading from the computer.

IMHO

[sagara]

Well that's encouraging - just how do they predict what time is left? So I'll carry on working with it and just see what time it gives me in real-time. But now I will have to install Microsoft Office, etc!

Thanks,

Robert

[sagara]

Well I did a kind of 'soak test': got the battery up to 100%, pulled the power lead out and did some internet stuff, some downloading, and then run an antivirus check that lasted 1hr.45mins. The battery lasted 2hr 45mins - it ran on for 3 mins after the battery meter registered 0%.

So with average use I'd guess I'd get around 3hrs 15 mins, which is what the battery meter showed before I started. But there are a few on this site that say they get at least 4 hrs without any RMclock tweeks, etc. so I reckon I'm bit short - if I'm not being too picky!

Lets see.

Thanks for your help.

[yhp2009]

I guess you should try RMCLOCK and see if you can lower the idle and max VID. If youre not familiar with how RMClock works, here are a few nice links: Proceed at your own risk!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardwar ... guide.html
http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/guides/1 ... essor.html

I was brand new to this concept till two nights ago, and the tutorials helped me.
I think the best case scenario would be to lower the voltage for the 4.0x FID since that is where the CPU stays at the most.

Good luck

[jvarszegi]

It's wild hyperbole to say that an NC10 is faster than even the MV-40 X100e, but I feel your pain. I am happy to report that I get over five hours of battery life out of my single-core X100e. Some differences may include that I have turned off Aero Glass and all unneeded programs and background services, that I use a six-cell battery, and that I have a cheap SSD installed. I was getting over 4:30 even before the SSD, though. My machine also doesn't run very hot, maybe a little warm.

It therefore sounds to me like you have one or more problems with hardware or software. It could even be something simple like a lack of thermal paste, I dunno. I wish you luck, because it can be better.

[yhp2009]

@jvarszegi

Besides the power management setting in Windows7, and the SSD, are there any other power saving functions you are using in getting 5+ hours of battery life? (i.e. Undervolting, Screen brightness, etc)
Thanks

[jvarszegi]

I'm not sure if this is true but I think that the battery life times predictions are based on past usage times. So when your system tells you "3.5 hours remaining", it is merely saying that "in the past, your battery lasted 3.5 hours under the same conditions"
But when your conditions change (ie uninstall problematic app, hardware etc), your battery has to recalibrate itself.

So the point is that your x100e battery may need to be cycled through a few times to get a reliable battery life reading from the computer.

IMHO

I believe this is false.

[jvarszegi]

@jvarszegi

Besides the power management setting in Windows7, and the SSD, are there any other power saving functions you are using in getting 5+ hours of battery life? (i.e. Undervolting, Screen brightness, etc)
Thanks

As I wrote above, "Some differences may include that I have turned off Aero Glass and all unneeded programs and background services, that I use a six-cell battery, and that I have a cheap SSD installed. I was getting over 4:30 even before the SSD, though." I'm not undervolting. I typically have my screen brightness set down a bit (this is usually true even on wall power).

[underclocker]

FYI, there are also two (at least) different capacity six cell batteries for the X100e!

And as discussed in numerous X100e threads, the CPU makes a difference with the dual cores apparently having longer runtimes and cooler temps.

You might want to include details about the CPU and battery in your X100e while discussing runtime and/or heat.

See this link for more info --> http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=91558

[craigmontHunter]

I'm not sure if this is true but I think that the battery life times predictions are based on past usage times. So when your system tells you "3.5 hours remaining", it is merely saying that "in the past, your battery lasted 3.5 hours under the same conditions"
But when your conditions change (ie uninstall problematic app, hardware etc), your battery has to recalibrate itself.

So the point is that your x100e battery may need to be cycled through a few times to get a reliable battery life reading from the computer.

IIRC, The method used involves looking at the capacity of the battery, and dividing that from the discharge rate. This is why you occasionally need to "recalibrate" the electronics - it needs to know the capacity. This is also one of th reasons that old laptops go from~30%-0% in a matter of seconds - it cannot adjust the charge capacity.