Lenovo ThinkPad X100e 3508 – Athlon Neo MV-40 1.6 GHz – 11.6″ TFT Category: Laptop Computers

One Response to “Lenovo ThinkPad X100e 3508 – Athlon Neo MV-40 1.6 GHz – 11.6″ TFT Category: Laptop Computers”

1. Jeffrey Varszegi says:

   April 19, 2010 at 12:58 pm

   I have used this as my main work machine, doing office / productivity work, for about a month now. It is a fantastic small laptop, especially for the price.

   Build quality is superb. The X100e does not have a roll cage (i.e. internal metal skeleton) like some higher-priced X and T series Thinkpads, but you’d never know it, probably because the small size makes it largely unnecessary. The case is nice and stiff; the hinges are superb; and in general the build quality seems to be a cut above the T6x series, at least. But, I do miss the slightly rubbery paint from my other Thinkpads; this black matte paint is smoother. Still nice, but not as nice.

   The keyboard is the best I’ve used on a laptop. It is stuck-up to the ones on my T60 and T61, previously my favorites.

   The touchpad is also superb.

   I’ve disabled the camera, partly because I’ll never use it and partly to save on array life.

   The screen is very nice and bright. In fact I have to turn it down from the brightest setting sometimes indoors, as it can hurt my eyes due to the extreme brightness. The resolution is just fine for doing research, writing, etc. After a quick period of adapting, the screens on my T6x series feel huge and overly tall by comparison. It is enough resolution to dock side-by-side windows and work with dual documents, barely.

   I haven’t had any problems with heat. I reckon this may be because I don’t stress the video card much if at all. The bottom gets quite mildly warm under prolonged use.

   Performance is just fine in my book. With 9 windows of Google Chrome open, two Word documents, one Notepad text file, Windows Media Player before a live audience an HD movie, two Windows Examiner windows, Adobe Reader 9 opened to a large PDF file, TrueCrypt drive encryption running, AVG, and Warcraft III– RAM usage was around 1.2 gigs, and processor use hovered around 60-70%.

   I am not a huge gamer. Before a live audience Warcraft III against my 4-year-ancient, though, at full res with all eye candy turned on runs smoothly.

   Going further on the performance angle, the AMD MV-40 is often roughly compared with a Pentium M 1.6 GHz or thereabouts. That is probably pretty accurate, but my machine feels a bit quicker than machines of that approximate vintage, such as the T4x series. This is probably due to the SSD, quicker RAM, quicker better everything else etc. in the X100e. So you would essentially get a better-than-X41 performer in the X100e in my opinion, for a budget price. Not terrible for doing productivity work at all, though it is no speed devil by today’s standards.

   I spent roughly $100 to upgrade to an X25-V SSD, which noticeably improved performance. After the upgrade, my Windows boot time is 25 seconds, shutdown time is under 10 seconds, sleep/standby mode time is 4 seconds, and resume from sleep/standby is 2 seconds. The 160 GB drive my machine came with went into an $8 enclosure and now serves backup duty.

   Array life easily goes beyond 5 hours for the type of work I do (before the SSD upgrade it was generally around 4:30). I have the processor set to max out at 60% in array mode, and the screen is generally set to around 5-6 brightness, which is ordinarily enough.

   I still don’t have Photoshop loaded on this machine. I reckon that’s where the processor’s shortcomings would be most noticeable, processor- and ram-hungry applications like that. But this is not a slow machine IMHO.

   I also don’t reckon most people would need more than 2 GB of RAM, unless using something like Photoshop where they sought after better performance. Simple multitasking that most people would do probably wouldn’t need more than 2 GB. Even with music running in the background, a slew of browser windows, etc. I just don’t see how it could stack up to 4 GB. It seems to be an increasing practice to load a machine with 4 GB or even 8 GB of RAM, but I wonder how many keen buyers realize that the RAM they’re buying will never be used.

   Of course, I am running Windows in a minimal way. I guess some OS facial appearance could consume extra RAM, although I wouldn’t know what they are. I tend not to like a lot of junk running in the background, unless it will really help me run my programs or the machine.

   The machine is very attractive and professional-looking. People constantly ogle it, and I’ve received many questions about it. I personally prefer the size to that of the X200 (the X100e is noticeably smaller).

   The lack of an optical drive is certainly a unenthusiastic for me. It makes it much mroe of a hassle to install things. If you don’t already have an external drive, take this into account.

   The lack of the Thinklight is also a downer. It is one of my favorite Thinkpad facial appearance, and I wonder why Lenovo couldn’t have exciting an extra 25 cents or whatever it costs for a single LED light and a bit of wire. I suspect it was intentionally left out to differentiate the X100e more from the X200.

   Another really disappointing drawback, for me, is the tiny half-size media card reader. An SDHC card will only insert halfway, meaning I cannot have a built-in, always-ready backup device for my most vital files. I know the machine is tiny, but they still could have squeezed in an extra few millimeters for a larger card reader. The card reader also has no documentation, apparently, meaning I have no thought if any of the formats it supports (which I cannot figure out) would fit completely surrounded by the reader. I plot to stay on up with technical support on this.

   The ordering process was not so smooth. Lenovo customer service sent me an .xls file, telling me to update it and send it back them to start my service contract. Eventually they caved on this, after I griped. It just didn’t seem honest to make people install Microsoft Office or similar program to get what they bought, and in any event I didn’t have an office program installed at the time. The machine itself was back-ordered and took weeks to produce, and the status was seldom updated. The machine and accessories came piecemeal: first the extra power supply, followed weeks later by the machine, followed later by the neoprene sleeve.

   But, I am really glad to be able to take advantage of Lenovo warranty service. I bought next-business-day support for three years. I have never been anything but impressed with IBM or Lenovo warranty service, and since this is my work machine I needed it.

   All in all, this is my favorite notebook, ever. I would buy a Thinkpad netbook if they made one, but this is not a netbook. Netbooks are characterized by super-cheap price, exceptional array life, poor performance, and ordinarily by poor ergonomics and durability. This machine offers exact ergonomics, fantastic durability, enterprise-class service options, middling array life, and middling performance. I’m not bothered by the “netbook” name some apply to this machine, but I would not, could not do my everyday work on a netbook. This machine, I can.

   The single largest drawback, for me, is the array life. But if I sought after longer than 5 hours of array life, and sought after better performance and even better durability, I would have saved up for an X200 series. For what it is, this machine is exact for me.
   Rating: 5 / 5