Thoughts on the new laptop
I’ve had my new Lenovo Thinkpad X300 for about 5 days, so I thought I’d plunk down some impressions. This is mostly for the benefit of my future self, so I can look back at a contemporaneous view of the experience. I will take no offense if regular readers wish to skip this one and wait for one of the guest posters to barge in.
The Good
- The form factor is awesome. Astonishingly thin and astonishingly light; even though it has a 13.3″ screen as compared to my previous Dell with its 12.1″ display, the X300 is only an inch wider and is actually about 3/4″ narrower.
- The weight — a svelte ~3 pounds — is a delight. Light enough to easily manipulate with one hand, but evenly balanced so it doesn’t feel tippy. My old Dell X1, which was even lighter, was so unbalanced that it would fall over backwards if you nudged the screen the wrong way.
- The most impressive thing to me so far is the build quality. Despite how thin and light it is, it feels incredibly solid: there’s no flex in the screen; the hinges are grippy and the screen doesn’t wobble no matter how hard you shake it; and every seam is tight with no gapping or loose edges. The palm rests and back fo the display are covered with a matte high-friction coating. It’s hard to describe, but in comparison, my old Dells feel like cheap plastic toys — this one feels like a precision scientific instrument.
- As a bonus, most everything — USB ports, volume controls, headphone jacks, speakers — are thoughtfully placed, so there are no major ergonomic disasters except for the perplexing location of the Fn key (more on that later). The Dell X1, aside from odd placement of ports, also featured a single, mono speaker, conveniently located on the underside of the chasis. That’s right, it pointed at the desk, so you can imagine how great that sounded.
- The display is nice and bright, and has a wide range of dim settings (I like to keep it fairly dim to save on battery life).
- The speakers are great for such a small laptop. Easily on par with the big honkin’ sound emitters in larger laptops I’ve owned, and so far beyond the squeekers of the other small Dells that it doesn’t even bear comparison.
- It has dedicated volume keys, and the mute button works even if the system hasn’t fully booted. If you read my previous rant, you’ll realize how cool that is.
- Here’s a nice little touch: there’s a small LED at the top of the monitor that illiuminates the keyboard when activated.
- I’ve saved the biggest feature for last: the solid state harddrive (SSD). It’s small (only 64GB), but eerily quiet and crazy fast. Supposedly it saves on power (more on this in the next section), but the real difference is in read speed. Since the processor is pretty gutless (1.2 Ghz, again chosen for low power consumption) I had expected the overall performance to feel a bit sluggish, but the SSD more than makes up for the lack of processing horsepower. To launch, say, a Word document, is near-instantaneous, even before the application has been pre-cached. OpenOffice, which isn’t exactly a sleek application, flies open, as does the GIMP, which is notoriously slow.
The Meh:
- The touchpad is very small, and it can’t be entirely attributed to the small form factor of the chasis. My Dell X1, which was even smaller, had a much larger touchpad. No, it appears that the touchpad is kept small by the need for the big mouse buttons for the little pointing nib thingy, which I never use. I understand that many Thinkpad afficianados swear by the pencil eraser, and I don’t begrudge Lenovo for favouring its core clientbase. Still, it’s taken some getting used to, and it really wouldn’t have killed them to give some more thought to the needs of people who prefer a touchpad.
- I’m getting used to the placement of the Fn key where the Ctrl key should be. Still don’t like it, and I think it’s an insane design choice. Again, I suspect that Thinkpads have had that for a long time, and Lenovo is simply pitching to its loyal customers (unlike Dell, who sling out radical design changes with each new machine).
- Why on earth does it need to have a white power button that’s bright enough to use as a flashlight? It’s distracting.
- There’s no card reader of any kind, which sucks. There’s a full DVD drive, but they couldn’t find space for an SD reader. Huh.
- They couldn’t find any room on the bottom for a docking station connector. Not a big deal, but I had come to appreciate a permanent dock on my desk.
- Stickers on the palm rests. Grumble.
- There’s no obvious or convenient way to roll up the power cord. The adapter for my Dell was roughly shaped like an oblong spool, and it was really easy to wind the cord around it and secure it with a built-in rubber latch. This one comes with a velcro thingy and a rectangular adapter. No matter what I try, I can’t get it to roll away cleanly without a timewasting effort.
- Given how sturdy the thing is and how little play there is in the hinges (none whatsoever), does it really need dual latches to keep the cover secure when closed? There’s a single slider on the right that uncouples both latches, but because the hinges are so stiff, it basically takes two hands to open the cover smoothly. It’s overkill.
- By far my biggest complaint to date is battery life. Even with the larger 6-cell battery, the most I’ve been able to coax out of it is 3 1/2 hours from full charge to kaput. I’ve tweaked most everything I can, and it’s still falling short of my previous Dell (though, to be fair, the Dell’s battery was a 9-cell). Now, I suspect that the wireless is a huge power drain and I haven’t tested it with the wireless turned off, so on an airplane I may be able to squeeze 4 1/2 hours out of it. Still, for an ultra-low voltage chipset with an SSD drive, I’d expect it to be better than this. Fortunately the spare battery is quite light, so I should be able to keep an extra, fully-charged replacement around.
Overall, I’m delighted. The battery life is the only major disappointment, but in most other respects I’m quite satisfied to date. I should also mention that I’ve made good on my promise to go Linux full time, which so far has gone quite smoothly (VMWare helps).
.: Tags: geek, laptop, linux, rants :.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
So I guess looking at dodgy websites during business meetings is a go, then?
November 29th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Depends on what you mean by dodgy, I guess…
December 1st, 2008 at 10:09 am
I’ve had my new Lenovo Thinkpad X300 for about 5 days, so I thought I’d plunk down some impressions.
You’ve had the thing five days and you can already impersonate it? That’s extraordinary.
This is mostly for the benefit of my future self, so I can look back at a contemporaneous view of the experience.
Wow. I don’t ever plan anything for the future.
I will take no offense if regular readers wish to skip this one and wait for one of the guest posters to barge in.
That’s all well and good, but you’re not the easily offended type anyway. Just keep that rat bastard Ingvar away.
The form factor is awesome. Astonishingly thin and astonishingly light; even though it has a 13.3″ screen as compared to my previous Dell with its 12.1″ display, the X300 is only an inch wider and is actually about 3/4″ narrower.
I’m astonished myself.
The weight — a svelte ~3 pounds — is a delight. Light enough to easily manipulate with one hand, but evenly balanced so it doesn’t feel tippy. My old Dell X1, which was even lighter, was so unbalanced that it would fall over backwards if you nudged the screen the wrong way.
Okay, now you’re not actually forward thinking at all here. Once the thing breaks – and it shall, faster than you think – you’ll want to have it for a boat anchor. But that’s out the window if there’s no weight to it.
Oh, wait a minute. Edmonton. I forgot. No water, no boats. Nehmind that.
The most impressive thing to me so far is the build quality. Despite how thin and light it is, it feels incredibly solid: there’s no flex in the screen; the hinges are grippy and the screen doesn’t wobble no matter how hard you shake it; and every seam is tight with no gapping or loose edges.
You clearly haven’t physically tested the unit enough yet. Shake it harder.
The palm rests and back fo [sic] the display are covered with a matte high-friction coating. It’s hard to describe, but in comparison, my old Dells feel like cheap plastic toys — this one feels like a precision scientific instrument.
Damn.
As a bonus, most everything — USB ports, volume controls, headphone jacks, speakers — are thoughtfully placed, so there are no major ergonomic disasters except for the perplexing location of the Fn key (more on that later).
Excellent use of this effective ploy to keep your readers on edge right until the end. Great work, Krankor.
The Dell X1, aside from odd placement of ports, also featured a single, mono speaker, conveniently located on the underside of the chasis. That’s right, it pointed at the desk, so you can imagine how great that sounded.
Um… awesome?
The display is nice and bright, and has a wide range of dim settings (I like to keep it fairly dim to save on battery life).
I keep my computer dim so I can outshine the bastard.
The speakers are great for such a small laptop. Easily on par with the big honkin’ sound emitters in larger laptops I’ve owned, and so far beyond the squeekers of the other small Dells that it doesn’t even bear comparison.
But you mentioned it anyway. Very sneaky.
It has dedicated volume keys, and the mute button works even if the system hasn’t fully booted. If you read my previous rant, you’ll realize how cool that is.
Good to hear they’re dedicated to their task, and you know I read the previous rant, and agree how cool it all is.
Here’s a nice little touch: there’s a small LED at the top of the monitor that illiuminates the keyboard when activated.
Lead is not good for your health, unless you’re using it to cover body parts during an x-ray. I recommend you have this removed, and learn how to spell it.
I’ve saved the biggest feature for last: the solid state harddrive (SSD). It’s small (only 64GB), but eerily quiet and crazy fast. Supposedly it saves on power (more on this in the next section), but the real difference is in read speed. Since the processor is pretty gutless (1.2 Ghz, again chosen for low power consumption) I had expected the overall performance to feel a bit sluggish, but the SSD more than makes up for the lack of processing horsepower. To launch, say, a Word document, is near-instantaneous, even before the application has been pre-cached. OpenOffice, which isn’t exactly a sleek application, flies open, as does the GIMP, which is notoriously slow.
Just wait until you see how the sucker slows down once you have all those naughty websites open simultaneous to your attempt to open a Word document. I’ll hear the cursing from here, no doubt.
The Meh:
The touchpad is very small, and it can’t be entirely attributed to the small form factor of the chasis. My Dell X1, which was even smaller, had a much larger touchpad. No, it appears that the touchpad is kept small by the need for the big mouse buttons for the little pointing nib thingy, which I never use. I understand that many Thinkpad afficianados swear by the pencil eraser, and I don’t begrudge Lenovo for favouring its core clientbase. Still, it’s taken some getting used to, and it really wouldn’t have killed them to give some more thought to the needs of people who prefer a touchpad.
I once had the use of a laptop with a pencil-eraser mouse thingy, and it’s pretty easy to get used to. But I actually (obviously mistakenly) thought the touchpads were “the way of the future” and that the pencil erasers were disappearing from the scene.
I’m getting used to the placement of the Fn key where the Ctrl key should be. Still don’t like it, and I think it’s an insane design choice.
Which is another way of saying you’re a good fit for insane things. Nice.
Again, I suspect that Thinkpads have had that for a long time, and Lenovo is simply pitching to its loyal customers (unlike Dell, who sling out radical design changes with each new machine).
Lenovo may have been subject to bribes, threats, or blackmail. Youneverknow.
Why on earth does it need to have a white power button that’s bright enough to use as a flashlight? It’s distracting.
At first I thought you had a cocaine dispenser on your machine, but then I re-read this line and it does indeed say “white power button.” I could have answered the question if it were about drugs, but not if it’s about the KKK. I’m surprised Sharpton isn’t picketing your office. White power button. Hmmph.
There’s no card reader of any kind, which sucks.
Did your Dell have a built-in fortune teller? Nope. It’s a little unfair for you to have such high expectations of your new unit, then, innit?
There’s a full DVD drive, but they couldn’t find space for an SD reader. Huh.
Huh?
They couldn’t find any room on the bottom for a docking station connector. Not a big deal, but I had come to appreciate a permanent dock on my desk.
For shuttlecraft? I thought the whole thing was only three pounds? Holy shit, I’m behind the times.
Stickers on the palm rests. Grumble.
Covered this before. Recommend you shrink-wrap your wrists.
There’s no obvious or convenient way to roll up the power cord.
Solved! Just weld an old automobile wheel rim to the computer, and wrap the cord around it, just like some people do with their garden hoses.
The adapter for my Dell was roughly shaped like an oblong spool, and it was really easy to wind the cord around it and secure it with a built-in rubber latch.
Now see, the people at Dell had this beat.
This one comes with a velcro thingy and a rectangular adapter. No matter what I try, I can’t get it to roll away cleanly without a timewasting effort.
Every decent effort is worth a little time, but if you continue to have trouble, I have a couple of rims you could pick up. They’re off my old 1971 Oldsmobile 98.
Given how sturdy the thing is and how little play there is in the hinges (none whatsoever), does it really need dual latches to keep the cover secure when closed?
Yes. They know you’re eventually going to destroy the hinges.
There’s a single slider on the right that uncouples both latches, but because the hinges are so stiff, it basically takes two hands to open the cover smoothly. It’s overkill.
See previous comment, a few weeks ago, about “two hands”.
By far my biggest complaint to date is battery life. Even with the larger 6-cell battery, the most I’ve been able to coax out of it is 3 1/2 hours from full charge to kaput.
Even given the demands of your level of computing, unknown anywhere within half a million Earth-miles of Earth, that seems a trite fast.
I’ve tweaked most everything I can, and it’s still falling short of my previous Dell (though, to be fair, the Dell’s battery was a 9-cell). Now, I suspect that the wireless is a huge power drain and I haven’t tested it with the wireless turned off, so on an airplane I may be able to squeeze 4 1/2 hours out of it.
Changed your name again so they’ll let you fly? Let me know how that works out.
Still, for an ultra-low voltage chipset with an SSD drive, I’d expect it to be better than this.
As well you should.
Fortunately the spare battery is quite light, so I should be able to keep an extra, fully-charged replacement around.
I said the same thing about my cordless drill, but things just never work out the way you want them to.
Overall, I’m delighted.
So are the folks who sold you this low-quality, low-performance machine.
The battery life is the only major disappointment, but in most other respects I’m quite satisfied to date.
Just unroll that power cord off the Oldsmobile rim, and you’re good to go, with or without the battery.
I should also mention that I’ve made good on my promise to go Linux full time, which so far has gone quite smoothly (VMWare helps).
Linux? You’re one of them???
December 1st, 2008 at 10:18 am
Little too much time on your hands down at the ol’ eviction mill, Iggy?
December 1st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
It’s Monday, dude. I get more done on Mondays than on any other day of the week, including time-wasting activities.
True, that.