Lenovo x121e netbook

When I go to boot options at start up I do not get the boot options as you normally get. Is there a way to get the boot options for booting from a cd or a usb memory stick ??
 
scylos said:
As you said, nothing in the market in that category.

They seem to have got a minor spec bump, they now ship with an
i3-2367M rather than the i3-2357M.

Not sure what the big deal is, couldn't find a benchmark.

Also the AMD models seem to have vanished from the UK site. I wanted to go for a second AMD one for my brother, but I reckon I would be going for the i3 instead.
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That's just a little annoying as I ordered mine with the 2357m last week and I'm still waiting for it to arrive.

MAybe they'll just upgrade my order (I doubt it though)
 
Wishy said:
You can knock up the font size to allow for the relatively high res screen.
....

My travels in linux
Debian - Squeeze don't support the inbuilt wired network interface. It will support the Centrino 1000, but they're too puritanical to include these for you, so faf++
Ubuntu (All varients) - If you get a black screen on boot, disable the UEFI in the BIOS. Once you've done that, everything should pretty much work. That said, I miss gnome 2.x
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How did you install ubuntu on the x121e. I want to boot from a usb memory stick. But I cannot find the boot option when I press F10 at start up ??!! Any help is appreciated. I bought the x121e primarily to run ubuntu 10.10 and at the moment I am struggling to even get to the point of installation.
 
inventoryphoto said:
Just found this... looks like an x130e is on its way...

http://www2.partnerinfo.lenovo.com/partners/us/resources/downloads/live/US_Channel_Update_101911.pdf
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Looking at the performance claims, it's going to be identical performance to a X121 (See the performance claim against a netbook), but with some additional ruggedness. Good for kids, but the build quality on the X121e is perfectly fine for me to take around with me. And frankly if i damage it's not cost the world. Long as i can recover my SSD!
Plus rugged will come at a price, financial and in terms of looks and size.

Until Ivy Bridge comes along, anyone with an X121E shouldn't be worrying about upgrades. And Ivy is only really going to help with battery life - which is already excellent.

JENSON10 said:
How did you install ubuntu on the x121e. I want to boot from a usb memory stick. But I cannot find the boot option when I press F10 at start up ??!! Any help is appreciated. I bought the x121e primarily to run ubuntu 10.10 and at the moment I am struggling to even get to the point of installation.
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Booted fine off usb key. might have been a different F key.

You're in for trouble with ubuntu 10.10 - wired network card drivers won't be in the kernel as far as i can remember. Also, you'll want to turn off UEFI to get it booting - otherwise I just got stuck at a black screen.


inventoryphoto said:
That's just a little annoying as I ordered mine with the 2357m last week and I'm still waiting for it to arrive.

MAybe they'll just upgrade my order (I doubt it though)
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Its a 1.4ghz process vs 1.3ghz. Odds of you noticing are pretty much zero I'd have said.
 
Wishy said:
Booted fine off usb key. might have been a different F key.

You're in for trouble with ubuntu 10.10 - wired network card drivers won't be in the kernel as far as i can remember. Also, you'll want to turn off UEFI to get it booting - otherwise I just got stuck at a black screen.




.
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Well I managed to enable the F12 boot option and everything seems to be fine apart from the wifi as I have the broadcom chip (thinkpad a/b/g/n). So you reckon I wont be able to get even the Ethernet port running on ubuntu then. What about using ndiswrapper and the likes ?? Apart from that the boot was fine from the usb. I will install it and run ubuntu with UEFI turned off.
 
JENSON10 said:
Well I managed to enable the F12 boot option and everything seems to be fine apart from the wifi as I have the broadcom chip (thinkpad a/b/g/n). So you reckon I wont be able to get even the Ethernet port running on ubuntu then. What about using ndiswrapper and the likes ?? Apart from that the boot was fine from the usb. I will install it and run ubuntu with UEFI turned off.
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No idea on the broadcom wireless - I paid for the centrino (Which works easily. Should be an easy swap with a second hand part if you need)
Wired ethernet - Support was compiled into the kernel around april, so if you can get a kernel update you'll probably find it starts working. Of course, might be troublesome getting a kernel update without wired or wireless network!
11.10 should work out the box, but then you'd have unity, and crashing. Fedora also worked out the box, but then you'd have gnome 3.
 
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Wishy said:
No idea on the broadcom wireless - I paid for the centrino (Which works easily. Should be an easy swap with a second hand part if you need)
Wired ethernet - Support was compiled into the kernel around april, so if you can get a kernel update you'll probably find it starts working. Of course, might be troublesome getting a kernel update without wired or wireless network!
11.10 should work out the box, but then you'd have unity, and crashing. Fedora also worked out the box, but then you'd have gnome 3.
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Thanks a lot mate .

The reason I am using the Ububtu 10.10 is because it was packaged with the OSIAN environment and I need OSIAN to work on my dissertation. I really like the look of Fedora 15 especially when paired wit Fedora electonics lab.

ps: Did you install Ubuntu 10.10 after manual partitioning. I have heard that the Ubuntu installer tends to wipe out the EFI System Partition (ESP) -- normally the first partition on the hard disk. The ESP holds boot loaders, including one that's vital for Windows to boot. Any wat to work around this.
 
JENSON10 said:
Thanks a lot mate .

The reason I am using the Ububtu 10.10 is because it was packaged with the OSIAN environment and I need OSIAN to work on my dissertation. I really like the look of Fedora 15 especially when paired wit Fedora electonics lab.

ps: Did you install Ubuntu 10.10 after manual partitioning. I have heard that the Ubuntu installer tends to wipe out the EFI System Partition (ESP) -- normally the first partition on the hard disk. The ESP holds boot loaders, including one that's vital for Windows to boot. Any wat to work around this.
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Yeh, think I said it wouldn't be a smooth ride when you said you wanted 10.10.

Ubuntu 10.10 went on a fresh SSD. I never like dual booting, you always end up wanting to swap. I tend to find the OS which best suits the device for the purpose (Eg Server -> Linux. Firewall -> BSD. Desktop which does games -> Windows 7) and leave it with that.
 
Wishy said:
Yeh, think I said it wouldn't be a smooth ride when you said you wanted 10.10.

Ubuntu 10.10 went on a fresh SSD. I never like dual booting, you always end up wanting to swap. I tend to find the OS which best suits the device for the purpose (Eg Server -> Linux. Firewall -> BSD. Desktop which does games -> Windows 7) and leave it with that.
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Yep, you did mention this. I think I will have put up with not having internet while using the x121e for linux then. Or better yet search for another solution. If I do find a solution, I'll let you. Cheerio :)
 
JENSON10 said:
Yep, you did mention this. I think I will have put up with not having internet while using the x121e for linux then. Or better yet search for another solution. If I do find a solution, I'll let you. Cheerio :)
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Swap out of the network card for an intel model will likely get connectivity - drivers are copyright but freely distributed by intel. Ubuntu include them (Debian do not). You MUST make sure its a lenovo branded half heigh PCI-E card. Non lenovo cards have the wrong PCI-ID and you'll get an 1802 error. There are ways around, but best just to buy a lenovo one.

Alternatively, a USB network card (Wired or wireless) with linux support, or 3G card is likely to be get around the issue.
 
Wishy said:
Looking at the performance claims, it's going to be identical performance to a X121 (See the performance claim against a netbook), but with some additional ruggedness. Good for kids, but the build quality on the X121e is perfectly fine for me to take around with me. And frankly if i damage it's not cost the world. Long as i can recover my SSD!
Plus rugged will come at a price, financial and in terms of looks and size.

Until Ivy Bridge comes along, anyone with an X121E shouldn't be worrying about upgrades. And Ivy is only really going to help with battery life - which is already excellent.
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Agreed. Looks like its gonna be uglier than this - this looks really modest and sleek.
As long as it doesnt have a rollcage it'll never be too rugged, so I'm more than happy with the X121.

Performance wise it should be the same - i.e. the i3-2367 and prbly the E-450.

I'll keep you posted when I get the updated processor one, but as Wishy said, it won't be a difference that you would be able to see.
 
I'll keep you posted when I get the updated processor one, but as Wishy said, it won't be a difference that you would be able to see.
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I suppose that depends what you're doing. If it were say a second faster at processing an image file (what I'll be using it for) then that soon adds up. 60 images becomes a saving of a minute.

At a festival, I could probably process out around 600ish images a day, so based on a second that would be 10 minutes over the course of the day (enough time to grab a smoke and a coffee! ;) ). I can live with that, but it's still a little annoying that I missed the upgrade by a couple of days.

My x121e still hasn't been dispatched though. I wonder if I'm going to get a 'parts not available' email instead? I ordered an e520 for my Dad at the same time and that's been dispatched.

Looking at that x130e thing again, maybe it's just going to be the US version of the x121e (as they can still only get the x120e atm)? If that's the case, it'll be roughly the same. They may have to maintain different model numbers for the wireless licensing doodar they have to do?
 
inventoryphoto said:
I suppose that depends what you're doing. If it were say a second faster at processing an image file (what I'll be using it for) then that soon adds up. 60 images becomes a saving of a minute.

At a festival, I could probably process out around 600ish images a day, so based on a second that would be 10 minutes over the course of the day (enough time to grab a smoke and a coffee! ;) ). I can live with that, but it's still a little annoying that I missed the upgrade by a couple of days.
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Your choice of antivirus will probably make more difference, and in any case this is not a laptop designed to deal with image processing.
Really, 100mhz is nothing.

inventoryphoto said:
Looking at that x130e thing again, maybe it's just going to be the US version of the x121e (as they can still only get the x120e atm)? If that's the case, it'll be roughly the same. They may have to maintain different model numbers for the wireless licensing doodar they have to do?
Click to expand...

x130e is more ruggedised, it says so on the PDF.
 
Lenovo support was so poor that in the end rather than arranging a repair I had to arrange for a refund!

So now I have my money back I don't really know what to do. I used to have the AMD E350 so I may go back and order the i3, are there any other competing makes/models you would suggest I look at?

Also are there any 10% codes aroundd for the Lenovo site?
 
Screen problem on resume

Had this for a few weeks now and this is the 2nd time it's happened. Sometimes coming out of sleep mode the screen doesn't come back - it's on as the brightness changes but no picture. Holding down the power button doesn't help as I can hear it reboot but still no picture appears.

Only fix seems to be a convoluted system of pulling the battery, plugging it into mains, turning on, turning off, putting battery back in and turning on again! Have tried just leaving battery out for 15 secs, holding down power button for 15 secs etc but the above sequence is the only one that works.

Any ideas chaps? May be time to send for a replacement as this is really annoying when it happens as you can imagine?
 
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