Lenovo x121e netbook

Processor speed for the AMD: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+E-350


Same for i3-2367M: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-2367M+@+1.40GHz



The i3 demolishes the AMD in any meaningful comparison. If of course you only need this for browsing etc, go for the AMD. I personally needed something that could also do some proper business; I initially wanted an X220 but the X121e covered my needs admirably.

Its not that the A-350 is useless, its just that if you see how much faster the i3 is you will wonder why you didn't spend that extra bit. Well, I would anyway, though the A-350 is probably the best cost/power ratio.

The Ideapad is for all purposes similar to performance with the AMD X121e that's now not for sale in the UK - but with slower memory & hard drive. When the X121e was available, it was with fast memory and 7200 drive for £270 I think.

Having said that, I cannot stand ugly things and the S205 is *very* ugly, so I would never buy it. The X121e is simply put, beautiful (in the special Thinkpad kind of way).
 
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scylos said:
Processor speed for the AMD: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+E-350


Same for i3-2367M: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-2367M+@+1.40GHz



The i3 demolishes the AMD in any meaningful comparison. If of course you only need this for browsing etc, go for the AMD. I personally needed something that could also do some proper business; I initially wanted an X220 but the X121e covered my needs admirably.

Its not that the A-350 is useless, its just that if you see how much faster the i3 is you will wonder why you didn't spend that extra bit. Well, I would anyway, though the A-350 is probably the best cost/power ratio.

The Ideapad is for all purposes similar to performance with the AMD X121e that's now not for sale in the UK - but with slower memory & hard drive. When the X121e was available, it was with fast memory and 7200 drive for £270 I think.

Having said that, I cannot stand ugly things and the S205 is *very* ugly, so I would never buy it. The X121e is simply put, beautiful (in the special Thinkpad kind of way).
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Thanks for this. Those benchmarks really do put things in perspective. I was only intending to do a bit of web browsing, but it would be nice to be able to do a bit of photo editing etc. Hmmm... going to have to think about this a bit more.

scylos said:
Having said that, I cannot stand ugly things and the S205 is *very* ugly, so I would never buy it. The X121e is simply put, beautiful (in the special Thinkpad kind of way).
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I actually think I prefer the look of the S205... it's just... simpler!
 
I've got the AMD E-350 X121E but would get the Intel version. Once you use the Nov code and Quidco, you're looking at around £330.

I had a budget of £250 at the time and pushed in out a bit further and went for the E-350, which I managed to get for under £300 in the end.

Really only purchased it it for Internet and general use and was surprised I could play TF2 on it!
 
It's using short render distance and the 4250 which is crap for Minecraft is beating the HD3000 with i5 2500K.
 
Wishy said:
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.
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Hmmm I have installed Ubuntu 10.10. It's running smoothly apart from that wireless LAN problem. I will try to find a solution to that later on or else I will have to follow your solution of getting an intel WLAN card.
 
I've seen a few reports of the x121e powering off in this thread, with the battery having to be removed and installed before being able to power up the machine again.

I think this is a case of the laptop shorting out, it does seem to happen more when there is an impact (shutting the laptop lid) or when moving the machine around. This happens predominantly on the right hand side of the laptop, so I think it may the the HDD or SSD shorting on the removable cover.

I've spent more time trying to fix tedious issues with this laptop since I bought it, with the first (and most annoying) being the issues caused by a bug in the BIOS causing an issue with the wireless card in Linux distributions.
 
Threebie 3 said:
I think this is a case of the laptop shorting out, it does seem to happen more when there is an impact (shutting the laptop lid) or when moving the machine around. This happens predominantly on the right hand side of the laptop, so I think it may the the HDD or SSD shorting on the removable cover.
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That very accurately sums up what was happening to me, in the end support were so bad (and slow) I just sent it back for a refund. And guess what? I am waiting for a new one as we speak, despite it's problems I can't see anything else on the market that competes (to the i3 that is).
 
Threebie 3 said:
I've seen a few reports of the x121e powering off in this thread, with the battery having to be removed and installed before being able to power up the machine again.

I think this is a case of the laptop shorting out, it does seem to happen more when there is an impact (shutting the laptop lid) or when moving the machine around. This happens predominantly on the right hand side of the laptop, so I think it may the the HDD or SSD shorting on the removable cover.

I've spent more time trying to fix tedious issues with this laptop since I bought it, with the first (and most annoying) being the issues caused by a bug in the BIOS causing an issue with the wireless card in Linux distributions.
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My only real gripe so far is the amount of bloatware PC it shipped with, even if the Vantage suite is on the useful side.

Setting out the machine is .... painful to say the least. When I finish it, It flies and when I set the power options properly I easily get 7 hours with brightness at 10 and 5:30-6 with brightness at max. But as it comes from Lenovo, its performance reeks of mediocrity.

Also, lots of overlap between the Lenovo functions and the Windows ones.

Microsoft really has to put some effort into cleaning up the unbelievably fragmented setting menus, it just drives me nuts at times.
 
scylos said:
Processor speed for the AMD: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+E-350


Same for i3-2367M: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-2367M+@+1.40GHz



The i3 demolishes the AMD in any meaningful comparison. If of course you only need this for browsing etc, go for the AMD. I personally needed something that could also do some proper business; I initially wanted an X220 but the X121e covered my needs admirably.
Click to expand...

That covers CPU benches but any sort of light gaming in mind you might want to consider the AMD as HD3000 is woeful, so what you buy really depends on your usage model, some people like myself don't need mega CPU but value decent graphics drivers and Linux support, AMD wins here.

for windows gaming look at Samsung Series 9 with core i5 2537 (HD3000 with 25% better CPU than i3 x121) vs HP DM1 (AMD E350 x121AMD equiv)

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21902/7

So for a CPU that is good enough for general tasks, light gaming and better battery life the AMD x121 has to be considered. It should breeze through Minecraft.

Personally I have just picked up the faster e450 variant of Brazos from HP (dm1-4027) after my refund issues with Lenovo (all resolved but took months)
 
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sandys said:
That covers CPU benches but any sort of light gaming in mind you might want to consider the AMD as HD3000 is woeful, so what you buy really depends on your usage model, some people like myself don't need mega CPU but value decent graphics drivers and Linux support, AMD wins here.

for windows gaming look at Samsung Series 9 with core i5 2537 (HD3000 with 25% better CPU than i3 x121) vs HP DM1 (AMD E350 x121AMD equiv)

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21902/7

So for a CPU that is good enough for general tasks, light gaming and better battery life the AMD x121 has to be considered. It should breeze through Minecraft.

Personally I have just picked up the faster e450 variant of Brazos from HP (dm1-4027) after my refund issues with Lenovo (all resolved but took months)
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Well, I was lucky enough to be able to try out a 6GB AMD-350 before my i3 one and as far as I can tell there is no difference in the games I tried (Neverwinter 2, TF2, Star Wars Empire at War) - if anything, the i3 is faster. But, I am sure that there will be the odd game where the AMD fares better, just because of the abysmall state of the Intel drivers. Its not that the 3000 is a better video card (though its integral to the CPU if I understand), its that the E-350 is just weak; most modern games will require more of the processor, enough to cause bottlenecks.

The E-450 is sure to be better than the i3 when it comes to video, and a better performer overall.

Having said that, I am more than willing to sacrifice 2-3 FPS if necessary to ensure no lag when doing everyday stuff, and the difference is profound.

No way I could run the size of presentations my office usually produces on the E-350, just wasn't practical.

So it just comes down to what one wants to do with the machine.
 
2StepSteve said:
So, we have no one here that will test Minecraft for me?! Out of all the Intel X121e owners in this thread. Come on guys, surely one of you play Minecraft or at least could run a quick FPS check.

Minecraft is a really difficult to judge game with how well it will run.

Here is the AMD-350 for a comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ynXLl_t3I&feature=related
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Agree the e350 is weak in comparison to i3 but for some it might be good enough, 'tis for me, I've been running an Atom for a few years in my EEEPC 1000H, its been fine bar GPU acceleration so anything is a step up.

e350 (radeon 6310) vs various integrated in Minecraft @1080p

i5-2500k run same gpu as i3 (though a touch faster) and cpu is clearly a lot faster than the i3, so you can expect worse performance than in this review, it'll probably still be acceptable.

Google is not so hard to use :p
 
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I've been spending quite a bit of my time using google. :p

I have read those benchies before.

They only give a ball park figure of how the x121e will perform. It is clearly going to be slower than the i5-2500k but by how much, is the question. Also we have to factor in that the x121e is running at a lower resolution than those benchmarks, which will help frame rates.

Again, having someone test Minecraft is the only solution. As from my searching no one has done so before in a configuration like the x121e.
 
2StepSteve said:
I've been spending quite a bit of my time using google. :p

I have read those benchies before.

They only give a ball park figure of how the x121e will perform. It is clearly going to be slower than the i5-2500k but by how much, is the question. Also we have to factor in that the x121e is running at a lower resolution than those benchmarks, which will help frame rates.

Again, having someone test Minecraft is the only solution. As from my searching no one has done so before in a configuration like the x121e.
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I'm happy to help you, but I aint buying that thing, will the browser version do? Or the beta one (the one for free)?
 
I am thinking of buying the intel version of this. I love all things red and pink so I was thinking about getting the red casing. But I have read it shows up fingerprints really badly whereas the black does not. Since this will be my portable PC it would affect which I pick. As for shipping who do they ship with, and do you get notice of delivery because I can not always be home for it.
 
NeonAngel said:
I am thinking of buying the intel version of this. I love all things red and pink so I was thinking about getting the red casing. But I have read it shows up fingerprints really badly whereas the black does not. Since this will be my portable PC it would affect which I pick. As for shipping who do they ship with, and do you get notice of delivery because I can not always be home for it.
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They use UPS, and it takes a while, don't know if others have had the same experience but to give you an idea; I ordered on the 8th, shipped on the 14th, out for delivery today (17th).
 
s4vva said:
They use UPS, and it takes a while, don't know if others have had the same experience but to give you an idea; I ordered on the 8th, shipped on the 14th, out for delivery today (17th).
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Do they tell you in advance what day the delivery will be? IE giving you the tracking number or something? Just its a pain in the arse to have to go through a redelivery.
 
NeonAngel said:
Do they tell you in advance what day the delivery will be? IE giving you the tracking number or something? Just its a pain in the arse to have to go through a redelivery.
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Oddly only on the first and last days. So from the UPS tracking page when the unit is first shipped you can view the estimated delivery date, that then disappears and you can view the tracking (exact location) and of course yo ucan then tell when it is out for delivery.
 
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