Lenovo's Thinkpad Edge: Thoughts and Advice Please

I am presently researching to purchase a laptop for my wife at Christmas who is a teacher thus she will need to access the internet, do Office work, grading, emails, research, etc., but no gaming at all.

Will be running 7 64 OS, with 4 gigs of RAM, and hopefully a 7200 rpm hd. Leaning towards the i5 processor. There are three models: 13, 14, and 15 and I am looking at the 15 because my wife will be using it in place of a desktop.

The Thinkpad Edge is part of Lenovo's excellent T Series but somewhat less expensive and I have come across mixed user reviews as to the 15 having flex and then again others swear this is not the case. Looking at current configurations it seems it will deliver what I am looking for but I know nothing of the buiild quality.

Would love to hear back from people who have used this series and/or from ITs who repair laptops for their insights.

Thanks!

I would stick to the good-ole T series. I bought a T61 two years ago and it is still going strong. Battery is at 46% capacity, but I use it a lot. I came from a horribly designed Toshiba, so it was a breathe of fresh air to have a good laptop.

If you are going to do a lot of work on it, I would suggest the 15" (or higher) models.

Have a few questions / comments for you.

1. will she need long battery run time?
2. No need for an Intel core anything for basic computing. Dual core and or single core will be fine. Will lower the cost considerably.
3. 7200RPM is pointless run runtime if that's what she needs if running on battery. That extra 1800RPM sucks down the battery.

3gig or 4gig is what I would be looking for with W7 either 32/64bit. I see no difference in 32/64bit computing while browsing and checking e-mail..

Brands I like...and own Toshiba, Lenovo, Acer

I just bought this acer for a client. Cleaned it up and sent it out. Beautiful machine. Fast too. has a P6100 2.0Ghz Dual core with a 4 hour run time

That extra 1800rpm actually makes little to no difference in runtime..wish people would stop spreading that myth. Also she will need 64-bit Win 7 to use all the 4GB of memory the OP wants and most notebooks come with these days.

Your point 2. I'm not sure what you're even trying to say...any new Intel based notebook will be i3, i5, or i7 based if you're getting at the t4400 and the like they are old tech and won't really be found in a new notebook anymore.

1) Mine ran about 3-4 hours when I first got it. I got the normal 6-cell battery. It also depends HEAVILY on what you are using. I can extend/lower my batter life by over and hour by changing the brightness of the display, running the processor in a low power state, turning off the hard drive and disabling the wireless. Of course, you don't want to do that if you need to process information, access the internet and are working in a bright place. It varies too much for me to give an answer.

2) I'm not sure if this is a question, but I agree with it.

3) 7200rpm drives will take a bit more power to get running (startup) and keep running. I don't think it is going to be more than a few watts or a few minutes of run-time.


I would absolutely stay away from Toshiba at all costs. I will go into detail through private messages (to keep this thread clear) if you want to know what happened; otherwise I'm going to shut my trap and say "don't use them".

The quality of Lenovo laptops is mind-blowing after working with hundreds of others. I used to work for a local university fixing student's laptops, so I've seen my fair share that have been through a rough life. After having a big mishap with Toshiba, I decided to say "screw it" to performance and decided to just go for quality of product and support. After talking with a bunch of people here on the forums, at work and through other mediums, I decided to take their advice and go with a Thinkpad. Haven't had an issue to date except for the CPU fan clicking (bearing bent). I notified IBM through email, they called me less than an hour later and told me that someone would be out the next morning (let me remind you that I emailed on Friday, they were going to send someone on Saturday!) to fix it. Blew my mind and completely worth switching companies. I know what my next laptop is going to be.

I've had a few older Thinkpads and they were always good T42p and T40 and most recently a 500SL.

Trap05 said:

That extra 1800rpm actually makes little to no difference in runtime..wish people would stop spreading that myth. Also she will need 64-bit Win 7 to use all the 4GB of memory the OP wants and most notebooks come with these days.

Your point 2. I'm not sure what you're even trying to say...any new Intel based notebook will be i3, i5, or i7 based if you're getting at the t4400 and the like they are old tech and won't really be found in a new notebook anymore.

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Not a myth at all. My current laptop has a 250gig 5400RPM drive. I upgraded it to a 250gig 7200RPM drive. My run time went down from 8.5 hours to 5.5 hours. Does not look like a myth to me.. I re-installed the 5400RPM back in. I'm not taking that much of a run time hit.

If you're not gaming, no need for any core i series cpu. A waste of money. T or P series dual core Pentium is plenty.

The problem is you are comparing two different drives that may have very different features. There are acoustic settings that could differ, even between same model drives. Not to mention you may have a different amount of spinning mass (platters), different actuators and different electronics on the drive itself. Unless your laptop takes a total of 5-7 watts (it doesn't) while running, you wouldn't see a performance hit like that.

Well said...I have two brand new 2.5" sata drives here a Seagate 250GB 5400.6 0.4515A and a WD Black 320GB 0.55A less than 0.5A difference is not going to eat 3hrs of battery life

About lenovo's new laptops...

I just bought a new L412 with the i3 and integrated graphics. Build quality feels fine, the case can be flexed on the palm rests and bottom if you press with moderate effort. The case on my MSI CR600 actually felt less flexible. It seems like, to me anyway, older Thinkpads required more effort to flex the case (such as the A22e I have at work). The keyboard on the L412 is fine, nice to type on. The textured touchpad feels nice, it is responsive, and the trackpoint is simply awesome. The L412 also has loud and reasonably clear speakers. However, in regards to the L412 (not sure about their other models) this particular L412 I got has the worst LCD I have seen on a laptop since typical 486 laptops from the mid 1990s. Seriously, it is that bad. The colors look washed out, the individual pixels are clearly noticeable, the viewing angles are mediocre at best, even at max brightness it isn't very bright, it looks "muddy", there is a lot of pixelation in black areas during video playback (far more then I have ever seen on any laptop, unacceptable even for a business notebook). The LCD is actually tiring to look at, it is simply the worst LCD I've seen in a long time. Reviews on this particular model have much of the same gripes about the screen that I have, so I doubt its something specific to my Thinkpad. I might have a defective screen, but I seriously doubt it, for all intents and purposes it looks defect-free, no dead pixels etc., it just has an incredibly low quality appearance. My old iBook G4 had a far better screen then this Thinkpad.

The Edge might be better because it has a glossy screen, at least the colors should be more vibrant. I suggest going to a retailer that has one and look at it yourself, try typing on it cause the Edge uses an "island" keyboard that is a departure from the style of keyboards previous Thinkpads used, feel the build quality of the machine for yourself. If possible have your wife go with you, even though its a Xmas gift, and see how she likes the machine.

If I had to do it again I would 1) see the machine in person first so I could've seen in person just how bad the screen was, 2) buy a higher end Thinkpad like the T or X series, 3) or just go with a different brand (or model) all together. That's just my $.02. Good luck!

thideras said:

1) I would absolutely stay away from Toshiba at all costs...

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Toshiba, like many other manufacturers, has a wide range of quality ranging from very poor and spotty to excellent. The Satellite series qualifies as the prior, while the Portege series qualifies as the later.

That said, the Thinkpad edge series are a bit lighter-weight than the "classic" T series, but they're still well constructed. We've sold 4 of the 0301DCU in the past 3 months and the users are all happy with them. During setup and configuration, I found them to have a good solid feel, they ran cool and they performed well.

You may, however, wish to consider a model with a docking port and the port replicator to go with it. There's nothing like a full-size keyboard, monitor and mouse and the convenience of single-click connections is more than worth the cost. Also, this arrangement allows you greater flexibility with notebook configuration, as you needn't factor screen size into daily use scenarios.

Now for the ubiquitous refrain: Get a quality SSD, such as the Intel X25-160 for your OS if you can afford it. It is the single most significant performance improvement you can make.

Thanks to everyone who has replied. It has helped me tremendously in thinking things through some more (this is why I love these forums; some of the most helpful and knowledgeable on the net are here and I belong to a number of tech forums).

I'd like to get more of your opinions on the cpu. I have settled on 7 64 with 4gigs of RAM and a screen size between 15" to 15.6" and 17" but only if I find a deal and as I said I am leaning towards the i5 processor. However, my wife will, again, be doing Office, internet research, surfing, Skype, email, etc. As said before, no gaming and though she may need to take it to school on occasion she will primarily use this at home where she does much of her grading, weekly planning, etc.

So since she won't be doing any demanding work do you think from a cost effective point an i3 will more than suffice? There are also some nice AMD offerings which would lower the cost some more but the latest AMD, including their tri-core, do not have an L3 cache.

Thoughts please and thanks again.

i3 would be more than enough.

@thideras - just pm'd you before I read your response.

No worries, big PM on your way.

thideras said:

The problem is you are comparing two different drives that may have very different features. There are acoustic settings that could differ, even between same model drives. Not to mention you may have a different amount of spinning mass (platters), different actuators and different electronics on the drive itself. Unless your laptop takes a total of 5-7 watts (it doesn't) while running, you wouldn't see a performance hit like that.

Click to expand...

Well it should be that much different. Its a performance drive.

The CPU is a Celeron ULV 743. MAX TDP is 10 Watts. I did an extensive test. Full battery to dead (7%) 5400 RPM drive : 8 hours 30 minutes.

Drive: MK2555GSX

Read/Write 1.4W (typ.)
Low power Idle 0.6W (typ.)
Stand-by 0.18W (typ.)
Sleep 0.13W (typ.)

DRIVE: WD2500BEKT

Read/Write 2.1W (typ.)
Low power Idle 0.85 (typ.)
Stand-by 0.25W (typ.)
Sleep 0.20W (typ.)

When dealing with a laptop that draws almost nothing, and slight increase in power draw will make a significant change on the run time.. The read and write power is almost double with the WD drive.

.7 watts
.25 watts
.07 watts
.07 watts

1.09 watt difference from the 5400 RPM drive and the 7200 RPM drive.

This 1 watt difference impacted my run time significantly.

Ran some numbers quick, not like it matters.

If your battery life went from 8.5 hours to 5.5 hours with a 1 watt increase, that would mean your overall power consumption increased by 54%. This leaves your "8.5 hours power consumption rating" at a whopping 1.85 watts. Basically, that isn't possible. I'm pretty sure my laptop takes more than that when it is sleeping.

Somewhere, the numbers don't add up, but this isn't from a simple hard drive swap.

thideras said:

Ran some numbers quick, not like it matters.

If your battery life went from 8.5 hours to 5.5 hours with a 1 watt increase, that would mean your overall power consumption increased by 54%. This leaves your "8.5 hours power consumption rating" at a whopping 1.85 watts. Basically, that isn't possible. I'm pretty sure my laptop takes more than that when it is sleeping.

Somewhere, the numbers don't add up, but this isn't from a simple hard drive swap.

Click to expand...

I'm going to start another thread, because I'm going to bombard this thread with pictures and I don't think that would be a good idea for the OP.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6649044#post6649044

Honestly, I'm not interested in bickering back and forth.

thideras said:

Honestly, I'm not interested in bickering back and forth.

Click to expand...

Hmm.. whats the purpose of a forum?