Lenovo x230 review


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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
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    Lenovo x230 review

    I wont bore you with the hardware as you can find out where the ports are elsewhere, but I wanted to document my Linux experience so far.

    I ordered this on ebay new for just $999, which I thought was quite a bargain. It is last years model but Lenovo has a few i5 processor ones still for sale.

    It replaces my beloved Lenovo x120e (AMD chip) which was a great little machine which I probably also reviewed on this site.

    However, it was a "mobile" processor and I needed more power!

    My x230 boasts anIntel i7 CPU busterable to 3.6ghz, though I haven't run any speed tests myself, other than just normal usage for 2 days.

    I chose this over the newer x240 because the x240 can only support 8gigs of RAM, which isn't enough for the virtualization I want to do. I ordered 16 Gigs from crucual which is still in the mail.

    This is also 1 inch bigger than my previous netbook but still only 12.5 inches...not too big, but not as small as I've used too. It seems the keyboard has a bit more space. Not complaining, just something new to get used to.

    The battery came in failed. I partially suspect that's why the deal was so good at $999, especially since it is a 9-cell battery with 14 hours of life according to the doc's.

    However, this is still under warranty so Lenovo themselves are shipping me a new one. Not a big deal, just a hassle. I will also say that the 9-cell battery is massive and probably doubles the weight. I'll be ordering a 3 or 6 cell soon as I am never more than a few hours away from a plug.

    Of course it came with Windows 7 so I booted up as I wanted to make sure everything was working before I upgraded to Linux.

    A side bar: even the Lenovo install of Windows 7, with very little fluff is sooo damn slow. It's so refreshing once you get back to Linux isn't it?

    Anyway, barring the battery issues which Lenovo eagerly is trying to fix, so far so good.

    I have installed Fedora 19 XFCE spin and everything works...everything....video (though I haven't researched which driver I'm using), camera, wifi, speakers (which actually suck but that's not a big deal for me), mouse, touch pad (which I can disable in the BIOS), bluetooth (to my phone), keyboard mute and volume buttons...

    Everything works straight from the default install (except the battery of course).

    This also has a PCIe (?) slot for mSATA drives, which I've also ordered. My plan is to put the OS on that (32gig) and leave the slower 500GIG traditional drive for storage when needed. I'll update when that comes in.

    There was some extra "work" to do in the BIOS, like turn on VT, disable some wake on lan stuff, and some other things I don't recall at the moment.

    There is also a finger print reader I might toy with, though I have no idea where to even begin with that in Linux.

    double wow!!

    I just this minute tested "Suspend to RAM" and it worked, but the wow factor is that it took less than 2 seconds? Maybe less than 1 to wake up! Then about 5 seconds to find my hidden wifi again.

    Not sure what else there is to say other than "Good job Lenovo" for another great Linux laptop.

    Any questions let me know...the first few weeks are all about experimenting!
    Last edited by happybunny; 12-17-2013 at 11:26 PM.

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