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"Good, but still leaves some users out in the rain." on by chronoex
Pros: Thin, light, sexy; Bright, clear, high-resolution display; 3 USB Ports and and ExpressCard slot; Small power brick.
Cons: Shiny keyboard not one of Lenovo's better ideas; Underpowered CPU; Pretty pricey; External Optical Drive.
Summary: With the IdeaPad U110, Lenovo does make some strides forwards towards the creation of an ultraportable that's usable for the population at large, but the hardware that's been sacrificed still keeps some users out in the rain.
This in indeed an ultraportable notebook. It's really quite small and sleek, and easily slips into a bag to go virtually wherever you need it to. But when you pull it out of that bag for some actual use, what is it that you get? For some internet browsing or document work on the go, you get quite a bit. Lenovo's provided a good screen with plenty of real estate, so your apps aren't going to feel cramped. You've got some degree of expandability, if you need it, in the form of three USB ports and an ExpressCard slot. And you've got a head-turning, genuinely sexy machine, all in a truly portable package.
But you don't have much else, is the problem. With it's provided extended-life battery, one would think that this would be the optimum machine for some movie watching on a trip. Alas, however, the removal of the optical drive kills this potential for all but those willing to lug around the external drive. But...if you're really willing to pay almost $2000 for the sleekness that comes along with this notebook, it's also pretty easy to bet that you're probably not willing to carry around the unsightly DVD add-on.
A gaming machine this is not as well, the Intel Integrated Graphics have pretty much decided that for you. Plus, the lack of an optical drive completely locks you out from that possibility.
The Lenovo Ideapad U110 has made strides over some of the design flaws that came with the Macbook Air, but it still has not found the sweet spot between form and function thats going to gain the ultraportable market real attention. -
"Bright, but grainy screen. Much faster with XP." on
Pros: Higher resolution provides more real-estate than most laptops this size.
Sleek, Slim, Lightweight,
Super Bright Screen.
Good Battery Life.
Most importantly, the wife likes it.
Fast with XP ProCons: Audio is difficult to hear.
Slow out of the box. (With Vista Home Premium)
Had Severe issues with (Vista Ultimate)
Keyboard not so great for touch typistsSummary: Before I bought the U110, I first bought the Lenovo X60 because of the great reviews. The X60 was blazingly fast for doing enterprise development work, but heat coming off of the palmrest was so hot, it was annoying to type on and the max resolution of 1080 made it difficult to work with visual studio and sql server simultaneously.
Out of the box, with vista, the U110 was slow compared to the X60. Boot time took 60%-70% longer than the X60. The veriface login was also slow. I needed IIS, so I upgraded the U110 to Vista Ultimate. After installing lenovo's vista drivers on ultimate vista, I would get the blue screen of death followed by the OS rebooting. This lead to an infiniate reboot loop.
I used the "one button" restore feature, which restored the laptop back to factory specs. In about an hour everything was back to the way i first received the laptop. If you decide to install another OS over your existing OS, just be sure to leave the EISA Utilities partition intact and you'll be able to use by the "one button" restore. Also, note you can call Lenovo and they will send you one free set of restore disks as long as you are within your warranty.
I decided to give XP pro SP3 a shot and wow, what a difference! Ater installing XP Pro The U110 now boots up faster than my X60. The XP Pro installed eliminated the Veriface login, which probably helped boot up time. After switching to XP pro, reintsalling Vistual studio 2008, and reinstalling sql server 2005, performance is pretty close to being par with the X60.
The U110 doesn't get hot like the X60. - I can rest my hands directly on the keyboard without feeling any heat. The screen's 1366 resolution provides good real estate compared to the X60's 1080 res. The larger battery is rated for 8 hours, but only delivers about 4 hours of operation. I'm lucky to get 1.5 hours out of the smaller battery.
The keyboard is not great for touch typists. Because the keys are flat and there is little space between each key, I freqently find myself fat fingering words.
The audio volume on both the X60 and U110 is difficult to hear. Sometimes, I find it difficult to hear anything on some website videos without headphones.
Both the X60 and U110 are quiet laptops. There is no noise, and you can't tell that the laptop is on (noise-wise) unless you look at it.
Overall, the U110 feels solid; however, the lid doesn't feel quite as solid as other thinkpads. I would suggest picking up the lid from the center rather than from the corner to reduce twisting the lid since it doesn't seem to have the same reinforcement other thinkpads have.
The U110 LED is much brighter, versus the X60's LCD screen. The X60's highest brightness setting is equivilent to about 4 notches down from the U110's highest brightness setting. I didn't find the glossy screen to produce any more glare than any other laptop glossy screen. One thing odd about the U110's screen is sharp, yet it seems a little grainy. It is the oddest thing. The closest way of replicating this effect on a regular monitor would be to spray windex on a regular monitor and then wipe it clean. In those 1-2 seconds before that tiny remaining layer of windex completely dries, it produces a grainy/sparkley effect similiar to the U110's screen.
Both the X60 and U110, have no problems delivering a nice picture at a 1920 resolution on an external monitor.
Overall, the U110 is a gorgeous laptop with a solid design similar to the typical thinkpad line. With the default install of vista, it is a sluggish machine. If you decide to go with XP Pro, you'll turn that sluggish machine into a decent performing workhorse you can use in the office. XP Drivers can be downloaded from the Lenovo website. -
"Great product - if you know what you're buying" on by aspy008
Pros: Small, light weight, good looking, easy power adjustments.
Cons: Glossy Keyboard, poor resumability from sleep/hibernation, expensive.
Summary: I bought this laptop four months ago, and have used it almost every day since. I also brought it on a one month trip to Europe/Russia ? travel being the main reason I selected this product. I love this laptop, as it fulfills my requirements ? small, relatively fast, nice screen, and great battery life (with the larger battery). Remember that you are buying an ultra-portable for a reason, and as a result you wont get the same performance and feature set as you will with a larger machine. No, it doesn?t have an optical drive built in, but then when do you really need one? I used the portable drive that came with the laptop to install apps. Other than that I don?t need an optical drive, and really, in that sense its just a waste of space for me, so this has been a non-issue. I use this laptop primarily for working online, managing email, and simple documentation with Word, Excel, etc. During my trip I also used Photoshop and imported and edited many large image files. The laptop performed better than I expected for all tasks, including loading Photoshop (which is typically pretty slow on most laptops/desktops) and editing 10mb+ image files (the 2 GB of RAM is very nice for this). I have never done speed tests per se, but for me the real test is do I wait longer for files and apps to load and is there a lag in processing while I work? I haven?t really noticed that anything runs noticeably slower on this machine vs others I use. Sure, things may take milliseconds longer, but this is worth it to me considering the portability of this laptop. I have never had any issues with day to day use. The wireless card works as well as any, and I have the same range with this machine at home as I do with two other larger laptops I use. Hotspots are easy to connect to when im not at home. So in the area of general productivity, I have no complaints. I bought a much small messenger bag than I typically use to carry this around. Recently I brought my bigger laptop to the office in my larger bag, and I could really really tell the difference in size and weight ? like night and day. That?s the main benefit I get from the Ideapad. Length and width, Its about the size of a piece of paper. With the small battery its ridiculously light (get about 1.5 hours of time), and with the big its noticeably heavier, but still light (I get about 4.5 hours with the big one). I have two complaints. Both of these things **** me off about this machine. First ? The keyboard is glossy and shows EVERY fingerprint, smudge and spec of dust. No matter how clean my fingers are, the keyboard always looks dirty. Its almost embarrassing when sitting in public, as it makes me feel like I look like a slob. This made me want to clean it often. Every day practically. In wiping the keyboard clean, I accidentally lifted one of the keys and broke it off. The plastic that holds the keys to the board is about the size of a hair and obviously very fragile. Second, the machine is unpredictable when awakening from sleep or hibernation. Sometime I just need to open the screen and it?ll awaken. Sometimes I need to hit the power button before it?ll come to life. And sometime I need to restart it. needless to say, that?s annoying. All in all, a great machine. I would buy it again if I was given the choice.
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"Ultra lightweight, great performance" on by hstuckey90
Pros: 2.4 lbs, very small, most attractive laptop out there
Cons: price, trade utility for portability
Summary: I got this laptop a couple months ago and am extremely happy with this purchase. I bought it through J&R and got 3 GB RAM (1 more than buying direct from Lenovo) which runs Vista very quickly. I previously owned a 13" Dell which weighed a ton and fell apart. The ideapad is well built, lightweight and runs very well. The Veriface technology is stupid and doesn't work very well, but can easily be turned off. The keyboard isn't great to type on for a long time, so I recommend getting a USB keyboard and docking at home/work. Otherwise, I love this laptop.
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"The worst customer service experience ever" on by rover3d
Pros: Handsome; light.
Cons: Lenovo's tech support, in home service contractor (Unisys) and customer relations continue to debate my dead laptop...OS issue? Motherboard? Defective hard drive? Replacement unit? It's going on 3 weeks; laptop worked for 2 days. MadHatter tea party.
Summary: I was going to wait until I actually received a replacement unit before writing any review, but I don't want anyone else to go through what I've been through. I'll update this as objectively as I can if/when a new, working unit arrives.
Purchased 3g U110 direct from Lenovo online. After 2 days of data transfers and customizing, the unit froze...for good. It took over one week to get any response from the "24/7 onsite tech support." I still have no laptop. The original is at a service center in Texas. A replacement "should" ship in 10 business days. I have dealt with over 14 people and two supervisors in tech support alone. From errors on their website to erroneous invoices and mystery charges to the empty space on my desk where a laptop should be...A complete nightmare.
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