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Full user review
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"Bright, but grainy screen. Much faster with XP."
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.
Summary: 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.
Slow out of the box. (With Vista Home Premium)
Had Severe issues with (Vista Ultimate)
Keyboard not so great for touch typists
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.
