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I'm currently having the luxury of considering the X301 as my new laptop. The choice was originally the X200, but I'm simply not sure I can live with a 12,1" panel at a 1280x800 resolution. My previous laptop (a T61, R.I.P.) was at 1440x900 like the X301, albeit on an inch larger panel. The X301 has a 13,1" panel which is a go-go to me.

However, the X301 only has a 1,4GHz Core 2 Duo (Centrino 2 platform) Ultra-low Voltage CPU compared to the 2,4 GHz X200 (not Ultra-low Voltage, if I remember correctly). I will need it to do a bit of software development, writing papers, surfing the web, e-mail and stuff like that, but will it be sufficient for Windows 7? The SSD drive and a RAM upgrade would probably boost performance more than an additional 1GHz on the CPU would.

Hoping to get feedback from people with practical experience with the X301 and X200 or equivalent!

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6 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Considering that you can run Windows 7 on a netbook, I'm sure the X301 will be fine with Windows 7. Definitely get the ram, but the SSD may not be worth it (unless you're getting something like an X25-E) just because the lack of space may burden you more than the marginal speed upgrades on the stock SSD cards you will get from Lenovo. Also, make sure to get a decent graphics card, because for watching videos (regular, not flash) and for the different effects in Windows 7, this will come in quite handy.

But on a slightly different note, using lighter-weight programs will help you out a bunch as well. i.e. using Chrome instead of Firefox, foobar2000 instead of iTunes, etc. The whole idea of "is it powerful enough" is really subjective and depends on how you use your computer. I know people who have $2000 computers with all these whiz-bang technologies, and all they do is check their email, watch a few youtube videos, and write a few papers (and not at the same time either).

So yea, I hope that helps.

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Chrome is actually a lot more "heavyweight" than Firefox. – Stefan Thyberg Jul 20 '09 at 16:15
Hm, I wasn't aware of that. I was always under the impression that Chrome was slightly less heavyweight. Though, if you have a bajillion addons for firefox then it is more heavyweight :) – thebrokencube Jul 21 '09 at 16:27
I'll second that Chrome is heavier than Firefox. I think the UI tricks us into thinking it's lightweight, but when I run Chrome on older machines it struggles. – webdtc Jul 22 '09 at 20:59
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up vote 2 down vote

Windows 7 is pretty good at running on a low powered machine, I've had it happily running Visual Studio on a dell mini, so it should run fine on the X301.

The only taxing task from your list is really software development, and it really depends on what sort of development this is, is it occasional PHP development, or 8 hrs a day .net development, running visual studio, IIS etc? If its only occasional development you should be absolutely fine, if its full time, resource hungry development, and this is your only machine, you may want to re-consider.

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It will be used at the university on a daily basis. Watching slides during lectures, doing assignments after lectures, a bit of project work (software development), authoring text etc. The software development part will mainly be proof-of-concept type of work, while the heavy-duty development would be done on my desktop at home. – Anders Jul 15 '09 at 9:45
serverfault.com/questions/2425/are-ssds-worth-the-money I've just read this on the SSD matter, and I'm getting more and more scared of choosing a laptop with an SSD drive to be honest. – Anders Jul 15 '09 at 9:45
From what you said, this laptop should be fine for what you need. What is it that is worrying you about an SSD? – Sam Jul 15 '09 at 10:24
I'm just a little scared of all the MLC vs. SLC, degraded performance over time, limited reads and writes to the memory cells. Is there any comparison chart between the durability of a regular mechanical HDD and an SSD drive in regards of MTBF, reads/writes etc. – Anders Jul 15 '09 at 14:58
While a limit of read/writes is a factor with SSD's, I don't really think it is a significant factor when using a reasonable quality disk. All disks degrade over time, SSDs and regular HDD's, its just that we can have a a more accurate guess as to when the SSD's life will end, unlike a standard drive, which could be 1 year, it could be 10. – Sam Jul 15 '09 at 15:25
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up vote 1 down vote

I have Lenovo X300.

It has 1.2Ghz Centrino vPro processor, 64GB SSD, 4GB RAM, integrated graphics.

I'm pretty much satisfied with it's performance. I have extreme desktop configuration at home also, but I don't remember last time I've used it.

Like you said, GHz are not so important as GBs of RAM.

It's worth noticing that I have MS SQL Server running all the time, and when I develop in Visual Studio (WinAmp is turned on by default) I don't see any performance drawbacks.

I strongly recommend Lenovo X series.

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up vote 1 down vote

I have an X301 and it's the fastest laptop I've owned. The SSD drive makes it scream. I have never felt like I wished it were faster and that says a lot. The thing just keeps up with you barely skipping a beat.

of course, Windows 7 is a must with the laptop since the performance characteristics are only better (especially with an SSD).

Judging by the number of these laptops at Microsoft I'd say they are pretty well loved :-).

Also get the extra batter in the DVD bay, with it you get about 6-7 hours battery life.

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up vote 1 down vote

I have an X301 with Vista Enterprise edition. I use it for about the same activities that you plan to, and I am very satisfied. I have not done any major development, but I use Visual Studio to program small games/graphical demos. Office 2007 runs very well. Also I run several instances of Opera and open up 50+ tabs at a time. The SSD makes the laptop much zippier (especially boot times)

I just have two complaints:

  • The X301 seems to get a little hot in the upper left corner (I may have to clean out the fan)
  • The 64 GB SSD is a little small because Vista eats so much space (darn WinSXS folder!) I am thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 because its footprint is much smaller, and it seems to be even faster than Vista.

If you want a more powerful, but slightly larger (although thinner than the X301) ThinkPad, look at the recently released T400S

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up vote 0 down vote

I will need it to do a bit of software development, writing papers, surfing the web, e-mail and stuff like that, but will it be sufficient for Windows 7?

The only sticking point here will be the software development, and even there I think you'll be just fine as long as you max out the RAM on the machine. Everything else should be be just fine on that processor.

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