Ideapad u330 - New owners :-)

yah, I'm getting about 1.5 hrs too (max bright, ATI, wifi/bluetooth), using batteryeaterpro

I'm now using intel graphics, med brightness, and vista is saying it's going to give me 3.5 hours...we'll see

 

well, i don't believe on that 3-5 hours bettery life since the beginning as the spec said, all the laptop i've had w/ org. setting bettery was last around 2 hours for normal uses (75% bright, wireless, and occasional music in headphone).

also, did anybody feel the lid is kind of loose? such as having about 3-5mm moveable w/o actually move the lid...

 

OMG i just found out that i have a 280gb instead of a 320gb hard drive i ordered JUST NOW. What in the world!!!

 

Listen, you are being a little foolish here. First of all, you made a whole thread about this. There are no 280GB HDD's available.

What you are seeing is available space on your disk. Windows + recovery partition = lots of used space.

Chill out... I am sure you have the right drive.

 

havoc said he got a bit more than 4 hours with balanced mode, intel graphics, half brightness

(on slickdeals: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showpost.php?p=13113759&postcount=315 ...i dont believe he posted that here yet)

 

I'm at an hour on battery with windows reporting 2 hours and 35 mins. I have it on balanced power with the brightness down to half, ATI, wireless. Don't have my bluetooth connected. Just doing casual surfing and setting my fantasy lineups.

I'll test again later today with after a full charge and switch to intel graphics.

Oh, and I noticed I also have a slight wobble. The front right corner doesn't sit flush on the table.

 

Guys, how is the screen - especially outside or with the sun through the windows? From what I've seen, I could throw out my mirror and use the U330 instead if I decided to buy one. I really hope that is not the case, when the laptop is turned on.

 

Mine just went dead after 2 hours and 5 minutes but windows was reporting about 23 minutes left.

 

Are these laptops returnable in case you are not fully satisfied?

 

Calm down....you don't actually get the whole 320GB even it says so.....the OS takes up space and not to mention the Lenovo's back up hidden recovery drive

About the wobbling screen...I didn't expect much for a very thin screen but I'll see when I get mine....I'm more concerned with the battery life.....hoping to get at least 3.5 hrs out of it on integrated graphics mode.....will see how's the batter life on win XP ( http://www.jrin.net/2008_09_26/lenovo-ideapad-u330-initial-hands-on-review#u1)

 

I just got an e-mail from Lenovo informing me of another delay and saying that they'll cancel my order in five days unless I tell them otherwise. As far as I can tell, there are issues with battery life and build quality, and a lot of shipped units so far are defective.

So, here's my question to you owners: should I cancel my order, get the refund, and buy something else? As a student, battery life is really important to me. I like all the features of the U330 (HDMI, DDR3 RAM, etc.), but it's been forever since I ordered this machine, I'd like a new computer before the year 2050, and the more I read about the U330, the less spectacular and more ordinary it seems.

 

Could you paste the e-mail you received?

 

Can someone compare the footprint size (width/depth) with the Dell XPS m1330?

 

"Dear Customer

Due to the overwhelming demand for the Lenovo products you ordered, we have been unable to ship all or part of your order xxxxxx. You are a valued customer and we are working to ship your order as soon as possible. However, If we do not hear from you within the next 5 days, Federal regulations require us to automatically cancel your order for which you will receive a full refund. If you would like to keep your order open, just send us an email by clicking the link below. If you agree to this delay notification, you may still request to modify or cancel your order at any time by contacting your representative Lenovo Sales toll free at 1(866)428-4465."

Then there's some stuff about how I can view order status and how sorry they are. I'm leaning toward keeping the order because there aren't any deals out right now on other 13" notebooks, and I don't wanna spend over $1000. *Sigh* Guess I'll just take the delay...again...

 

acneuens

Thanks. Would you mind to tell me when did you place the order?

 

You might want to remove your order number from your post. Who knows someone might decide to try and cancel that for you, in order to speed up their order.

 

Whoops! Forgot. Thanks, Kaikou.

 

lol that would be so messed up. especially since a single order would make much diff

 

I wouldn't call mine defective. The build quality is just as good as any out there and certainly much better than the HP DV4T that I returned that had a washed out screen, touch media buttons stopped working, and the battery completely stopped charging.

If I can get 2 hours with the dedicated battery and close to 4 with the integrated, that's really what I expected. 5 hours sounded very optimistic to me but that is probably reported under the most ideal conditions. Also, a little battery conditioning should help.

Other than being slightly raised on the right side, I'm happy with it.

 

Apparently some like to overreact. Nothing is perfect. Especially nowadays almost everything is made in China.

Even if there is such thing as a perfectly build machine you probably have to pay double for it.

radyoactive is correct in that if we can get close to 4 hours with the integrated graphics then this is pretty good already.

It is unrealistic to expect to get 5 hours of battery time with ATI, max brightness and wireless all turn on. With a 6 cell battery 2 to 2.5 hours is pretty good already. 1.5 to 2 hours is more realistic.

 

Whats this about defective batteries?

 

Havoc what you are you getting out of your battery?

 

I got that same email. A little shocked with the battery reports given people were getting 4+ hrs on the t400. Making me think I should go that route but the multimedia/speakers suck on the t400. However as a small consolation, I was able to get 50 bucks back when complaining about the delay as was reported by someone else on this thread.

 

Me too. Otherwise I'd have gone the T400 route. But I think we will be O.K. Sometime we just need to compromise.

Maybe if you have the extended warranty plan you can have Lenovo ship a new battery later. At least this is my plan.

 

Me too if not because of the T440 speakers suck big time. Otherwise I'd have gone the T400 route. But I think we will be O.K. Sometime we just need to compromise a bit.

Maybe if you have the extended warranty plan you can have Lenovo ship a new battery later. At least this is my plan.

How do you get the $50.00 back?

 

the foot print of the u330 and xps1330 are almost identical.
I put it on my roomies and his was about the same.

Im getting 3.5hrs battery sitting outside with wifi and screen brightness at 3/4

 

I think he's saying they are defective because the batteries arent getting 5-6 hours. That doesn't make it defective if you are saying you got 4 hours plus.

 

I don't mean to sound like a dimwit but if Lenovo states that you will have 5 -6 hrs of battery life then you wud think they know better.

IMO the following factors are making me cancel my order ( i haven;t canceled but am leaning towards it )

1. Lower than expected battery life (even with integrated graphics, 13.3 inch LED backlit screen , 45 nm monteviena Core 2 platform) 3.5 hrs is something that falls below my expectations.

2. Trouble with rubber mounts on the base (unevenness, tilting etc.)

3. The screen seems very reflective. Comparing a similar feature on the HP called Infinity well I don't like it at all.

4. No upgradeable battery option. Give me a 9 cell option in order to increase battery time.

5. This one is not specific to this model but here's a rule of thumb. NEVER buy the first batch of electronics unless you want to be g.pig for ever1 else. I believe the delay in shipment is caused due to some issues that are bering ironed out.

For now, if these factors are not fixed I might cancel shipment of my laptop. I'm not saying I will not buy this laptop at all, perhaps in the next 2-3 months they will give us flexibility on the upgrades that we can have on our computer. Maybe then I will order again and be content with what I have. In a nutshell, so far the U330 has tremendous potential which has some caveats that are holding it back. Fix them and you can gladly have my money Lenovo.

 

It's true that a lot of the comments thus far have been negative, but that is purely human nature. People love to find faults in products and usually those same people are more likely to let others know of those faults. Those that are happy don't feel as much motivation to post their positive experiences.

1. Battery life is more than adequate for this laptop. I adjusted certain settings and am now getting about four hours out of the battery. (disabling bluetooth, screen brightness half, and disabling search/indexing etc.)

2. Most do not have any trouble with the rubber mounts, as I'm sure if people did they would be posting about it. (I think I've read two users' complaints about it)

3. I personally love the screen and do not find the reflectiveness to be an issue at all. When you are using the laptop inside, you will see ZERO reflection, as long as brightness is set at least half.

Outside there is reflection apparent, but it is minimal at the screen brightness set at high. Even at the lowest brightness setting it is night and day better than my Dell 700M in regards to usability in the sun. (read: I can actually use this laptop ANYWHERE)

4. Could always buy now and upgrade the battery later. If it's an issue than this is something you might have to wait some months on.

5. I don't follow this rule and would be considered an early adopter.

As everyone knows, this laptop cannot be beaten for the features that it offers, along with the price it can be had for.

A feature that has gotten little mention is the shock protection that the laptop offers. If the laptop is moved around a little too much, the hard drive is stopped in order to protect it from "damage". It can be adjusted in the sensitivity department, as for me the factory settings were a bit too sensitive.

 

About the 50 bucks, I just called to get an update on my 'real' ship date since the online one says 9/30. I ordered on the 2nd day it was available. They told me over the phone that it would ship on 10/6. Then I asked them to compensate me for the delay. The cust rep, whom I could barely understand since he mumble and had a hard indian accent, said he'd get back to me on that and asked for my phone number and email. I told him i preferred he email me, but no, he called my apt at 6am pacific time and left a message that I could barely understand. Wife wasn't too happy about that. Anyways, played it a couple times and figured out that he said I would get 50 bucks back.

 

5 hrs is the expected maximum battery life at some certain usage that is not really real life.....so I also did not expect it to be 5hrs but at least 3.5hrs for the integrated graphics.....since kaikou is saying we can almost get a 4hr out of integrated graphics I'm going to be happy with my order now!

 

To play devils advocate on the disk shock/stop feature when dropped or moved, I got a T61 right when the t400 came out. It uses that same hd stop feature. I had to shut it off cuz it slowed the computer down WAY too much. Worse than having Norton or some cpu hogging software on. You can however set the sensitivity of the accelerometer and software.

On the flipside, I can see the huge theoretical benefits of saving data and the hd, but like antivirus software, I just don't think the benefits are worth it. I just try to avoid dropping/huge movements as I do sites with viruses.

 

Just sent in my review for the U330.

For the battery life, I'm getting around 3 hrs and 20 minutes with integrated graphics, WiFi on, BT off, screen at 10%. Power draw varying from 11W to 16W with these settings, no where near the 8-9W with the Thinkpads.

As the first shipment of the U330, it still has some rough edges in regards to power management software and fan control in my opinion. I sure heck hope Lenovo will release some BIOS and software updates to polish up this product.

I just read some of the comments, and saw some advice on disabling Indexing, which I haven't done yet. I'll report back later tonight on the results from that.

Any specific suggestions for battery conditioning?

 

Is it possible for you to install Real Temp and Speedfan, and Riva tuner to help us know what the temps for the gpu, cpu and fan rpms are like . That way we can know for sure whether the system is actually heating up or just has fans at high speeds for no real reason.

This is all an educated guess I hope the programs work and give you an idea of what some of the parameters are like.

Thanks to all those who are pitching in.

 

If you go into your power saving options, via the battery icon, you can then click on advanced settings within the balanced power settings. This will open up a variety of ways to increase battery life.

Nothing to do with fan control however.

 

Here is what CPUID is showing me. The HD runs pretty cool compared to the DV4T I had for a week. It would start at 50 degrees keep going up from there. This hasn't gone past 45 degrees except during setup when I was installing a bunch of stuff.

 

o yeah for the battery life, do the majority of you have the higher end lenovo or the lower end? this may make a small difference but it matters i believe.

 

I got about 4 hours battery life at Panera today. I was eating and talking with the gf for about 30 minutes of that; the rest I spent in MS Word and Mozilla. Screen was at about 1/3, on Powersaver with BT and Wifi on. Again, not quite what I was hoping for.

The rubber feet on my U330 are just fine.

This is purely speculation, but if this first batch was rushed into production and the batteries are substandard, I would expect Lenovo to take care of the buyers who are stuck with bad batteries or firmware- whatever the problem is.

EDIT: I have the higher spec U330.

 

did u change any of the specific settings to get better battery life?

 

Turning off Bluetooth, Vista indexing should help.....Someone could try closing the gadget bar, turning off the dual-ray mics (I am assuming they are turned on right from factory), get rid of bloatwares.....and more RAM would sure help since you dun access the HD as much....still glad that Admlam got 3:20 hrs on his.....any news from Lenovo about the U330 batteries?

 

I forgot to state that I did turn off the mic and closed the gadget bar. I'm sure as time goes on people will figure out many different ways to try and get as much out of the battery as possible.

 

Hm, I'm already regretting ordering the lower spec model with only 2GB of RAM. Maybe I'll just get rid of Vista and put on XP.

 

well sadly i will be returning mine. not necessarily because i know i have a faulty one, as my battery wont last longer than 1 1/2 hours in any settings (dont base this off for your purchase, because mine is simply faulty - which is why everyone else is 3+ hours, etc)

but i also cannot get the HD3450 to work, it will not turn on, and won't let me switch to it.

but again, not the reason i am returning it.

I decided to go with the X200, and will sacrafice the optical drive and trackpad for the unbelievably cool laptop and the 9 hour battery life (yes....9 hours). it was only $200 more, and if i still get the cashback from live.com from the u330 purchase, it will be 100 more.


my main reason for returning is, besides wanting 4 hours battery and even with a non faulty battery, it seems i wont get that.....but the heat is the reason. The laptop isn't bad in all areas on the top but the bottom is too hot for me, especially the top left, and gets unforformtable for my lap pretty quickly. My sony SZ was pretty cool, and maybe i am bias from that because it was very comfortable on my lap - and it makes this seem ALOT hotter on the bottom.


oh and because the video card and battery is faulty....i will be sure it bi*ch my heart out until i get a 100% full refund, and since i plan to still give them business in the x200, i have a feeling they will give in

 

hello all. just got my U330 on friday. just wondering if anyone has tested out their wifi yet? mine seems to not want to go full speed at all. got a linksys wrt310n router with draft N. and it only connects at 65 mb/s. not very much higher from regular g....so wondering if anyone elses is working better. or it maybe its just my router

 

Actually, for everyone who just got their got their U330, how low does the P7350 underclock itself to? NHC is showing mine at 2GHz while CPUZ reports 1.6GHz on battery. That seems awfully high in my opinion, and could be the culprit for the low battery life? I couldn't mind going down to the 900MHz-1GHz range as all I do on battery isn't that system intensive.

 

That is the lowest I've seen my CPU underclock to. It would be nice to be able to go a bit lower.

 

Makes me wonder how low the P8#00 series underclocks itself to.

 

I got the laptop on Friday but I just opened it today. After uninstalling all of the bloatware and installing NOD32 (lower system resource utilization), I get about 4 hours of battery life on the 6 cell.

This is with the sidebar off, in windows vista basic graphic mode (using vista battery saver), microphones turned off, on integrated graphics, brightness on 2/10, bluetooth off, wireless on. I did disable some Windows features but not indexing. I was mainly browsing web pages.

 

Hey Radyoactive, is the background on your desktop in that picture a default in your U330? Also, did you do a clean install or is that the "factory image condition" O.S. that you have pictured? Thanks.

BBGus

 

good to know

4 hrs is plenty good i think...although i dont want vista basic mode