Tech Tips: lenovo

Showing posts with label lenovo. Show all posts

08 March 2025

Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 14" Touchscreen Laptop Review

As my child had been getting into video games, we decided to get them a laptop of their own so they wouldn't need to borrow my wife's.

Here were my list of requirements:

Priced less than $700
11-14" Screen

IPS or OLED
at least 300 nits
at least 45% NTSC coverage

A recent processor with great integrated graphics

AMD Ryzen 7 7840U with Radeon 780M
AMD Ryzen 7 8840U with Radeon 780M
Intel Core Ultra 7 155U
or newer

RAM >= 16GB
Storage >= 512GB
USB C charging
WiFi 7/6E with 2x2 antennas
Backlit keyboard (optional)
USB C charging on both sides (optional)

Best Buy had a sale for the Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1 14" Touchscreen Laptop (83DK000AUS / 12IAHP9), which we bought as it met most of my criteria.

Price: $600
14" Screen 300 nits 45% NTSC coverage (~60% sRGB)
AMD Ryzen 7 8840U with Radeon 780M
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 1TB
USB C charging
WiFi 6E with 2x2 antennas
Backlit keyboard
USB C only on a single side :-(
Left ports:

2 x USB C (one USB4 40Gbps)
1 x HDMI 2.1
1 x 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack

Right ports:

1 x USB A
1 x microSD

3.55 lbs
Charger is a 65W brick style with 3 pin power cord

Compared to my wife's Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1 16" Touchscreen Laptop (82QG0001US / 16IAP7) which we bought in 2022:

Price: $600
16" Screen 400 nits 72% NTSC coverage (100% sRGB)
Intel Core i5-1240P
RAM: 8GB
Storage: 256GB
USB C charging
WiFi 6E with 2x2 antennas
Backlit keyboard
USB C only on a single side :-(
Left ports:

2 x USB C (thunderbolt)
1 x USB A
1 x HDMI 2.0
1 x SD card reader

Right ports:

1 x USB A
1 x 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack

4.37 lbs
Charger is a 65W wall-wort style with 2 folding pins

My thoughts:

The laptop feels sturdy and premium
While the screen is not for color accurate work, or as good as my wife's, it looks plenty good to my eyes when not looking side-by-side
The memory and storage should be sufficient for many years to come
GPU should be about 2x more performant than my wife's, which should be plenty to play the types of games that my child likes
The included 65W charger works well. Unfortunately, the laptop charges extremely slowly on our existing 45W chargers.

Child acceptance factor, in general they like it except:

it is too heavy (would prefer a ligher 11")
sometimes when starting screen share on Zoom, Zoom will stop responding

Appendix

Sources:

Other Reviews:

12 March 2022

Replacing drives in ZFS

As my two 3TB WD Red drives (purchased before the SMR controversy) in Raid 1 were starting to fill up and the price of bigger drives came down, it was time for an upgrade. I purchased two 6TB WD Red Plus drives to replace them (~$105 each before tax). I went with this particular drive and size because of the speed (5640 rpm) to keep the drives quiet and cool. Most NAS drives are going to the higher rpm of 7200.

Checking the drives

I used an external enclosure to test each of the drives before adding them to the ZFS Pool

Determine the drive

For these examples I used /dev/sdX, but you need to use the device letter applicable to you
ls /dev/sd*

Check initial SMART attributes

sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdX

SMART short test

sudo smartctl --test=short /dev/sdX

Check SMART test status

sudo smartctl -c /dev/sdX

Check SMART attributes

sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdX

Write Zeros to the entire disk

Warning: This will erase the entire disk and you will lose anything stored on it
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M status=progress

Check SMART attributes

sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdX

SMART extended test

I had problems with this test being stuck at 90% remaining due to the drive stopping spinning
The solution it to make sure the drive is spinning and then kicking off the test and a command to keep the drive active
sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/null count=1 # Read one 512 byte block from drive
sudo smartctl --test=long /dev/sdX # Kick off the test
sudo watch -d -n 60 smartctl -a /dev/sdX # Make sure the drive doesn't spin down. Will also show test status

Power Off the drive

sudo udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sdX

Disconnect the drive
Repeat for the next drive

Adding the drives to the pool

At this point I hooked both drives up to the SATA connectors inside the server, but had to disconnect the front panel USB to access the open SATA port and disconnect the DVD drive. Now it was time to add them to the pool to get data replicated to them.

Get current status

sudo zpool status

Get the drive ids

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/

Attach them to a current drive to put them in the same mirror

Run this command with the values substituted for both drives:

sudo zpool attach [poolname] [original drive to be mirrored] [new drive]

If you get an error like: devices have different sector alignment

than add: -o ashift=9
There are performance penalties for running a 4K drive as a 512B one, but supposedly there are storage size advantages
Update 2023-12-10: Apparently it is a quite large performance difference: 35-45MB/s vs 70-72MB/s

Here is what I ran (serial 1 and 2 are the existing drives while 3 and 4 are the new ones:

sudo zpool attach storage /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-SERIAL#1 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD60EFZX-68B3FN0_WD-SERIAL#3 -o ashift=9
sudo zpool attach storage /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-SERIAL#2 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD60EFZX-68B3FN0_WD-SERIAL#4 -o ashift=9

Check on the status:

sudo zpool status

Wait for the resilvering to complete

Estimated time was ~33 hours
Actual runtime was ~18 hours copying around 2TB of data

Optional scrub to verify all data

sudo zpool scrub [POOLNAME]

Wait for it to finish

Estimated time was ~13 hours
Actual time was ~10 hours

Remove the old drives

Remove the old disks from the pool:

sudo zpool detach [POOLNAME] [DISKNAME]

What I ran:

sudo zpool detach storage /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-SERIAL#1
sudo zpool detach storage /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-SERIAL#2

Check on the status

sudo zpool status

Shutdown the server and remove the drives

Expand the Quotas

Check current usage and quotas

df -k /storage/mythtv /storage/.encrypted
sudo zfs get quota storage/mythtv
sudo zfs get quota storage/.encrypted

Set new quotas, total storage available was 5.45T

sudo zfs set quota=1.5T storage/mythtv
sudo zfs set quota=3.9T storage/.encrypted

While editing my zfs containers, I decided to turn off compression since i wasn't seeing any gains

sudo zfs set compression=off storage/.encrypted

Sources

Drive Check

Initial inspiration: https://superuser.com/questions/1252662/initial-testing-of-new-hard-drives-in-linux
Keeping the drive spinning: https://superuser.com/questions/766943/smart-test-never-finishes
Power Off the drive: https://askubuntu.com/questions/532586/what-is-the-command-line-equivalent-of-safely-remove-drive

Adding to zpool

Performance difference of ashift=9 vs ashift=12

https://louwrentius.com/zfs-performance-and-capacity-impact-of-ashift9-on-4k-sector-drives.html

Removing from zpool

https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/remove-disk-from-mirror-in-freenas-11.56494/

19 February 2019

Lenovo Chromebook 500e

Background

As my older Toshiba laptop was just too large, lagging in ssh and vnc applications (WiFi power save?), and battery performance was bad, it was time to try something different. I was tempted by Chromebooks from a price/performance standpoint, so that is where I focused my search.

The Search

Criteria:

2-in-1 design
11 - 13 inch 1080p display
Pen Input
USB Type C charging on both sides
Processor Min Celeron N3450 (preferably a m3 or i3)
RAM Min 4GB (preferably 8GB or more)
Storage Min 32GB (preferably 64GB or more)
Backlit Keyboard

I had eye on a couple different models:

HP 14-DA0011DX (on sale $449 from Best Buy)

No Pen
1920 x 1080 16:9 screen
Core i3-8130U processor
8GB RAM
64GB storage

HP X2 (on sale $499 from Best Buy)

Pen mounts in loop on side
2400 x 1600 3:2 screen
Core m3-7Y30 processor
4GB RAM
32GB storage
Screen detaches from keyboard

Lenovo 500e (on sale $269 from Lenovo)

EMR Pen
1366 x 768 16:9 screen
Celeron N3450 processor
4GB RAM
32GB Storage
Keyboard not backlit

Samsung Plus (on sale $449 from Best Buy)

Pen
1920 x 1200 16:10 screen
Core m3-7Y30 processor
4GB RAM
64GB storage
USB C ports on same side
Reviews cast doubt on longevity of touch screen

Samsung Pro (on sale $499 from Best Buy)

Pen
2400 x 1600 3:2 screen
Core m3-6Y30 processor
4GB RAM
32GB storage
Reviews cast doubt on longevity of touch screen

The Decision

I decided to go with the Lenovo largely due to the price and minimal compromises. It allows me to try out a Chromebook (and pen input) without spending too much. I also liked it due to its rugged build as I have a toddler that loves "helping". However, if the 14 inch HP would have come with a pen, I probably would have went with that.

The Review

I have had the laptop for 2 weeks and here are my impressions.

Overall Rating: 5/5 Stars

Pros:

Price, at $270, I could not find any other comparable Chromebooks
Solid build quality
Screen looks great indoors, but have not tested visibility outside

Scheduled Night Light to warmer after 10pm

Silent operation as there are no fans
Keyboard typing is great (I am typing this review on it)
Touchpad works well, but lacks a premium feel
Pen input was nice when I used it, but have not tested it thoroughly
Updates straight from Google (Version 71)
I have not seen a single slowdown with the Quad Core N3450 which benchmarks better than my A8 4500M (https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Celeron-N3450-vs-AMD-A8-4500M-APU/m208922vsm758)
Came with several free drawing/note apps ranging from $7.99 to $9.99
Came with 2 years of 100GB of Google Drive storage (about a $40 value)

Cons:

USB C cable on charger is not detachable
Keyboard is not backlit
Only bottom portion of touchpad is clickable
Chrome OS Web Store took backstage to Play Store and wasn't evident as where to get software from

Other Thoughts:

A little heavy for use as a tablet
Between the tabs on top and the shelf on the bottom, the usable screen real estate was not acceptable for web browsing. However, moving the shelf to the left side and setting the display size to tiny and page zoom to 110%, remedied the situation.
No caps lock key (Use: Alt + Search)
Function keys (F1-F12) are replaced by Search + Number
Lenovo is preparing to release a 2nd gen 500e with a Celeron N4100 which would be a nice improvement, but according to their website will on support AC power on one side

30 September 2016

Lenovo Yoga 700 Review

This is a review for the Lenovo Yoga 700 11.6 inch model 80QE0044US.

Just a little background, I decided to buy this over the newer 710 for several reasons:

Lower price: the 700 was on clearance
More USB ports: 2 vs 1 (later I found out that the DC power port is also a USB 2.0 port making it 3 vs 2)
Built-In SD Card reader

Key Specs:

Intel Core m3 6Y30
8GB Ram
128GB SSD
11.6 inch touch screen with 1920 x 1080 resolution
Windows 10 Home

Pros:

Ultra-Portable size
Boots in less than 10 seconds
Loads apps in seconds
Gorgeous Full HD IPS screen
SSD and fanless design makes it completely silent (0 moving parts)
m3 processor is power efficient allowing for hours of web browsing
SDXC card reader (also reads standard SD and SDHC, as well as MMC)
Micro-HDMI output (1.4a up to 1080p)
Dual Band WiFi that supports 802.11ac

Middle of the road:

3 USB ports (1 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0, 1 USB 2.0/DC power port)
Touchpad buttons makes a loud click when depressed
Keyboard does not have a backlight for typing in dark areas
With not much installed the SSD only has ~40GB left, so you may wish to spend a little more and get the bigger drive
Relative to the size of the computer the touchpad is a good size

Cons:

No Bluetooth
Short ~6ft Power Cord (about the same length as the Apple MagSafe with the AC Plug not AC Cord)
No divider on the touchpad to indicate where the buttons are, therefore you may think you are clicking when you are not

Other Thoughts:

Initially had issues with Windows Store and its apps not working, but that was fixed with the latest Windows update
CPU intensive tasks will take longer than the same generation i5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJCL3nFfoMs

Similar model 80QE000NUS has the following upgrades for roughly an additional $75:

m5 6Y54
256GB SSD
Bluetooth 4.0

Haven't really used in tablet or tent mode yet, will update review if necessary

13 August 2014

ThinkServer TS140 Build

As my old server is 5 years old (2008-12) and been showing its age, I decided it was time for an upgrade.

Hardware:

1x Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 70A4001LUX - $399.99 - $50 rebate (newegg)

Intel Xeon E3-1225v3 3.2GHz
4GB DDR3 1600
No Hard Drive
Gigabit Ethernet

2x Western Digital Red 3 TB - $114.99 a piece (newegg)
1x Old Western Digital Caviar 250 GB w/ sata cable - Already had
1x 18 inch Monoprice Sata III cable with 90 degree angle plug - $2.66 (amazon)
1x Trendnet USB to PS/2 adapter (TU-PS2) - $8.99 (amazon)
1x Small zip tie - Already had

Software:

Xubuntu 14.04 LTS 64bit - Free (xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/)

Total Cost: $591.62 + tax

Hardware Installation:

Opened up the case

Removed Thumb screws (had to use screwdriver to get it started)
Pressed in the side release button
Removed side panel

Installed the 250GB primary drive (in what Lenovo calls the tertiary drive slot)

Pressed the quick release button
Pushed the 5.25 to 3.5 adapter out from the inside
Be careful as the fan power cord is not long!
Placed the hard drive in the adapter
Flipped over while supporting hard drive
Aligned screw holes and fastened screws (make sure to use included screws as they are longer due to anti-vibration gaskets)
Pushed adapter back into place and assured that quick release snapped back into place
Attached Sata

Removed front USB motherboard connector
Moved existing Sata cable from Sata0 to Sata1
Reattached front USB motherboard connector
Attached Sata cable to Sata0 ran thru cord fastener on motherboard side and attached to HD

Attached Power

Clipped zip tie holding power cable in place
Un-did loop in power cable so it could reach HD
Attached power cable to HD
Zip tied all cables back into place

Installed the 2x 3TB drives

Pulled out the drive caddy
Installed pegs into one side of the HD
Stretched caddy so that pegs would go into other side of the HD
Pushed HD + caddy back into place
Attached sata (Sata1 and Sata2) and power cable

Testing:

I wanted to do an extended drive test on all the drives to ensure they were in good working order before proceeding with my software install. I used the Western Digital DOS diagnostic tool (wdc.com). It took about 7 hours for each of the 3TB drives and just over an hour for the 250GB drive.

Software Installation:

First I created a linux live USB from the ISO
Booted from the USB in Try Xubuntu mode
As I was recycling a drive from an old FakeRaid array, I had to delete the raid metadata. I opened up a terminal window and ran:

sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sdX
where X is the letter of the old raid array drive

Ran the install Xubuntu icon on the desktop
Followed the prompts to install to the 250GB drive

Used advanced partition setup:

/boot: 537MB
/: 100GB
/home: 139 GB
swap: 8GB

Remove USB and Reboot
Installed Updates

sudo update-manager

Reboot
Made sure Red Drives had WD Load/Unload update installed

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=619&sid=201&lang=en

Setup the ZFS mirrored raid

sudo apt-get install zfs-fuse
ls /dev/disk/by-id/
sudo zpool create storage mirror /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-SERIAL#1 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-SERIAL#2
sudo zpool status

Thoughts:

The server is dead quiet which is one of the major reasons I bought it
With the Trendnet for some reason the scroll on the mouse causes the mouse to jump instead of scrolling, but as I plan to use this as a mainly server this is a small issue