Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, or the Ultrabook Adventure
Today I hit exactly one month since I switched to the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s ultrabook. Initially, a detailed “just review” of this model should have appeared here. However, recalling the adventures experienced with the ultrabook, the author of these lines decided to significantly change the format of the post. Of course, I will tell about him - and quite a lot. But I will show even more. In the end, not every computer manages to visit the wineries not far from Cannes, and in the ancient city of Jaffa in 30 days.
First, a few words about the configuration of the IdeaPad U300s. It works on a dual-core Intel Core i7-2677M processor (second generation, or, more simply, Sandy Bridge) with a nominal frequency of 1.8 GHz. True, the frequencies here are pretty tricky: most of the time the CPU is working on 800 megahertz, and under load it can accelerate right up to 2.9 GHz. So understand - what frequency is considered to be nominal. It's nice that the processor fits into the TDP of 17 W, which allows the ultrabook not to overheat and get along quietly by the cooling system. Unfortunately, some other ultrabooks of the first wave an hour after the start of work can be found by the sound even somewhere at the airport, if any kind soul extinguishes all the light there. The U300s behaves very intelligently, and the cooler runs quietly and turns on infrequently. The main part of the heat is removed by the aluminum case, and the risk to burn your knees during batch processing of a couple of gigabytes of RAW photos using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is completely absent.
')
Also on board are 4 gigabytes of DDR3-1066 RAM and a 256-gigabyte SSD (some model based on the JMicron JMF616 controller). The latter reads data at an average speed of 240 MB / s, which, you see, is quite a lot for an ultra-portable computer. Perhaps, he should be thanked for the amazing rapidity of the work of the ultrabook, about which, however, we will talk a little lower.
The resolution of the ultrabook screen is standard 1366x768 pixels with a diagonal of 13.3 inches. The type of matrix, as you might guess, is TN. In my own laptop, with which we had been together for a year and a half, it was 1440x900 with a diagonal of 12.1 inches, and at first I was afraid that it would be uncomfortable to work with an ultrabook screen. I emphasize - to work exactly: write articles, process photos on the road, etc. etc. A month later, I recognize the fears in vain: yes, of course, I would not give up 1600x900 on the same diagonal, but the current resolution is quite enough for comfortable work. By the way, the Lenovo Ultrabook screen does not tremble with a slight shiver when you intensively type text on it. Also a plus for him, because some brethren with that oh so sin ...
Since we started talking about disharmonies, it's time to recall two things that I absolutely did not like at U300s.
First is the lack of an Ethernet port. It seems to be an anachronism that no one needs, but we have the old standard security standards in our editorial office, and it is proposed to use only a wired connection for work computers. The same misfortune lurks in many hotels: as they held laces in each room, they forgot about the problem. What? What is wifi? No, we do not know, dear guest. Have a better drink of tea and go to bed, and do not bother your head with sophisticated spells. The problem is solved by buying a USB-Ethernet adapter, which costs about $ 30. It seems that I bought it once and forgot it, but then the “second” pops up, namely, only two USB ports on board. In one, the wireless mouse receiver constantly sticks out, in the second — when I'm at work — an adapter for Ethernet. Do you want to connect something else (for example, a flash drive), if you please pull something out. You can, of course, attend to buying a compact USB hub, but aren't there a lot of additional purchases to meet completely basic needs?
To be fair, Ethernet ports are rarely found in ultrabooks of other brands. Say thanks to Apple, who buried this standard in the MacBook Air, not forgetting, however, to include in the assortment of all Apple Store the appropriate adapter. But the USB ports could be at least three, the benefit of free space on the sides is enough. But - alas. At least one of the two ports supports the USB 3.0 standard.
But probably enough dry details - let's talk about travel. I was brought to Cannes for business, and during the flight, a quote from Zhvanetsky about “I am to Paris on business is urgent” spun in my head. Cannes themselves - a small town, and from it blows at the same time pathos and despondency. There is no airport of its own, of course, so the plane flies to Nice, and from there you have to travel by wheel transport or by helicopter. The beauty of the ultrabook is that it is very thin - only 15 millimeters. Yes, and he has a weight of about 1300 grams, so that the backpack does not feel completely. At the airport, sometimes you even doubt - turn on the tablet or open the ultrabook? Of course, the iPad is ready to work anyway faster, but its functionality is narrower, whatever one may say. And then he opened the lid, counted to three, and here's a real computer for you. And not only the speed of waking up from sleep, but also full inclusion is surprising. It seems that the reboot is a notable process and a bit dignified. And then rraz, 20 seconds - and everything works again. Unusual!
Ultrabook and iPad 2
If you drive off from Cannes for a couple of kilometers, solid vineyards begin. The nature of those places contributes to the ripening of grapes of different varieties in the best possible way, and this is not only a tasty berry, but also an opportunity to make lots and lots of wine for sale. To make it, you know, what to drink coffee with croissants on rainy winter evenings. I was amused that some vineyards stretched along very busy roads. Wine from there, I suppose, it turns out especially life-giving. He himself climbed into the winery, located far from civilization in one of the many medieval castles. True, the castle in those days called something like a modern cottage of medium size. But, you see, the word “lock” on the bottles looks more solid.
At the end of March, the vines have not yet awakened from winter sleep, and therefore there is no particular pastorality in landscapes. But you can unpleasantly throw an ultrabook on fertile French clay and hold it for about twenty minutes under the hot sun to check whether it will freeze? No, I did. Only the screen dimmed in the name of energy saving.
For greater reliability, I perched him for half an hour on the branches of the local elm, and also without unpleasant consequences. The screen, however, in the bright sun is not very suitable for work. But, on the other hand, who would think of working in such conditions?
If you really want to do something useful, and in your pocket is something like a mobile 3G router, distributing Internet via WiFi with a decent speed, you can get a job at such a waterfall and work a few hours.
The IdeaPad U300s battery lasts for about six hours in Word + ICQ mode, or for honest five hours when processing photos. For an ultrabook, and indeed for an ultra mobile computer, this is a very good result. Considering that everything works very, very quickly.
In general, the speed of this ultrabook pleasantly surprised. In my own laptop, I also use Core i7 (true, the first generation), and the SSD there is quite decent - enterprise class, 256 GB. However, the U300s is so much faster that it even takes the shock at first - well, why would it, why? As I wrote above, considerable merit in this belongs to the fast SSD. However, the other components clearly get along well with each other. You know, when Photoshop 12.1 starts on a freshly loaded system in 9 seconds, and then starts in 2-3, it makes an impression. And filters, including quite complex ones, are superimposed with such ease, as if inside not two cores, but at least four. Again, I want to use the word "unusual." You seem to be picking up something thin and light, preparing for this to go to certain compromises, but you don’t need to go. Computer in the hands of more than real.
The next few photos taken in the cellar of the winery, I will leave without comment. It seems that if Athos, fleeing from the pursuit, locked himself up in such a cellar, and with an ultrabook, D'Artagnan, who came to his rescue, would not have pulled him out of there in a month.
From glamorous Cannes fast forward to old Jaffa. The city is so ancient that Tel Aviv, located next to it, is not even a teenager next to it, but a newborn. No joke, the first mention of Jaffa dates back to 1440 BC, and by the time described in the Gospel, he had already managed to grow old pretty. As an entourage for a photo shoot, I chose the Old Jaffa Hostel - a very unique hybrid of a hotel and hostel, located in a historic building. Local models often resort to taking photos there, but the ultrabook in this place was obviously the first to pose.
WiFi is available everywhere in the hostel, so you can go online and do your usual work without any tricks. When the latter gets bored, you can raise your eyes and look at old photographs, which are hung with walls. In one of the corners there is a special selection of photographs depicting people who were married after a meeting at the hostel. Some even send photos of children. Very dramatic.
Let's go to the balcony and look at the real Oriental bazaar, where you can buy absolutely everything - from the old armchair to the bronze trinket, which stands like the headsets of the master Gambs. Make this photo allowed a balanced arrangement of elements inside the ultrabook. He stood very confidently on the railing, despite the very strong wind.
At sea, to which from this place five minutes walk, there was a real storm. By the way, the sea is also visible from here.
In the hostel, the ultrabook met his great-grandfather - a ThinkPad running on the first-generation Centrino platform. It was with her that the time of truly mobile computers began. And it is necessary - one of them works fine so far. By the way, it was not for nothing that the first version of Centrino was designated by the code word Carmel - it was developed here, on the Promised Land (not all, of course, but a significant part). And among its developers was my Saratov classmate, who left for Israel at a very tender age. That's really - the world is small.
Among the old items of the hostel, there was a real telephone machine that accepts coins. It still works perfectly well, and I struggled with myself for a long time - to throw a shekel into the slot and call a friend in the good old way, or, without further ado, talk for free on Skype from an ultrabook? Given that it was in Israel, guess - which option was chosen? :)
What do I have to tell you?
Ultrabook in general and Lenovo IdeaPad U300s in particular is an arch-pleasant piece and very suitable for movement in space. I lack Ethernet and one more (or better two) USB ports, and also a fingerprint scanner, which creates the illusion of additional information protection. But, as I already wrote, the current ultrabooks are a kind of dolls of the ultrabooks of the present. Soon, very soon, the Ivy Bridge models will tumble down - even faster, more economical, equipped with a variety of sensors and new interesting features. They, of course, mercilessly eclipse the IdeaPad U300s and its fellows. But even that which is now ready to serve as people actively and faithfully moving in space. And the best ... It, of course, will always be. And this is hardly bad.
By the way, on May 8th, together with IdeaPad, we will fly to Shanghai, where HP will show new models of its ultrabooks. And there is not far to Computex.
First, a few words about the configuration of the IdeaPad U300s. It works on a dual-core Intel Core i7-2677M processor (second generation, or, more simply, Sandy Bridge) with a nominal frequency of 1.8 GHz. True, the frequencies here are pretty tricky: most of the time the CPU is working on 800 megahertz, and under load it can accelerate right up to 2.9 GHz. So understand - what frequency is considered to be nominal. It's nice that the processor fits into the TDP of 17 W, which allows the ultrabook not to overheat and get along quietly by the cooling system. Unfortunately, some other ultrabooks of the first wave an hour after the start of work can be found by the sound even somewhere at the airport, if any kind soul extinguishes all the light there. The U300s behaves very intelligently, and the cooler runs quietly and turns on infrequently. The main part of the heat is removed by the aluminum case, and the risk to burn your knees during batch processing of a couple of gigabytes of RAW photos using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is completely absent.
')
Also on board are 4 gigabytes of DDR3-1066 RAM and a 256-gigabyte SSD (some model based on the JMicron JMF616 controller). The latter reads data at an average speed of 240 MB / s, which, you see, is quite a lot for an ultra-portable computer. Perhaps, he should be thanked for the amazing rapidity of the work of the ultrabook, about which, however, we will talk a little lower.
The resolution of the ultrabook screen is standard 1366x768 pixels with a diagonal of 13.3 inches. The type of matrix, as you might guess, is TN. In my own laptop, with which we had been together for a year and a half, it was 1440x900 with a diagonal of 12.1 inches, and at first I was afraid that it would be uncomfortable to work with an ultrabook screen. I emphasize - to work exactly: write articles, process photos on the road, etc. etc. A month later, I recognize the fears in vain: yes, of course, I would not give up 1600x900 on the same diagonal, but the current resolution is quite enough for comfortable work. By the way, the Lenovo Ultrabook screen does not tremble with a slight shiver when you intensively type text on it. Also a plus for him, because some brethren with that oh so sin ...
Since we started talking about disharmonies, it's time to recall two things that I absolutely did not like at U300s.
First is the lack of an Ethernet port. It seems to be an anachronism that no one needs, but we have the old standard security standards in our editorial office, and it is proposed to use only a wired connection for work computers. The same misfortune lurks in many hotels: as they held laces in each room, they forgot about the problem. What? What is wifi? No, we do not know, dear guest. Have a better drink of tea and go to bed, and do not bother your head with sophisticated spells. The problem is solved by buying a USB-Ethernet adapter, which costs about $ 30. It seems that I bought it once and forgot it, but then the “second” pops up, namely, only two USB ports on board. In one, the wireless mouse receiver constantly sticks out, in the second — when I'm at work — an adapter for Ethernet. Do you want to connect something else (for example, a flash drive), if you please pull something out. You can, of course, attend to buying a compact USB hub, but aren't there a lot of additional purchases to meet completely basic needs?
To be fair, Ethernet ports are rarely found in ultrabooks of other brands. Say thanks to Apple, who buried this standard in the MacBook Air, not forgetting, however, to include in the assortment of all Apple Store the appropriate adapter. But the USB ports could be at least three, the benefit of free space on the sides is enough. But - alas. At least one of the two ports supports the USB 3.0 standard.
But probably enough dry details - let's talk about travel. I was brought to Cannes for business, and during the flight, a quote from Zhvanetsky about “I am to Paris on business is urgent” spun in my head. Cannes themselves - a small town, and from it blows at the same time pathos and despondency. There is no airport of its own, of course, so the plane flies to Nice, and from there you have to travel by wheel transport or by helicopter. The beauty of the ultrabook is that it is very thin - only 15 millimeters. Yes, and he has a weight of about 1300 grams, so that the backpack does not feel completely. At the airport, sometimes you even doubt - turn on the tablet or open the ultrabook? Of course, the iPad is ready to work anyway faster, but its functionality is narrower, whatever one may say. And then he opened the lid, counted to three, and here's a real computer for you. And not only the speed of waking up from sleep, but also full inclusion is surprising. It seems that the reboot is a notable process and a bit dignified. And then rraz, 20 seconds - and everything works again. Unusual!
Ultrabook and iPad 2
If you drive off from Cannes for a couple of kilometers, solid vineyards begin. The nature of those places contributes to the ripening of grapes of different varieties in the best possible way, and this is not only a tasty berry, but also an opportunity to make lots and lots of wine for sale. To make it, you know, what to drink coffee with croissants on rainy winter evenings. I was amused that some vineyards stretched along very busy roads. Wine from there, I suppose, it turns out especially life-giving. He himself climbed into the winery, located far from civilization in one of the many medieval castles. True, the castle in those days called something like a modern cottage of medium size. But, you see, the word “lock” on the bottles looks more solid.
At the end of March, the vines have not yet awakened from winter sleep, and therefore there is no particular pastorality in landscapes. But you can unpleasantly throw an ultrabook on fertile French clay and hold it for about twenty minutes under the hot sun to check whether it will freeze? No, I did. Only the screen dimmed in the name of energy saving.
For greater reliability, I perched him for half an hour on the branches of the local elm, and also without unpleasant consequences. The screen, however, in the bright sun is not very suitable for work. But, on the other hand, who would think of working in such conditions?
If you really want to do something useful, and in your pocket is something like a mobile 3G router, distributing Internet via WiFi with a decent speed, you can get a job at such a waterfall and work a few hours.
The IdeaPad U300s battery lasts for about six hours in Word + ICQ mode, or for honest five hours when processing photos. For an ultrabook, and indeed for an ultra mobile computer, this is a very good result. Considering that everything works very, very quickly.
In general, the speed of this ultrabook pleasantly surprised. In my own laptop, I also use Core i7 (true, the first generation), and the SSD there is quite decent - enterprise class, 256 GB. However, the U300s is so much faster that it even takes the shock at first - well, why would it, why? As I wrote above, considerable merit in this belongs to the fast SSD. However, the other components clearly get along well with each other. You know, when Photoshop 12.1 starts on a freshly loaded system in 9 seconds, and then starts in 2-3, it makes an impression. And filters, including quite complex ones, are superimposed with such ease, as if inside not two cores, but at least four. Again, I want to use the word "unusual." You seem to be picking up something thin and light, preparing for this to go to certain compromises, but you don’t need to go. Computer in the hands of more than real.
The next few photos taken in the cellar of the winery, I will leave without comment. It seems that if Athos, fleeing from the pursuit, locked himself up in such a cellar, and with an ultrabook, D'Artagnan, who came to his rescue, would not have pulled him out of there in a month.
From glamorous Cannes fast forward to old Jaffa. The city is so ancient that Tel Aviv, located next to it, is not even a teenager next to it, but a newborn. No joke, the first mention of Jaffa dates back to 1440 BC, and by the time described in the Gospel, he had already managed to grow old pretty. As an entourage for a photo shoot, I chose the Old Jaffa Hostel - a very unique hybrid of a hotel and hostel, located in a historic building. Local models often resort to taking photos there, but the ultrabook in this place was obviously the first to pose.
WiFi is available everywhere in the hostel, so you can go online and do your usual work without any tricks. When the latter gets bored, you can raise your eyes and look at old photographs, which are hung with walls. In one of the corners there is a special selection of photographs depicting people who were married after a meeting at the hostel. Some even send photos of children. Very dramatic.
Let's go to the balcony and look at the real Oriental bazaar, where you can buy absolutely everything - from the old armchair to the bronze trinket, which stands like the headsets of the master Gambs. Make this photo allowed a balanced arrangement of elements inside the ultrabook. He stood very confidently on the railing, despite the very strong wind.
At sea, to which from this place five minutes walk, there was a real storm. By the way, the sea is also visible from here.
In the hostel, the ultrabook met his great-grandfather - a ThinkPad running on the first-generation Centrino platform. It was with her that the time of truly mobile computers began. And it is necessary - one of them works fine so far. By the way, it was not for nothing that the first version of Centrino was designated by the code word Carmel - it was developed here, on the Promised Land (not all, of course, but a significant part). And among its developers was my Saratov classmate, who left for Israel at a very tender age. That's really - the world is small.
Among the old items of the hostel, there was a real telephone machine that accepts coins. It still works perfectly well, and I struggled with myself for a long time - to throw a shekel into the slot and call a friend in the good old way, or, without further ado, talk for free on Skype from an ultrabook? Given that it was in Israel, guess - which option was chosen? :)
What do I have to tell you?
Ultrabook in general and Lenovo IdeaPad U300s in particular is an arch-pleasant piece and very suitable for movement in space. I lack Ethernet and one more (or better two) USB ports, and also a fingerprint scanner, which creates the illusion of additional information protection. But, as I already wrote, the current ultrabooks are a kind of dolls of the ultrabooks of the present. Soon, very soon, the Ivy Bridge models will tumble down - even faster, more economical, equipped with a variety of sensors and new interesting features. They, of course, mercilessly eclipse the IdeaPad U300s and its fellows. But even that which is now ready to serve as people actively and faithfully moving in space. And the best ... It, of course, will always be. And this is hardly bad.
By the way, on May 8th, together with IdeaPad, we will fly to Shanghai, where HP will show new models of its ultrabooks. And there is not far to Computex.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/142985/
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