Comments on: Meet Apone: The X301 Review (Linux and Vista)

By: Hayden James

Hayden James — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:44:48 +0000

I run Linux Mint 11 now. My boot time on my x301 is just under 20 seconds. Tweaked down from 25+ seconds.

I run my x301′s 1.4ghz processor locked @ 1401000 mhz BOTH on AC and battery modes. Just edited a few files to achieve this since ubuntu/mint distro’s ondemand cpufreq forces cpu to 800mhz wayyyy wayyy too much = slower!

Rest is 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, dvd drive.

Yup, big weakness of the x301 is the processor. My T60 is about 30% faster and i have that since 07. t60 boots in under 15 seconds (never tweaked boot) other than concurrency=shell. The price u pay for 3.4 lbs! lol

I still get just over 2 hours on battery (x301) at near full back-light. I use conky to monitor the cpu core temp. Temps have yet to exceed 130 F. Intel states normal operation is up to 70 Celsius! So way in the safe zone!

In my bios I have disabled a lot of I/O, including my optical drive that I hardly ever use lol.

The x301 cpu is already very low in power consumption so maxing cpufreqs did not hurt battery times much for me. Still seaching/hoping I could OC cpu to 1.6mhz since its running cool. lol

Oh here’s my x301 Conky:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=30209&p=442516#p442516

I was going to upgrade to the lenovo x1 but other than the CPU it still cant touch the x301 and is more of a downgrade:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385422,00.asp
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2330686,00.asp

Thinking about the t420s to replace my t60 but I still have my tweaked T60 with 64Gb SSD… and it blazes!

Lenovo’s of late reflect the economy, a bit cheapened with specs just on par with the rest. Understandable to stay in biz in this market.

By: Kristoffer Karlsson

Kristoffer Karlsson — Sat, 14 May 2011 16:09:44 +0000

Why is’nt it mentioned how to use the card as a normal modem and/or phone?

ttyACM0 accepts ATDT commands, with a semicolon in the end the modem will be a regular modem/phone and establish a real voicecall.

incoming calls will flood /dev/ttyACM0
with ugly RING commands.
if anyone calls the phone number on the sim inserted.

By: Marius

Marius — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 11:41:36 +0000

Do you know if the GPS can be used at the same time as a 3G connection is active?

By: tecosystems » My Last Laptop

tecosystems » My Last Laptop — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:00:28 +0000

[...] which was temporarily replaced by loaned X60s and X300s because compiles took me six hours, and in September 2008 a shiny new X301 arrived. Which, while the processor is a bit anemic and the battery underwhelming, [...]

By: Marius Gedminas

Marius Gedminas — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:57:15 +0000

Wasn’t the Intel-Ethernet-destroying bug fixed at the last minute before the final Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex release (with a cleaner fix appearing on the same day as a security update)?

How’s the write speed on the SSD? Is Firefox 3.0 usable? It was *horrible* on an Asus EEE 900, pausing and not responding for seconds on almost every page load while it fsyncs its oh-so-precious sqlite databases. That made me wary of SSDs, although, I suppose it’s possible Lenovo uses a better one here.

By: tecosystems » How to Use an AT&T Ericsson F3507g Card on Ubuntu Intrepid

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:31:19 +0000

[...] the on board WWAN card in my new X301 – an Ericsson F3507g – working under Ubuntu. When I initially reviewed the machine, and later commented on the Ubuntu Intrepid compatibility, the Ericsson was one of the [...]

By: Jacques

Jacques — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:39:44 +0000

Thanx for this detailed info, I too am about to upgrade to the X301 from my trusty X41 (also with immense 40GB drive) and am salivating at the prospect.

But what did you do with your X40? Any good ideas? It seems so dishonourable to sell it on eBay for a few hundred dollars. It deserves better!

Also: did dealing with more than 1024×768 cause any immediate psycological problems… I imagine there could be major shock.

By: newhren

newhren — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:12:00 +0000

THANK you, N Z

GPSr was the last piece I needed to make work under linux (not counting the land-line modem) in my X200. It was clear that it got to be some mysterious AT-commands (because this is how it works in the “old” Sierra card), but where to get them was completely unclear (google still doesn’t find any mention of this commands besides this page).

By: Improved Means for Achieving Deteriorated Ends / Lusting for a Laptop: Lenovo the Liberator?

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:08:27 +0000

[...] of that have been very happy with SSD-based laptops for 6-months to a year now (Jeff Atwood and Stephen O’Grady, I’m looking at ya’ll) but a Linux filesystems expert whose opinion I trust, Val [...]

By: N Z

N Z — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:05:32 +0000

For those that might be interested in getting GPS going with the Ericsson F3507g card under Linux, sending “AT*” to /dev/ttyACM0 produces a listing of AT commands supported by the card. The following expect script configures /dev/ttyACM2 (interface 9 on the card) to emit NMEA sentences; you should immediately start seeing NMEA without a fix, and in my case, after a few minutes I got an actual fix from the card.

spawn cu -l /dev/ttyACM2
expect “Connected.”

sleep 1
send “AT+CFUN=1\r”
expect “+PACSP0″

sleep 1
send “AT*E2GPSCTL=1,10,1\r”
expect “OK”

sleep 1
send “AT*E2GPSNPD\r”
expect “GPGGA”