Lenovo Q100 Review
December 10th, 2009Tags: lenovo, lenovo q100, nettop, q100, windows xp
Categories: General, Internet, News
I had a chance to play around with the Lenovo Q100 nettop. It’s a tiny computer about the size of an average external CD player. The footprint is impressively small at 6″w X 0.8″d X 6.80″h. We are talking inches here. It’s small enough that it comes with an installation plate that can be mounted on the back of flatscreen monitor as seen here. It can also stand up vertically on its own stand as seen here. You can place it anywhere in your house, in the bedroom, living room or in the kitchen. It weighs only 1.67 lbs, and that includes the stand.
It’s very green. It consumes only 14 watts when in idle mode and 40 watts when fully loaded. So, what’s inside? It’s comes pre-installed with Windows XP SP3 Home Edition. It’s powered by a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 230 processor with single-core Hyper-Threading technology, Intel 64 Technology, 533Mhz system bus and 512KB L2 cache. It has 1GB PC2-5300 667 MHZ DDR2 of RAM. The hard drive is a 160 GB SATA 5400 RPM disk.
It contains 6 USB 2.0 ports, 2 front and 4 back. It has 2 speaker outputs, 1 front and 1 back, and 1 mic input in front. The audio is a High Definition (HD) audio, RealTek ALC662 codec. The network port is a built-in Gigabit ethernet RealTek RLT811DL. Last but not least, it comes with a VGA port powered by an integrated Nvidia ION chipset MCP7A-ION.
The system is not a speed demon considering the price and footprint, but it performs admirably. It’s ideally suited for basic computing such as email and internet. I’ve used it for streaming videos with a videocam at ustream.tv. It worked great. Fry’s currently sells the Q100 for $189 pre-tax. While at it, you can get a Canon Pixma MX330 All-In-One Printer, Copier, Fax, Scanner for $59 with a $50 dollar rebate. Technically, only $9.95.
Can you let me know if you tried to install any variation of Linux on the Q100. The current reviews say it does not play nice with Ubuntu, but there are not really many reviews for me to make an informed decision.
Thanks,
Rafid
Hi Rafid,
I haven’t tried it yet, mainly because my main Linux Desktop is having hardware issues. The kernel panics and freezes Ubuntu. Nothing wrong with Ubuntu. It’s a hardware issue. I think it’s either a power supply problem, RAM, or a GPU problem. In any case, I need the Q100, albeit it’s running on Windows XP. I would love to get another Q100 and install Ubuntu on it. Like yourself, I’m a little hesitant to touch it since I’m down to one reliable computer at the moment.
Just got Ubuntu 9.10 up and running on my Lenovo Q100. It was a bit of a chore because I had to boot from the network – but that was to be expected. The installation really went without a hitch after getting the network boot to work. The following link made it all pretty easy:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/LocalNet
I’m doing this reply with Firefox running on the Q100. To be completely accurate, I’m running Firefox on the Q100 with the X display set to my desktop here on a different machine after using ssh to get to the Q100 which has been mounted in my phone closet.
This is very cool – it’s not the fastest machine in the world, but for $180 I have a very low power Linux server mounted out of the way.
Eric,
Nice setup. Thanks for sharing. Have you tried installing from USB?
Nope – haven’t tried USB installing on the Lenovo. As far as I can tell, however, the Lenovo Q100 can’t boot from the USB, which would make it a bit harder. The only options on my boot menu (or in Bios setup) is booting from the harddrive and from the network.
Is there a mini-boot that you could possibly do from the network that would then allow install from the USB? – that would be pretty nice.