![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcitement.comadmin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/pic2-610x290.png\")
Z580 Specifications.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
The\u00a0IdeaPad Z580 comes with these specs:<\/p>\n
- \n
- 15.6\u201d LED widescreen display running at 1366×768.<\/li>\n
- Intel i5-3210M 3rd generation CPU running at 2.5 GHz.<\/li>\n
- 6 GB DDR3 RAM.<\/li>\n
- Hitachi 750 GB 5400 RPM 2.5\u201d hard drive.<\/li>\n
- Intel HD 4000 embedded graphics.<\/li>\n
- Bluetooth 4.0.<\/li>\n
- Intel Centrino N-2200 Wifi controller supporting 802.11b\/g\/n and WiDi Wireless display connection to supporting devices.<\/li>\n
- A 1 MP webcam, one MIC, and one set of headphones.<\/li>\n
- Two USB 3.0 connectors, two USB 2.0 connectors, one VGA connector, one HDMI connector, and a 5-in-1 memory card reader.<\/li>\n
- Buttonless trackpad.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
First Impressions<\/h2>\n
The packaging is minimalist and efficient (you might say sparse), with a quickstart guide, power cord, and little else beyond the machine itself.<\/p>\n
My first impression of the laptop is that its sleek and shiny. Opening the lid of the machine is actually too easy because there is no latch to keep it closed, so I suggest a laptop sleeve if you plan on moving around a lot with it. Two things I immediately notice are the full number pad on the right side of keyboard and that the screen is definitely not 14 inches as the promotional materials shown above claimed. A quick review of the Lenovo website confirmed that the Z580 indeed features a larger 15.6″ widescreen display. I notice a similar mistake on the technical specifications for the processor model, but other elements of the documentation seem to be correct. As for the keyboard, it\u2019s both a feat of engineering and an albatross, but I\u2019ll get back to that in a moment.<\/p>\n
One other item of interest is that all connectors, including power, are on either the left or right sides. The back is without any connections at all, and the front has only the 5-in-1 memory card reader. Z580’s power button is on the right side.<\/p>\n
Here are a few of the other features highlighted by the Lenovo promotional materials:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Enhanced Experience 3 \u2013 A series of technologies to reduce the boot time and increase the overall responsiveness of Windows 7.<\/li>\n
- Boot Shield \u2013 \u201c\u2026maintains fast boot performance even after installing multiple applications\u201d<\/li>\n
- VeriFace biometric face recognition security software<\/li>\n
- OneKey Rescue System \u2013 for easy backup and recovery<\/li>\n
- Thermal management with \u2018Dedusting Mode\u2019<\/li>\n
- OneKey Theatre II<\/li>\n
- Touch sensitive hotkeys<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Software<\/h2>\n
I’m always interested in \u00a0learning about how vendors optimize their systems. Sometimes their claims are gimmicks that add little to no value, but when a company like Lenovo alleges significant improvements to the core operating system I take the claims seriously. Promotional materials for the Z580 are splashed with details about how Lenovo has improved the speed of Windows start and stop functions, as well as overall performance. Looking at Windows 7 Premium Home as installed gives me a good feeling about how serious the company is; it’s a clean install, with only a few included utilities and no junk applications I can find.<\/p>\n
The set of Lenovo performance improvements are grouped under the moniker “Enhanced Experience 3.0”, and the marketing materials claim I can go to www.lenovo.com\/ee to find out more, but that redirected me to a standard product page. \u00a0I found the correct link (adding a 3 to the end of the URL) after a Google search. That corrected URL takes me to pages that describe how, through a variety of improvements to things like when a service starts to how a driver loads\/unloads itself into memory, Lenovo engineers greatly improved Windows 7 performance during startup, sleep, and shutdown sequences. In practice, it does seem much improved, including immediate network connectivity (although I wonder if this is a good thing or makes some assumptions about the network), drive access, and keyboard\/mouse responsiveness.
\n<\/p>\nPerformance<\/h2>\n
Let\u2019s get this out of the way: the Lenovo Z580 is fast. Even with an i5 processor, which is certainly no slouch but several rungs below top of the line, this machine feels more than capable of handling day-to-day business and multimedia tasks. In fact, if runs almost as quickly as if it had a solid state hard drive, which is impressive. Multitasking is also respectable, and the laptop has a quality screen, with good side angle viewing and nice contrast and brightness. All in all, a competent effort on the part of Lenovo. Multimedia is great, with louder than average volume with no distortion and smooth playback of video content locally stored and over the network from YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu. Networking is also positive, with near-instantaneous wireless connections to my WPA2 secured home network and performance consistent with 208.11n networking, which is to say, more than adequate for normal home and business use (if you\u2019re transferring hundreds of gigabytes of data I\u2019d go looking for a network cable, but that\u2019s true of most wireless connections). Battery performance is also good, clocking in at a little less than five hours of a mix of business use and playing network videos. The system as provided with the six cell battery weighs a bit less than 6 pounds. The base warranty in the U.S. is one year parts and labor, but you have to mail in the unit. Warranty upgrades are available.<\/p>\n
Strengths & Weaknesses
\n<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\nThere are, in general, three primary interfaces to any computer: keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Audio, camera, printing and scanning, these are all important, but the vast majority of interactions are through the hands and eyes. And that is where I ran into trouble with the Z580.<\/p>\n
Z580’s keyboard is impressive. The keys are each distinct, with no lip or sloped portion between them like on most other laptop keyboards. Although the keyboard looks different, it doesn’t seem to affect my typing at all, but I can feel the difference. What does affect my typing, however, is the mass of number pad keys inhabiting the entire right side of the keyboard. While it’s an impressive feat of engineering to cram so many keys into such a small space and still have them be functional, I do have a few issues with this layout, such as:<\/p>\n
- \n
- If this is marketed to more media-centric users, why would they need a number pad?<\/li>\n
- The right shift and backslash keys had to be reduced in size to accommodate the number pad.<\/li>\n
- It’s difficult for me to find the arrow keys without looking.<\/li>\n
- The trackpad is over to the left of the laptop. While I have seen this before, with or without a number pad, I never consider this a good design decision.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I can get used to the keyboard, but I don\u2019t really understand why I should have to on a machine marketed for home\/personal use.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcitement.comadmin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/pic4-484x290.jpg\")
The backslash and shift buttons are smaller, and ctrl is moved, which results in a lot of typing errors.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
The trackpad is a different matter. I not only find the lack of buttons unintuitive, but see it as a regression from more conventional, and functional, two-button designs. The Mac used to have a single button mouse but diehard Mac users are increasingly adopting the PC\u2019s two mouse standard for the flexibility it affords. With previous laptops, I would hold my thumb on the left button and navigate with my index fingers. Doing that here, I instantly zoomed in my active window to 400 percent without knowing quite why. It took me a minute to understand that the trackpad interprets my stationary thumb and moving finger as performing an expand gesture via multi-touch, much like Apple’s iOS. Getting it to left click instead of right click is nearly-draconian as I have to be all the way in the corner to make it work. The experience is so frustrating that had I continued I would have resorted to a mouse. This is disappointing as it takes away from an otherwise excellent device.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcitement.comadmin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/pic5-610x290.jpg\")
The trackpad with no buttons was frustrating and resulted in constant accidental zooming in.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Z580’s multimedia buttons are interesting in that they look like any other illuminated indicators above the keyboard, but are touch-sensitive. This is something you would need to know as it\u2019s not obvious. The buttons are cute and cool, but the technology doesn’t seem particularly necessary. In my experience, the same goes for the OneKey Theatre II, which only serves to change the brightness and maybe color temperature. To be honest, I didn’t use the OneKey past the initial testing of it and had no trouble seeing videos or the desktop regardless of the setting.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcitement.comadmin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/pic6-274x290.jpg\")
The touch-sensitive buttons above control the volume and brightness.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
There is a small button just to the right of the power button that acts as the OneKey Rescue System. Apparently, if you turn the system off and press it, the machine boots into a special recovery mode. I didn’t test this feature because I prefer complete backups and strongly\u00a0recommend\u00a0everyone perform them regularly.<\/p>\n
The thermal management “dedusting mode” is a feature far more useful than you might think. Computers, and especially laptops, use airflow through their case to manage the heat generated by internal components. Heatsinks (think radiators for computer components) sit on the most critical heat generating components including the CPU, GPU, and chipsets. These heatsinks transfer the heat from those components to the air that’s pushed through the machine via internal fans. Over time, dust and gunk accumulate on those components, restricting airflow and causing overheating. I\u2019ve seen many older laptops crash due to heating problems from dust. Dedusting mode is a maintenance cycle that alternates the fan running high in both directions for a period of time, hopefully clearing any dust. Running this periodically will hopefully ensure years of avoiding heat-related issues.<\/p>\n
This brings me to the final utility provided by Lenovo: Verface, the company’s facial recognition software. Make no mistake, it’s cool technology. The problem is that it\u2019s not quite ready for prime time. Some examples as to why Verface needs more tweaking: there’s no clear guide from step to step in how to use the software; there are several options and settings that are, at best, confusing, and at worst, completely meaningless to the average user (and reviewer) and potentially incapacitating as you could lock yourself out of the system. In my experience with the system, it’s almost always easier to type in a password than wait for the nifty looking face analysis to complete. I also have no idea what the false positive (mistaking someone else’s face as mine) or false negative (when it misdetects a valid face as incorrect) rates are, but those are always concerns with biometric technologies. So, you can feel more comfortable with a password, even though the more adventurous or curious reader is encouraged to try it out. \u00a0As I said, it’s geek-cool.<\/p>\n
Wrap Up
\n<\/strong><\/h2>\nThe Lenovo IdeaPad Z580 is an interesting mix of highs and lows. It has good performance out of the box and special software optimizations designed to ensure Windows continues to perform as well as when you first buy the system. The screen, network, and other features all seem to work exceedingly well. For me, the challenges are the keyboard and trackpad. If you’re an accountant or are used to a number pad, this notebook may be the bees knees. But if you are, like me, used to a more traditional keyboard layout with large shift and backspace keys, along with a trackpad that has buttons, this particular model may take some getting used to.<\/p>\n
I should note that, based on the marketing materials, it appears that the smaller models don’t have the number pad keys.<\/p>\n
Overall, I recommend the Z580, but feel it’s not quite what the intended market is looking for, and, like it\u2019s marketing materials, could use a bit more refinement. If Lenovo can smooth out the kinks just a bit, I think they have a real winner in the IdeaPad Z580.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lenovo was kind enough to send Techcitement an IdeaPad Z580, a mid-priced and sleek 15.6\u201d wide-screen laptop geared toward the media and social network savvy crowd.\u00a0 The laptop has unique, and unusual, features that distinguish it from the run-of-the-mill Windows laptop, some of which enhance my experience with the device and others thatalmostenhance my experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":13500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1916,31,1085],"tags":[521,3320,2009,184,1782,3304],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13482"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16365,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13482\/revisions\/16365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}