KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Native ports for all major operating systems are available:
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
- Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
- Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
- Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)
All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:
- SMP – Multi-Processor
- MC – Multi-Core
- SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
- MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
- GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
- NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
- AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
- IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit
The Core i7 2620M inside this Thinkpad X220 is a powerful mobile chip, outperforming some of the lower specification desktop processors. Due to Lenovo only populating one of the two memory slots, the single channel performance is less than impressive, scoring 9GB/s. If the machine was populated with two, it would rise to around 15 GB/s.
good looking machine, very businesslike. shame about the lack of backlight keyboard. thats a bad move.
I have a X220 and it has been nothing but trouble. the battery lost a charge in a month and I had to return it. then they released a firmware update which hosed my bios and I had to return the laptop after that.
Its all working now, but im wondering what will happen next………… very bad experience for me. (it is a nice laptop however as reviewer said, but ive concerns about quality control).
I use it with Ubuntu 11.10 and it works like a charm, everything is smooth and worked out of the box. Also, seller was fast and delivered really quickly. I read a lot of complaints about they not replying emails, but my experience was the opposite, they replied me fast and were accurate. I recommend them too!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005AJYZE8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=emjay2d-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005AJYZE8
It’s all very well saying this laptop looks like the ultimate mobile business warrior’s tool. Sure it has the specs, and the dependable looks. I followed the advice of reviews like this one and shelled out $1,200 for a high-spec X220 but when the laptop’s casing developed a crack on the side by no accident or fault of mine, I was in for a ride from Lenovo Customer Service. The following thread on the Lenovo forum gives you a pretty good idea of what I’ve been through:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Crack-in-X220-casing-poor-support/m-p/693719#M36529
My opinion after owning an X220 for five months: not only is this laptop of low quality build, but you can forget customer service. My experience of customer service at Apple on similar issues was lightyears ahead of this. Also: “milspec tested”? Give me a break! And what does “milspec tested” mean without actually getting some kind of milspec certification anyway? You can “milspec test” a fisher price toy and it would come out better than the X220, I’d wager.
Hi wimute, im really sorry to hear that. It is a problem with most reviews to be honest. we only get a week or two tops with a product like this before it has to go back. Ill have a look at that thread. thanks for sharing.
@ Wimute, I’ve been using a Lenovo X220 as my main everyday machine for about eight months and had no problems at all. I can’t comment on Lenovo customer service as I’ve not had any issues with the laptop but in my opinion, the build quality is fantastic.
I want to buy it
Nice review. I’m looking to buy thinkpad this Summer
I’ve owned one for about six months, and I love it. I came from Macs, and so far, my x220 has been more reliable and just plain better.
I am looking to purchase the highest end quality laptop summer/fall 2012
Well I’m now experiencing another design flaw in my X220: I’m starting to see ghosting in the display. Seems I’m not alone: if you bought yours with the option of an IPS display, you’re likely to have ghosting crop up. The thread about this issue over at Lenovo has 47 pages of posts and counting. I’m so shell shocked by the Lenovo customer service experience regarding the crack though that I’m not sure I’ll even bother sending this machine in. They’ll probably tell me it’s my fault again and waste a month of my time with a maze of incompetence and denial.
Have you a link? What are you planning on doing?