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The Lenovo IdeaPad S205 is a light weight, portable laptop with an 11.6 inch display and a 1.6 GHz AMD E-350 dual core processor.The laptop also has with Radeon HD 6310 graphics, 3GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive and Windows 7 Home Premium. But at $499, it’s actually a little more expensive than similar offerings from Asus and HP… normally.

This week Lenovo is offering the IdeaPad S205 for $100 off when you use the coupon code USPS27505. That makes the laptop one of the cheapest models available with a new AMD E-350 chip… at least until the coupon expires on Friday.

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16 replies on “Deal Alert: Lenovo IdeaPad S205 laptop for $399”

    1. Business models, Thinkpads, tend to be tougher and better made than the consumer models, Idealpads.

      So the X120e is likely to withstand more abuse than the S205 but there is also aesthetic considerations and so also depends which looks better to you.

      Like for the X120e the six cell battery will stick out the back for example, and the track point and touch pad layout of the Thinkpad series may not appeal to those who don’t use the keyboard heavily.

  1. Thanks.

    I also find it odd that they don’t feel the need to identify it as “dual-core”. I am sure you are right, but I would think they would want to mention it since dumb butts like me would assume otherwise.

  2. Lenovo seems to skimp on listing specs. I can’t even identify how much it weighs.

        1. Ok. At that first link they show it starting a 3.3 pounds, not that I consider it a huge difference.

          On a side not I have an Dell Inspiron 6400 that is 5 years old that I am looking to upgrade.. The system properties make no mention of whether it is single or dual core but apparently it is Intel Duo Core T2300 1.6 according to the packing slip and the specs on the internet.

          I wonder what the performance difference would be if any. I figure 3 gig of ram versus my current 1.5 of ram would make an impact. And it wold be a lot lighter.

          1. you could always just have checked task manager to see if you had two threads in the performance tab…

        1. Ahh, that explains it… I didn’t know they were even selling a 3 cell battery option, but my contact at Lenovo told me 2.97 pounds earlier this year.

          Bear in mind, the E-350 is powerful when compared with an Intel Atom chip, but it’s not exactly a speed demon. If you’re looking for something that’s vastly superior to your five your old system, this might not do the trick (although the graphics will likely be much better). But the E-350 is fast enough to handle most common computing tasks while providing decent battery life.

          I’m going to hound my contact to see if I can get a review unit, but I’m a bit backed up on the review front so it might be a while before I can publish anything even if I do get one soon.

          1. No problem. I am glad I asked since I wasn’t aware that the E-350 was faster than the Intel Atom. At $399 it is definitely tempting. I have till Friday to decide.

          2. Well to put Brad’s review in proper perspective, the E-350 1.6GHz Dual Core Bobcats are just a little better than the Intel Dual Core 1.8GHz D525 nettop chip. The 2-3 times comparison is to the slower mobile Intel
            Atom chips.

            The C-50 for example is basically a rival to the N550 and the single core C-30 dips just below single core ATOM for a more complete picture
            comparison.

            The key selling point is the AMD graphics are significantly better than the Intel GMA and only slightly below the Nvidia ION but without the PCI 1x lane bottleneck. So the AMD solution is more consistent.

            The APU and out of order processing support also gives AMD better multi-processing handling than Intel ATOMs, which are all limited to in order processing. So some applications will perform better than the raw
            performance numbers may suggest otherwise for the AMD Fusion offerings.

          3. I haven’t tested an Atom D525 system, but I did test the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q150 with an Atom D510 chip last year and the HP Pavilion dm1z transcoded a video file in 254 seconds that took the Lenovo 383 seconds.

            The third party benchmarks I run don’t just measure CPU, but while the Lenovo got an overall higher 3DMark06 score, the dm1z consistently had higher marks in the CPU portions of the tests.

            The Lenovo got a 3DMark CPU score of 878, and the dm1z got a 1019.

            The Cinemark scores were interesting, because the Q150 got a 550 single CPU score, and 1601 multi CPU score, while the dm1z got an 1151 single CPU score and a 2143 multi CPU score.

            Anyway, benchmarks are all very specific to the tasks at hand, but the key difference between the AMD E-350 and virtually every Atom-based system I’ve tested was that the HP Pavilion dm1z didn’t feel like it was going to choke at any moment if I asked it to do just one more task.

          4. I’m not contesting that the E-350 is better Brad, I was simply pointing out there isn’t a 2-3 times difference in performance and to show there was a range where the AMD Fusion line more properly compared.

            The D525 at 1.8GHz is noticeably better than the D510 at 1.66GHz. So the gap is smaller between the E-350 and the D525 than it is for the D510.

            The Eee PC 1215N is the better system to be making comparisons with the E-350. Especially since they are both top of the line for both Intel and AMD offerings in the low mini-notebook range…

            Basically showing the E-350 scores a little better than the D525 for raw CPU performance and just a few points below the ION2 for graphical performance.

            The E-350 just also has additional benefit of having more consistent performance, since it doesn’t have the PCI 1x limitation the ION2 has, and advantages that “Out of Order Processing” and the APU that let’s it more efficiently manage resources when multi-tasking and similar resource handling and that’s why it seems more responsive than it’s performance advantage alone would otherwise provide.

            Like I pointed out before, Intel ATOMS are limited to “In Order Processing” and lack APU enhancements.
            So in some applications the Intel ATOM is less efficient.

            But the only thing really 2-3 times more is the AMD GPU vs the Intel GMA. Showing AMD’s clear graphical advantage for any Intel ATOM not coupled with a Nvidia ION2.

            The CPU performance is much closer for the Ontario offerings, the N550 actually pulls slightly ahead of the C-50, helps they drop the clock speed to 1GHz. Even though the C-50 has similar advantages as the E-350 and can pull ahead in some benchmarks. So AMD Fusion relies more on the graphical advantage on the lower end and Intel still has a small run time advantage.

          5. Fair enough. “2-3 times” was just sort of an off-the-cuff estimate I came up with before I looked back at my test results.

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