X220 Any Problems with displays of large excel files?

[la808]

I was about to purchase an X220 until I read one bad review that this model has issues with displaying large Excel files.  Being that having Excel files with thousands of rows/column is the core of my usage, I needed to check this out.

Please let me know if you have been okay with this model and working with large excel files.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

where are you reading about issues displaying large excel files? I have files that have nearly 50,000 rows and it flies through it.

[la808]

There was a review posted on Lenovo mentioning that this model has issues with large excel files.  My files will not be more than 50000 lines! 

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

can you post a link to the review? I am not having any issues, nor does the other two X220 at work have this issue when using the large excel files.

[la808]

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lead_org wrote:
can you post a link to the review? I am not having any issues, nor does the other two X220 at work have this issue when using the large excel files.

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Based on your feedback I'm probably going to go ahead and get the model.  But If I hadn't inquired on this forum, this review would have changed my mind.

Here's the text from the review on lenovo.com :
Light, solid machine with one small glitch

Date:February 23, 2012

"I have owned and used by X220 for about six months and consider it a real workhorse. Great display quality, wonderful keyboard (perhaps the best of any laptop, a Thinkpad tradition). I like it better than my previous light machine for the road, an X201.

The only problem is an odd one. With some memory intensive programs, such as Excel, the display has trouble keeping up. In Excel, for example, on a larger worksheet the rows will bunch up and can't be read, or rows will unexpectedly be transposed to cover the ribbon, so that they and the ribbon can't be read. This seems to be a limitation of the built-in graphics chip, the Intel HD Graphics 3000. It should be adequate for these straightforward business tasks; 64 megs of video RAM are built in. Yet, those big files, in both Excel and also, surprisingly, in Word, can tie themselves up. When that happens, the only solution is to close the program and start over.

If you need graphics clarity for all business purposes, you would be wise to consider this issue before buying the X220."

[andyP Community SuperMod]

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la808 wrote:

Here's the text from the review on lenovo.com :

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It would certainly help, and also be correct, to provide a link to the quoted text in order that members can evaluate better the review you are referring to.

[jiv]

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la808 wrote:

Here's the text from the review on lenovo.com :

Light, solid machine with one small glitch

Date:February 23, 2012

The only problem is an odd one. With some memory intensive programs, such as Excel, the display has trouble keeping up. In Excel, for example, on a larger worksheet the rows will bunch up and can't be read, or rows will unexpectedly be transposed to cover the ribbon, so that they and the ribbon can't be read. This seems to be a limitation of the built-in graphics chip, the Intel HD Graphics 3000. It should be adequate for these straightforward business tasks; 64 megs of video RAM are built in. Yet, those big files, in both Excel and also, surprisingly, in Word, can tie themselves up. When that happens, the only solution is to close the program and start over.

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I have this problem sometimes (quite seldom though), but minimising and opening up the window again will fix it. Very minor issue.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

Can you post the url link of the above post?

If X220 have this problem, then the other Thinkpad with intel HD3000 would also have this problem.

[ccl13]

If there's problem X220 taking big Excel files, it should already failed in other things like handling pagefile or load the OS or something more heavier loading. Otherwise it is someone else's fault, like Microsoft has a bug in Excel prevents certain configuration to load file correctly, or Intel's driver is faulty displaying big tables.

Anyway, generally speaking, since excel is standard, and X220 is at heart a standard machine (it's just a X86 machine which consists of none proprietary core system but only customized circuits and shell), there shouldn't be a Excel specific problem that not affecting other functions.

[jiv]

What I'm facing is not an Excel specific problem, and definitely not limited to large Excel files. It occurs even on Word, Chrome, Firefox, anything really. Sometimes when you scroll around too much, the image gets sort of jumbled up. I've always been able to fix it with a simple minimise window then maximise window. It's quite a rare occurence and not really much of a problem (in my opinion).

While I have not seen that particular review of the X220, my experience with this issue (I'm not really sure if it's the same issue, but it sounds somewhat similar) isn't bad enough to make me post it in a review.