Everything that you want to know from a guy that received one of these a month or so ago.
Hey Gang,
I purchased the i5 with 128gb SSD a month or so ago. Hopefully this answers some of the questions you may have.
The MTM Model is 10HYS0NE00
Came with Windows 10 Home Edition Preinstalled
Came with a USB Keyboard and a USB Optical Mouse
The 128gb SSD is SATA even though there is an available m2 port.
m700 came with a stand to hold it upright
m700 came with antenna for wireless card. This screws onto the post on the back of the m700
I upgraded the RAM to 16gb. There are 2 slots available and it can hold up to 32gb (2x16gb). RAM was purchased from Crucial and worked just fine
If you register your product with Lenovo, you can download recovery media to restore Windows 10 Home via USB if you hose something. It also tracks your warranty which is nice.
I purchased a Displayport to HDMI cable on amazon. I can confirm that it DOES pass audio and video and both sound and video look great on a flatscreen TV via HDMI. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004C9P9TM/
In order to easily take this with me on travel, I purchased this bag Yukon Outfitters Mission Bag. It works perfectly to safely transport this unit and it has extra storage for cords and the above mentioned portable keyboard/mouse.
Now onto the nerdy stuff. I managed to install Windows 7 on this computer. Works great now but I had to jump through a few hoops to get things installed.
First, before anything upgrade the BIOS to the latest version. You can do this using Lenovo System Update which is preinstalled.
In the BIOS, you have to make a couple of changes. First, under Devices > USB Legacy Support set to [Enable]. Next, under Devices > USB Virtual KBC Support set to [Enable]. Finally you may have to Enable Legacy UEFI in the BIOS if not set to [Enable] already. Without doing all of this, you won’t be able to use a keyboard and mouse when you load the Windows 7 installation from a bootable USB.
Now the painful stuff - first, you need to obtain LEGIT copy of Windows 7 media. I owned a copy of Windows 7 Professional that I had in ISO format. Create a bootable USB drive with the Windows 7 installation files. For this, I used the Rufus utility and selected my Windows 7 ISO file. No problems there.
Don’t try to install Windows 7 just yet because the m700 won’t allow it until you do 2 more things. First, the partitions that are preinstalled on the provided harddrive cannot be recognized by the Windows 7 installation media. I had to create a bootable USB drive using the free version of Partition Wizard. I booted to this USB drive and using the wizard I deleted the existing IBM partitions. I then created a NTFS partition and saved. The second gotcha is the the Windows 7 bootable USB that you just created doesn’t have a storage driver that can be used to recognize the drive. This means that when you load the Windows 7 setup files from USB, it will say no drive detected. To resolve this, use the WindowsImageTool which edits your just created Bootable USB Windows 7 drive by adding all of the necessary storage drivers. Both of these steps are covered in this forum post: English Community-Lenovo Community.
Once you handle all of these gotchas you can load Windows 7 on your m700. With upgraded RAM and the SSD, it absolutely flies.
I take this with me when I travel for work. I installed Plex with my media library on a USB thumb drive for local viewing and hooking it up to the hotel wireless works great for NetFlix. Here is one more tip - when taking this with you to a hotel for work travel, purchase a cheapo universal remote control. Some hotels try to lock down their tv’s so that you cannot access the HDMI input outside of the provided used input. I use the cheap remote to simply switch inputs and it works great!
I hope that this answers some of the outstanding questions.
M700 PC to T2224z 21.5"
I’ve been trying to hook up the monitor but it’s been giving me a No Signal message. Everything seems to be connected correctly, using the USB 3.0 port. I don’t have an adapter for any of the other available ports although it came with a VGA to VGA. Will I need to take a look inside to adjust the graphics card or something?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Just wondering, once I change the partition layout to install Win 7, can the stock Lenovo USB recovery backup that I made still restore the original partition layout?
