Lenovo Thinkpad T410 Owner's Lounge

This is what he is selling for the T410 and T410S. It looks like the same part as the one you referenced, but it's more expensive. Unless someone here has ordered both of them, I suspect the best you're going to get from anyone here is a guess.

As for "proper" part, read his feedback. Some say his ultrabay adapters are cheap junk and others were very satisfied. Given its a fairly inexpensive part, I just ordered the one from Lenovo. "ThinkPad Serial Hard Drive Bay Adapter III p/n 43N3412

Dan

 

I have a question maybe someone is able to answer.

When I set the laptop to sleep mode and then begin to charge the battery, it stays asleep for a while then suddenly wakes up and goes into hibernate mode instead!? Is there a reason for that?

 

You probably have it set to do that in the Advanced Power Settings in Windows. The default is to change from sleep to hibernate after 18 hours of sleep.

 

Looked it up but in windows power plan (advanced settings) it says: Hibernate after, plugged in: never

 

Look under the "advanced" power settings.

 

That is the value from the advanced settings.

 

I just wanted to say hello. I guess I'm a little late to this thread, but I'm a proud owner of a recently ordered T410.

 

Random comments – Days 14 through 21 owning a T410

Day 14 – Forum members assisted with the 9-cell battery “non” issue. On Power Manager 3.20, when the laptop autoswitches to Max Lifespan Mode (occurs about four hours after you click the box in Advanced Options), two things happen: 1) The full charge capacity temporarily drops from 93.59Wh to 84.29Wh (as if the battery is turning off one cell to lengthen battery life) and 2) You will leak about .25Wh/day as an internal discharge even when strictly using AC power. What 3.13 did was continually top off the battery to prevent the small discharge, which forum members have universally agreed, shortens the life of the 9-cell.

Day 15 – Thank you Intel i7 and Samsung 8GB RAM, you both earned your keep. While the U.S. market melted both down and up in a matter of minutes, the T410 streamed all real-time broker bid/ask quotes without a hitch.

Day 16 – Created a System Repair DVD using one DVD+R. Found out after skimming through all the preinstalled software, making this DVD was overlooked until now. You can use DVD-R and presumably DL ones as well; it’s just a matter of personal preference.

Day 17 – Have less than two weeks to decide whether to add ADP policy (depot replacement repair for one power surge or one keyboard spill or one LCD crack or one drop) to original warranty. Per the Lenovo website, you have within 30 days from the ThinkVantage start date to update the original warranty. Decided to pass on the ADP as I will have to be extra cautious when it comes to others leaning too close to the laptop, whether its co-workers with coffee mugs or airplane passengers in no class with their “Oops, I’m so sorry for spilling my third Bloody Mary on your laptop”.

Day 18 – Slight crackle is back on the right speaker when listening to voice sound or music on YouTube. Since I’ve tried different SmartAudio and Sound adjustments, I’m thinking it’s a flawed speaker. I want to wait until about a month before the warranty expires to determine whether to replace since the problem doesn’t warrant someone opening up the laptop when most everything else works great.

Day 19 – Friend of mine received his T410 and notifies, is using the DisplayPort to hookup to their 46” Samsung LCD. I start skimming the Lenovo and Amazon sites for the adapter and/or cable since a family friend has the same LCD. Shutsdown computer for the night. Noticed Windows Update installs its second update to the operating system before the T410 turns off 90 sec later.

Day 20 – Laptop was off for four hours. Upon cold start, room temp 57F, 30% humidity, about 30 sec after the Think desktop is on, the screen flickers, goes black for two seconds and then normal with the following message in the lower right, “Display Driver Nvidia Windows Kernel Mode Driver Version 1xx.xx Stopped Responding and has Successfully Recovered”. Third time its occurred. Apparently, it’s a known issue on the main Lenovo forums. However, all the suggested solutions, whether on the Lenovo or Microsoft forums are not 100% effective. Since the error message flashed too quickly to write down the exact driver number, will wait until it reappears before deciding upon any driver or BIOS changes. The Nvidia 256 GPU is 99% effective for what I need (streaming quotes, Microsoft Office Pro, occasional YouTube, Hulu) and attempting to ferret out a two second blip every seven days isn’t worth it unless the graphic card problems worsen.

Day 21 – AVG Antivirus does its weekly scan. Apparently the scan is the most processor intensive task since owning a T410. Processor usage is between 38-41% during the 19 min full system scan and the processor speed is in “overclock mode” running between 2.93 and 3.06GHz. Not even when 15 tabs are open on IE 8.0 does the processor use or run that fast. Interesting thing is while no viruses (applause), thinking the Windows update (yes I’m speaking to you Lenovo and Microsoft) might have done something to a registry entry for three preinstalled programs from Lenovo because AVG recognizes each program as having a “broken signature” (Direct DiskRecorder, Corel DVD, and BurnNowSD).

It’s a little early to tell if I will have Buyer’s Remorse considering what I paid for the T410. (Next time, remember to pay with an American Express or Visa Card, because select credit cards add one additional year on top of the purchased 3-year warranty). If its 5-7 years from now and the T410 still runs as efficient as the X60s before it, then it will make things much simpler when deciding on a new ThinkPad. Although I am being nitpicky and unduly attempting to compare this T410 to my own prior ThinkPad experience, I’m hopeful that the small annoyances from the Nvidia 256 card, the subpar internal mic, and the right speaker crackle are the only negative things I can say about the T410.

 

Try updating the audio driver (from Lenovo support site or through System Update).

People tell me the inbuilt mic on my T410 is the best inbuilt mic they've heard.

 

If you're getting complaints about the quality of the internal mic, give some of the suggestions in this blog post a shot: Inside the Box Blog Archive Getting High Performance from Lenovo Cameras

Apparently some over-aggressive power-saving settings can degrade the quality of both the mic and webcam. Hope that helps!

 

Finally got my t410! It took two weeks and a day after ordering. Got the computer in the mail, literally as I got home from my last final exam so it definitely worked out rather well, and I am loving it so far.

How do you guys clean your lids? The computer had a small smudge on it when I took it out of the box and upon wiping it gave a small smear. Not too big of a deal just wondering if there was a special way.

And has anyone tried out this bag. Wenger 14'' backpack CB540.
It seems to be the only real case at Lenovo's site for a 14" laptop unless I'm missing something.

Lenovo - United States

 

Oh yea also. Has anyone tried to install a flash drive in the ExpressCard slot. I was wondering if anybody's successfully booted an OS from one. Or would it be better to go with an UltraBay SSD.

 

I looked into finding if anyone had tried this... I don't believe it's possible.

I'd probably load the OS on an SSD in the main drive bay and have a regular drive in the Ultrabay which you use for data and can swap out if necessary.

 

Yay! Mine is here aswell .

I am thoroughly impressed so far and have had barely any problems that have been stated above. The only 2 gripes I have are that my left palm rest (the very left side where I never touch) creaks a bit but it doesn't matter since I never touch it while typing and that it came with a small scratch. I'm not going to send it back though since that would be a waste of time all for just a stupid scratch.

I will run some games on this thing for anyone interested and tell you the frame rates. I have the NVS 3100 model with an i5 520M.

Typing on this keyboard is a DREAM!!! I'm still getting used to the trackpoint though but that shouldn't take too long. I was having a bit of buyers remorse after reading some problems that people were having but since I've received it I have been loving it!

 

Honestly the ExpressCard ssd's are not suitable for use as an operating system. Their [edit] practical [/edit] read speeds are significantly slower than a modern physical drive (i.e. any hdd you'd have in your t410), though I suppose their seek times are faster. Either way, you will notice a significant decrease in performance using such a card for you OS, unless you have enough ram to load the OS entirely into ram. Of course with windows this is absurd, as it takes up quite a bit of space (which it can now, since hdd's are so large). However, with many distributions of Linux this is quite easy.

So basically: before you put too much thought or time into figuring out if this works, just do not bother.

 

Just ordered mine for school on wednesday. Im so excited to finally get an upgrade. The computer im typing on has a Pentium D with a 9600gt and 2 gb of ram running XP.

This is my first laptop of my own and my first ever thinkpad!!

 

Does anyone own the slice battery? With the T410s with the dedicated card what kind of battery life do you get? How much does the battery stick out? How does it work?

 

Play some older games (Quake Live & CS:Source) on this machine with the Nvidia & i5-520m and they play great full speed, high res, full settings, etc..

Any of you that have made the backup CD's already.. What's with the Boot Medium and Recovery Medium? What's the difference, why need both? I burned them which seemed to take a while and after they burned I can't recognize the Boot Medium and disc one of the Recovery Medium.

The first time I tried to make the backup discs it spit out disc 1 of the Recovery Medium before it started burning and said that it couldn't use DVD RAM. This second attempt it asked for DVD's for both Recovery Medium discs. Anybody else have a wierd situation with this? Think my discs might work they just aren't being recognized in explorer? Thanks for the feedback, I'm using Win 7 Professional x64 by the way.

 

Wow magically after pushing down on the creaking area a few times, the creaking has stopped .

This laptop is just a dream to use but I'm kind of regretting not getting the 9-cell battery since the life I'm getting with the 6-cell is kind of underwhelming. Overall though, this was a great purchase and I recommend it to anyone looking for a work machine.

 

I finally ordered a t410i on Thursday to replace my old, but trusty t23. I hope i'm not disappointed.

The status still says "in process". I was expecting it to be past that by now. Is this normal?

 

mine was "in process" for 10 days. now it says "shipped" but the tracking has yet to produce anything. I'm hoping it comes this week. It's been 2 weeks since I ordered it

 

This is pretty normal. Mine was "in process" for a little over a week, then the tracking number didn't show up in UPS' systems until almost 4 days after it shipped. It sucks, but don't let it worry you.

 

Yesterday myself and one of my colleagues had to go onsite to a clients manufacturing facility for a meeting. There were some files which we wanted to share with our client so I pulled out my T410 and fired it up. A few seconds later my colleague pulled out his hp and fired it up as well. In less than a minute my T410 was up and running and we were browsing through the files. My colleague was astonished how fast my T410 booted up and was operational. He admitted that he thought it would take forever to get the files opened on my "Old looking, outdated" thinkpad and that is why he fired up his laptop. I proceeded to explain some of the great features that my "outdated, old looking" T410 had which his fancy curvy shiny laptop didn't.
Now every time during the 45 seconds it takes to boot up my T410, I have a hearty chuckle thinking about the look on my colleagues face.
Don't you just love being underestimated only to come out all guns blazing to prove your critics wrong

 

I decided to call Lenovo and the rep told me my order is scheduled to be shipped on May 24, which is a week ahead of the June 1 that shows on the order tracking webpage.

I ordered a 2GB stick of ram from Amazon, so once it's here i'll be ready to roll.

 

I ordered mine on the 12th and it is supposed to ship on the 31st

 

Hahaha coincidentally enough, 1 day after my whole worried post about not receiving it, the UPS guy tried to deliver it today.
I shall have to open and play with this badboy this weekend

 

Hey guys, I just got my T410s. This is the one with the integrated graphics.
Just some thoughts:
My first ThinkPad. Far more sturdy than any other laptop I've used.
The only thing I've bad to say about it are the speakers, which distort even at low volumes. However, the display is far better than what review sites make it out to be, the keyboard is an amazing device, there is zero flex on the keyboard (the strip of plastic that holds the power/volume/thinkvantage controls moves around a lot though). The lid is wobbly, but only if you hold it by a corner. Also the touchpad's texture was hard to use at first (real rough; sticky almost), but I've gotten used to it.

Keep in mind I am NOT a longtime ThinkPad user. These observations are from the perspective of previously owning a pretty bad and old Gateway laptop.

More thoughts:

• Disappointing that the middle mouse button can't be used for both scrolling and clicking.
• Having a lot of trouble making the recovery disks (can't select DVD writer for making the data disks).
• Does not have the 30 sec startup/5 sec shutdown advertised in review videos.
• Thinklight!
• I'm wondering why they put so many ports on the back of the computer.
• Space bar makes a fairly loud popping sound; doesn't bother me much.
• Compared to a MacBook Pro 13", it is less than an inch larger for width and depth. Less than a 1/4" taller.
• I noticed in pictures the profile of the laptop looks uneven (thin at front and thicker in the back), this is barely noticeable.
• I really like the battery manager, its far more useful than Window's built in one (which is hidden by default).
• The 2.4ghz i5 + integrated graphics can run Portal just fine (at modest settings, though I never tried all max).
• This laptop has never gotten hot on me. Even running Portal. It scares me.

Maybe these notes help somebody decide, maybe they're just rambling. I can try to answer questions about the T410s.

 

21t:

Did the machine come with a driver disc? What discs did it come with?

I ordered my 410i with Home Premium 64, but i plan to install Windows 7 Ultimate from my MSDN subscription. So i'd like to know if they include drivers or if i have to download.

Thanks,

 

21t - which hard drive do you have? That might help explain the boot up and
shut down times.
Get used to this thing running super cool. Its unbelievable.
I agree that the power manager and Thinklight are bloody awesome!!!

HolyBull - Unfortunately yout T410i is gonna come with no driver discs whatsoever.
You have to download them off the lenovo website.

 

HolyBull: I got NO disks whatsoever. But I heard from a friend who did a clean install of Windows 7 Pro (from his school) that all the ThinkPad specific stuff is available on the Lenovo website. Also I think Windows is pretty good about finding drivers, but I'm not sure.

miliranga: I've got the standard 250gb/3200rpm. No SSD. It runs cold even with 3D gaming. Amazing. It's also SILENT on battery.



More thoughts:

• The battery doesn't sit perfectly flush with the bottom; It "springs" out about half a millimeter.
• The DVD drive feels real cheap and wobbly.
• Volume/Mute/Mic Mute buttons feel cheap.
• The fan exhaust smells like icky plastic.

also scrolling doesn't work for iTunes and GTK-2.0 apps

 

Got my T410i today!!!! Shall have to go over it with a fine comb this weekend. I'm so happy!

First impressions are already exceeding all my expectations. I can just feel it to be better than my past laptops and should last me for a while. It is actually lighter than what I thought it would weigh and I'm not even remotely bothered by the 9ion cell battery sticking out.

 

I can't wait until I can order one of these over the summer. I don't know whether I should wait for USB 3.0 though.

 

I just played some Just Cause 2 (demo) on my T410 and the performance was, frankly, pretty underwhelming.

With all the settings set to low and no AA I would get around 21-24 fps on average. When there were some battles I would drop under 20 and I only reached 30 when climbing up a random mountain. I guess it's pretty good for a business class graphics card but I was a bit disappointed.

Oh well, at least I still have my trusty Team Fortress 2

 

when did you order it? I ordered mine yesterday and am counting every second

 

Ordered mine on the 3rd. It took them a while to finally get it shipped out but that is probably because I did a bunch of customizations, plus I had to wait an extra day for the UPS man to return since I was not in the day before (I did the 6 days regular shipping).

First impressions = I love it so far. Everything about is already much better than my previous laptop and exceeds my expectations. It's real quiet, can't feel heat even putting it on my bare lap.

I'm still getting used to the "click clack" of the keyboard, but it feels great. The battery life is amazing.. I'm getting about 8.5 hours initial (with idling) time on a full charge.

I now just need to figure out the best way to get rid of the stickers that are on the lower left side of the keyboard.

Hope yours comes swiftly.

--sent from my T410i

 

did u get the 9 cell?

 

Yes. It sticks out the back a bit, but it doesn't bother at all.
The speakers aren't the best, but that is to be expected from a business laptop.

 

i ordered the 6 i don't know if i made a bad decision?

 

Is this also the de facto T400 owners lounge as well now?

 

No. Leave now.


jokes

 

unless you're out for a day at a time, I really don't think the 6 cells is all that bad. I'm getting around 2:40-2:50 (at least) while doing normal things (web browsing + videos, etc). A thing to note is that the ThinkPad 65w charge brick is extremely light and small so carrying it around in a bag isn't really a huge addition.

EDIT: actually right now the battery life says 3:20 at 95%.

 

What he said.
I got the 9 because I knew that I will be needing extended periods of laptop running solely on battery power. So far, I've got idling battery life at 99% listed at a bit over 10 hours, so I'm loving it since realistically I'll be able to get a lot out of it.
The 65w AC adapter that comes with it can easily fit into the palm of your hand.

 

how long does it take your battery to fully charge?

 

about 3 hours 50 minutes from 1% battery to 100%.

 

Hmm well, I just hit a snag.
Might just be my laptop and its port or something but when I plugged in a VGA cable, it does not show the color red on the external monitor.

 

This happens on the desktop at my house. My problem has to do with a crappy cable. If you have other cables I would try them out to see if it fixes it.

 

Tried that. Still same problem.

 

Can this thing be used on your lap comfortably for hours? Or does it get hot on the bottom with modest CPU use?