Lenovo Thinkpad T410 Owner's Lounge

I'm interested in this as well ... some reviews say the lid is still rubbery, and TGG says it's not ...

 

It is a weird texture.

Kind of rubbery, but not really.

 

I see some comments on noise - i got my T410 a week ago, can't really hear the fan. BUT my big disappointment is the lousy battery life. I upgraded to 6 cell cos reviews mention 5 hours, but so far, i am only getting 2 hrs about 20 mins from a full charge. And i'm a basic business user, no games no long videos. It's a basic T410, i think it's intergrated graphics - not sure how i confirm that, it says i have: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD - AMT and Integrated Mobile Broadband. Anyway, I'm still wondering if i got a defective battery or if they sent me a 4 cell instead. It does not say 6-cell anywhere on the battery. It does have a 55+ red dot, and 10.8V, 4.84Al 5.2Ah, 57 Wh - can anyone help interpret this? Should i return or exchange the battery? anyone know how tedious that process will be? Thanks.

 

Yes you have integrated. 57whr is the 6 cell. Your battery life is definitely too low, read some battery life guides, minimize the amount of processes you run, maybe describe your usage in greater detail to get more help

Open up Power Manager, select the maximum battery life plan, enable battery stretch. Go to Battery tab and tell us what your Full Charge Capacity is

 

Hey,

I recently got my T410 and I have noticed that I only get max 3h of battery life with half screen brightness and lowest CPU. And I only use word processing :S. I have a 6 cell battery, is this normal? The power consumption for word processing is soo high! it is 19 Wh !

I've also noticed that the left speaker is not as clear and strong as the right speaker. Have any of you noticed that?

Thank you

 

I thought I'd chime in with my personal experiences...

Regarding battery life:

I have a 6-cell T410 with a Core i7-620M and integrated graphics, and I (can) get 4 hours in linux. Usually I get closer to 3.5 hours. If you are not getting at least this much with a similar config in Windows then somewhere your settings are messed up. 19W is indeed high. My T410 uses around 8-11W with minimal use in Windows (basically idling, except for input interruptions). In linux it uses 10-13W with minimal use. With heavy use, I seem to get a couple hours of battery. Heavy for me tends to be maxing out one core (usually at 3.3GHz) for a computation to run.

Regarding screen flickering:

I vaguely recall Windows flickering a little bit at certain brightness levels. However, linux does not do this at all. This means it is not a hardware issue (for me at least). I put my brightness at various levels (10%,20%,...,90%,100%), and then ran my cpu at 100%, and had no flickering in linux.

Thanks,
Ryan

 

Does the access panel on the bottom of the T410 actually stick out like this? :
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/7568/t410panel.jpg

If so ... :~

 

It has 2 little tabs on each side of the cover plate, around where it is raised in that image, that locate into the casing.

That person has not 'clicked' the cover into place before doing up the screws!

 

This is my first ThinkPad, but to me, its definitely rubbery. A black rubbery texture with some shiny bits in there lol.

Should i take a picture?

 

Mine does not. Still, the quality of the cover is not very good. I could certainly bent the it a lot more than that when its off the laptop..I have a picture, but its just what you would expect, flat, not bowed.

 

^ a response to MkFly, not talking about the lid of the laptop

 

how do u improve the battery life?im getting around 2-3hrs but the %drop is quite fast i believe.im using the 6cell batt.thats about the only gripe i have for the t410

 

How would you say the sturdiness of the plate is when it's installed (properly) on the laptop? I don't plan on getting in there much after my initial setup and any upgrades that I might throw in.

Are you using the Intel IGP or the nVIDIA discrete graphics?

 

Hi,
Your ears are probably as sensitive as mine!
My experience is that the only way to get a truly silent ThinkPad is by using TPFanControl in combination with an SSD. They are still rather expensive but it was worth it for me. My T400 is now super silent.
BTW: I thought I could never live with a 128GB drive, but I actually still have 50GB free and I am running everything I need to run (including Windows XP mode and a VMWare Player virtual machine).

 

nvidia
gpu

 

If you have a good camera and lighting, yes please!

 

Just got my new T410 yesterday.

Ditched my MacBook Pro and went back to Windows and ThinkPad. I'm loving it!

 

MkFly, it is pretty flexible. Still I wouldn't let that stop you from getting a t410 because of it alone. and I'm definitely a person who will find anything wrong with any piece of hardware.

Its not like the cover actually makes contact with a desktop.

and regarding the lid.. This is my first thinkpad so I don't know if thinkpads before it had some sort of super rubber lid, but this one seems fairly rubbery... if that helps

 

The only thing I am worry about T410 is the screen, the contrast ratio is way better on the MacBook Pro than the T410. What year is your MacBook Pro, is it the unibody one or is it the older one. I am going to buy a laptop in a couple of month and had a hard time deciding whether or not get a T410 or the macbook pro 13. If only the T410 has a good screen, I wouldn't be in this delima.

 

Hey guys, I'm considering buying this laptop
comparing it to sony cw26
i5-540 w/ 330m gpu

just some questions:
1.how well does the 3100m run autocad and other modeling programs
2. should i get the i5-520 or 540
3. how long is the 4 cell battery life, I sort of don't want something sticking out at the end of the notebook

Thanks!

 

Somebody will correct me if I'm mistaken, but I believe on the T410, the 6-cell is flush with the casing and the 9-cell sticks out, as opposed to the T400, where all but the 4-cell stuck out.

 

My MacBook Pro is a current mid-2009 generation, unibody unit.

And there is a bit of a different, however, it's not too bad. The many other benefits of the ThinkPad line overshadow the MacBook Pro, in my opinion.

This is coming from a former ThinkPad owner, however, so this isn't my first ThinkPad that I've worked with.

 

I just want to ask a question regarding video converting.I tried converting a video with the same program and settings on my i5 t410 and my desktop running dual core x2 64.my amd manage to convert the same video 20 min faster.how is it so?both have 4gb ram.

 

I haven't called Lenovo yet. The flickering only seems to happen when it is on battery. I haven't noticed the flickering in Linux. I have dual-boot with Mandriva 2010 but most of the hotkeys are not working so I don't use it much.

 

You want to check if the power management (maybe the Intel driver) changes the LCD frequency from 60Hz to 59Hz or so.

 

Hi, thanks for your advice.
I called Lenovo. They sent me a new battery. Super efficient, i got it the next day, BUT, it's the same poor performance with the new 6-cell battery. Still only 2 hours 20 mins after 100% charge. It's dropped to 1 hr 41 mins even faster... I went to the Power Manager as suggested. Full Charge Capacity with battery stretch turned on, 56.16wh. is that bad???

 

Yes my T410 6-cell battery is flush with the notebook, not sticking out. BUT i've had poor performance, getting just a little over 2 hours, when I should be getting over 5 hours. Not sure why. Will have to call lenovo again tomorrow.
I've tinkered with the battery power settings, pushed it to minimal performance, max battery, still the same low remaining battery life. So far, 2 out of 2 strikes out. Dare i ask for a 3rd battery to try...

 

I would check in the power manager what the current shows on the Battery tab.

Try turning each item off (Wifi, BT, WWAN) and see how low it goes.

Turn screen down to minimum brightness, power plan to Max Battery Life.

What is the lowest you can make the Current?

 

I'm using the 6cell battery as well and the battery life is appalling. I managed to get around 2-3 hr at full charge. However the battery life % drops really fast.

 

I did a full battery reset.
First time i unplugged the power and used battery, it showed 2:42 and immediately dropping to 2:22 hours. with everything lowest except screen cos i have to read it, the current is 1.72A. The full charge capacity changed to 61.53 and design capacity is 56.16wh.

I plugged back the power, and unplugged 5 mins later, it showed 3:11 hours, and dropped to 2:19 within 2 minutes...current shows 1.66 and changes a bit.

Do you think it's the T410 configuration? it just can't get much better with a 6-cell?
I have the core i5. going to call Lenovo again today to complain. Even the tech guy said their specs show a 6-cell is supposed to get 5 hours.

 

After posting this I realized that asking for Wattage would have been much more useful, however I suspect that the voltage is still 12V on your system anyway, making Current ok to use.

Below are 2 screenshots from my system.

The first has everything switched off, and lowest settings of everything. No wifi, screen brightness 0, maximum run. Other than switching on battery stretch, you can't get any more. However the system is also pretty useless at this setting and it is not realistic.

On the second shot, Wifi is on and screen brightness 3. This is a reasonable setting and I was browsing - so this is a light usage scenario.

I have the Core i7 620m and 8GB RAM with 9 cell, and the Wattage here was 14W, with a Current of 1.2A. Given that your system has a slower processor, less memory and probably no WWAN card, I am surprised your power usage was higher than mine.

Can you supply similar screenshots? With Brightness 0 and Brightness 3.

 

How did you do that screen shot?
I tried the right click over the power manager screen nothing happens. I just tried ctrl-c and ctlr-v it did not paste...
did you print it and scanned it?

btw - my brightness setting it 10 of 15. Anything less is too dark and hard to read.
the wattage is 19.3W

 

I used the Windows 7 "Snipping Tool"

 

Tech support says i have to send the machine in. something possibly wrong with system or driver. bummer. hope it at least comes back with 5-6 hour battery life. thanks for all comments and help. I'll update FYI when i get it back.

 

Thank you for keeping us posted. This had me thinking about switching i7 and a 9 cell simply for battery life.

 

Are the Thinkpad T410 and T410s equipped with spill-resistant keyboards? It seems like the T400 and T61 mention this, but I can't find any specific mention of it related to these models.

Thanks!

 

Did you look at tabook?

 

Thanks. It says the 410 and 410s do have spill resistant keyboards. I think I'll be ordering a 410s shortly.

 

Hey guys I just got my t410 a few days ago. I have one problem. When I close the lid on the laptop while I am on battery, the laptop goes into sleep mode but when I plug in for charging it goes into standby when I reopen the lid. Does anybody know what's wrong with it? Seems to be something wrong with the settings but I can't find it anywhere in Windows. Also, my configuration is 9 cell battery with a 520m and integrated graphics. I have the computer set on max battery mode and with the screen set to 40 percent. The meter seems to be showing 6 hours and twenty minutes max. I only have wifi turned on browsing without watching any videos and just reading pdfs. Is this normal?

 

What is the difference between sleep and standby? I only know of a sleep and hibernate. What you say about sleeping when closing the lid is usual. When you open the lid it will remain sleeping until you turn it on.

Sounds pretty normal to me.

 

realwarder,

I made a mistake in my post. I was trying to say that it goes into hibernate while after I plug the charger in. It goes to sleep mode when I close the lid while on battery. After I plug the charger in while the computer is still asleep, it goes into hibernate.

 

If you want to stop it going into hibernate (as I do), go into Power Manager/Advanced/Idle Timers and change the Enter System Hibernation setting to Never.

Then it will only ever sleep.

 

about to guy this laptop. give me a reason NOT to buy it

 

Here are some reasons not to buy this laptop:

1. if you don't like a laptop that has awesome build quality (rock solid)
2. if you don't like to use a laptop that is very reliable.
3. if you don't like a laptop that to my opinion has the best keyboard
4. if you don't like to have a laptop that has been proven the best business laptop by professionals.
.... the list goes on but you can just imagine what im saying

 

- You might get a slight squeak on the left palm rest.
- Touchpad buttons 'feel' a little cheap

Pretty solid other than that. There are a lot more worse laptops you could buy. Not sure I've found a better one at this price level, else I'd probably have it.

 

It's not sexy to most of the population.

 

just want to confirm the t410 has max resolution of 1440 x 900 if you get discrete?

 

The only 1440 x 900 max resolution is on the internal WXGA+ LCD screen. You can display higher on external monitors you plug in.

 

Anyone knows an up-to-date version of the tabook.pdf? I can't find product number NT7F2HV...

 

Did you check the sticky at the top of this board?