Lenovo Thinkpad over Dell Precision M4400?Why

Any thoughts? Can't make up my mind between a Thinkpad T400 or so, or a PRecision M4400. Probabaly get either from their respective outlets. Dell seems a little cheaper through the outlet, and better graphics card and such.

Will be using for Cad and Analysis and general stuff.

Thanks

 

I chose Asus N80Vn-X1 over these two models.

Because it's just a laptop.

 

I keep going back and forth myself between these two and a new-old-stock macbook pro. Unfortunately I'm most concerned with the display qualities and the only model I'm able to see in person is the macbook pro, in which I have the least interest.

No sales or deals (at least in Canada) other than free shipping for Dell while Lenovo keeps piling on the incentives --> currently about 2/3 of list with free shipping making it about $400 cheaper than equivalent Dell. Some 48 hour, extra 16% off right now. Still a few mbp's available at about the same price as a similar T400.

From what I've been able to gather at moderate configurations the T400 may be a better deal, even with paying the extra for the same (3yr) warranty. But Dell seems to have the better choices for the LCD, possibly by far, at least from my perspective.

Good luck...
Doug

 

Dell offers better screens (of course, at a large price premium) than Lenovo.

If the laptop is going to be used for CAD, I suggest you get a Dell Precision, which have workstation graphics card options, or a Lenovo Thinkpad W500.

 

I personally Like the Lenovo ThinkPad W700 for AutoCAD and SolidWorks and for that matter all engineering work. With that being said the W700 comes with a hefty price tag. But will worth it.

If you are doing engineering work the price should not matter to you, as long as the NoteBook does its job and then some Wright. I have looked at dell but do you won’t to pull that thing out with that funky lid in a business environment.

And when you add everything you need you are in the same price range as the W700 so why not just start with the best NoteBook that I have seen to date. You need to Read my post and then read this Mobile Workstation tour Play the videos on the right side of the page.

As far as reducing the price some look for coupon codes like USP48HOURSALE

 

If the OP's shopping a 14" laptop, I can't imagine that he'll want to adjust his requirements to a 17" chassis trivially.

Maybe I'm wrong, though.

 

lol good one

Why not!!

 

W500 might not be a bad choice. It is only a little heavier than the T400 but it will perform much better for CAD due to the FireGL drivers.

 

jonlumpkin is right, the W500 is a good choice.

Sorry about that, I'm just a little fired up over my new W700

 

Better screens in which way?

Those two the OP mentioned are also contenders for me as well. I'm leaning towards the Dells though because of the better screen but I wanted to confirm how they're better.

 

With the 15" precision Dell has 3 choices that are purported to be superior to the T400 for brightness, colour gamut, and resolution --> a 1440 x 900 LED backlight that according to what I've read may give the the MBP, prior version with a matte screen, a run for the money. A 1920 x1200 dual lamp CCFL display with a larger gamut which is matte I think and seems to have better brightness/contrast as well. The big cheese is a glossy 1920x1200 RGB LED backlight that is spec'd to cover the entire aRGB gamut with excellent contrast and brightness. The Latitude 6400 also has the first two screens available but not the RGB backlight (I checked with Dell).

I had hoped the T400 screen would be the equal of the first, white LED Dell 4400/MBP choice but I don't think it is. The smaller 14" dell (M2400) sounds to be both inferior to Dell's own 15" 1440x900 and very similar or identical to the T400. Notebookcheck doesn't seem to think as much of the smaller LED screens due to the higher black point and thus lower contrast.

Unfortunately all I've ever seen personally from dell is the crappy best buy models, none of which I'd let my dog look at.

Since there are currently no real deals on the precision line in Canada and we are precluded from the outlet store I am wondering if something like the RGB LED is worth nearly a $1000 more than the T400 (though of course the smaller/cheaper M2400 is more comparable!). As a business machine I think, other than the displays, Dell has a better warranty and Lenovo has faster memory speeds and switchable graphics, while all other components are either the same or equivalent.

Good luck....
Doug

 

Thanks for the comments guys. AS much as i would love to buy a BRAND new laptop from the respective companies sites, even with the 48 hr discount deals going on (from noth companies) the W500 and even the T400 (think a T500 is more likely) come in at over $1300 easy after outfitted correctly with 7200rpm drives, the right graphics, and processor etc.

The precision comes out to more than that on Dells site for sure.

I had come to the conclusion yesterday that the Outlets were the way to gofor sure, but the Lenovo outlet models are all set up with not so great graphics cards when they even have one.

On the Dell outlet, there seems to be pretty good setups, and with the discounts added in, something in the $900 -$950 range that beats Lenovo easily with a better graphics card, seems very tempting.

I just keep holding back from making that leap when i hear that Lenovo is the way to go in the indutrial work world. Good reputation for sure, but not sure if that reputation was much better a few years ago.

Here is a quick Copy Paste from Dell Outlet:
Didn't realize this one was with Vista. Can find similar within $50 with XP and Vista Business

* Precision Mobile Workstation M4400 Laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 (2.80GHz, 6M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
* Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate

System Price : $1,119.00
W/Coupon: $950

Operating System
Genuine Windows Vista UltimateMemory
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)Hard Disk Drive
250 GB Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive (7200 RPM)Video
512MB NVIDIA Quadro FX 770MModem
Internal 56K ModemWeb Camera
No CameraNetwork Interface Card
Dell Wireless 1510 802.11a/g/n Draft Mini CardSoftware Upgrade
NO Intel vPro Secure Advanced Hardware Enabled Systems ManagementBase
Precision Mobile Workstation M4400 Laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 (2.80GHz, 6M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)Hardware Upgrade
130W A/C Adapter, 3P
9 Cell Battery, Primary
No Fingerprint ReaderCertified Refurbished
Certified RefurbishedLaptop Screen
15.4 inch WXGA Laptop ScreenMedia Bay
8X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capabilityBluetooth Wireless
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth ModuleSystem Color
Black

 

I don't know where you are located but if you are handy with computer upgrades and have access to some of the web component outlets you might be able to save yourself some bucks by ordering minimal memory and HD then upgrading yourself.

As an example (Canadian prices & NCIX.com but comparable to USA) Dell wants almost 200 bucks for 4GB of ram vs just over $70 for Kingston from NCIX. For the Harddrive it's even worse as dell wants $481 for a 320GB for 7200rpm + gforce whereas NCIX has the 320GB 7200rpm Seagate Gforces for a hundred bucks on sale. Between the two that would be a $500 savings off of dell's normal price. With a hard disk replacement you'd have to reload windows but given the amount of bloatware on these computers it may be wise to do so anyway.

Good luck.

 

I had kind of thought of that. Thanks for pointing that out though. Wasn't sure if it would be worth the hassle of tracking stuff down and having to install everything. On the Outlet it seems kind of hard to just get the bottom of the barrel for much less price than just upgrading.

I will check it out. Thanks.

 

Wide gamut on a 6bpp TN panel is a bad thing, even on an 8bpp IPS or VA panel it's not great.

 

Speaking as a photographer, it's a bit of trade-off either way for a person that's working with color.

Wider gamut and 6 bits would mean greater granularity or steps between colors and thus more than likely greater banding artifacts on the screen. Working with printed images this is more of a nuisance than a deal breaker as it makes it impossible to tell if real banding will occur in a print. Working with clients I think most wouldn't notice. With a decent CRT if banding is visible on the screen it will most likely be on the print as well.

On the other hand a clipped gamut makes it difficult to evaluate color if an image is out of gamut for the display but still in bounds for printers and/or a normal home/office display. A limited gamut is tough for proofing prints and also for doing stuff like demos to clients, depending on the image content of course. The laptop I am replacing is particularly bad for this as many images don't come off as well due to the limited color rendition.

Personally I'd choose none of the above, but since it seems to be pick one I think I'd be farther along with the larger gamut and some banding problems as I would almost never be printing directly from a laptop image.

Doug

 

I have used the T400 and MacBook Pro - the MBP has a much better display in terms of contrast and viewing angle. The keyboard on the T400 was also a huge step down from my t42p. I am getting a refurb M4400 with the RGBLED backlight next week, and will return it if it is not significantly better than the T400. Incidentally, I have used a couple of Sony laptops in a smaller form-factor (the Z and TT) that have fantastic displays I prefer to the MBP, so an appropriately-sized Sony might be worth considering as well.