My T420s review

I just set it up a few minutes ago so this won't be too in depth. It came preconfigured with software from my University so it was fairly ready to go out of the box.

First impressions:
It is a mean, slick little computer. It looked beautiful out of the box and I noticed no scratches or flaws. It is amazingly lightweight and when I put it in my backpack it felt like I wasn't even carrying it. The build quality is fantastic, I have never held a computer that felt so solid and well put together except for maybe my friend's Macbook Pro.

I turned it on and installed Malwarebytes free version, Google chrome, Skype, and Steam in that order. The computer flew through installation of these which amazed me as my only other computer (a Pentium 4 POS) takes forever to install stuff. Whether it is the 7200rpm hard drive or the Sandy i5 that makes it so fast, it just works.

The screen. Oh my God the screen. I have never seen a screen this beautiful or that could fit so much text onto itself. And this is only the 1600x900. I think I might have a heart attack if I ever used a 1024x1200 screen!

There were a few other things I tweaked as well. I changed the settings for when the computer sleeps and hibernates, but I'm still not really sure what the difference is between them.

I haven't put the machine through any benchmarks, but I will amend this review with my findings after I play Portal 2 later (it has the NVIDIA nvs4200m graphics option)

I do wonder where the PCI Express Port is (and what the symbol looks like!) as well as what color the USB 3.0 is.

Ok so a quick run down.

Pros:

The speed
The 1600x900 screen
The delightful to type on keyboard
Build quality
Size
Weight

Cons:

Fan is a little loud but I can manage (running BIOS 1.13 at the moment)
Hard drive space (only shows 264 GB free out of 298, I thought it came with a 320GB hard drive)
Makes lots of noise and flashes the screen when some stuff happens, but I'm sure that can be changed
Of course, battery life

Overall I am satisfied with this machine and I look forward to using it through college.

Edit: I'm not sure what to use for moving the pointer around but the touchpad and trackpoint are both good quality and easy to use (I just discovered that you can tap the touchpad to click).

 

Hard drives are measured differently by HDD manufacturers and Microsoft. Don't worry, you did get a 320 GB HDD by manufacturer standards. IIRC it's a debate if the prefixes mean 1000 or 1024.

EDIT: This explain it better than I did.

 

Which screen do you have?

 

Download TPFanControl. It helps a LOT with fan noise.

 

BIOS 1.25 as been released but since I haven't noticed any difference in fan behaviour I agree with Faideelah, try out TPFanControl. It helps a bunch and is easy to set up.

I would suggest this release (supposedly works better for the new line of W & T models). You can also make a shortcut in the Windows startup folder (in the start menu) to enable on every boot.

I run these settings, but you should probably play around with the settings yourself until you are satisfied.

Code:

// Celsius/FanCtrl/BiosCtrl/CtrlNWrite   
Level=40 1 1 1
Level=50 2 2 1
Level=60 3 3 1
Level=65 4 4 1
Level=70 5 5 1
Level=75 6 6 1
Level=80 7 7 1
Level=85 128 128 1

 

USB 3.0 - Blue port
Always on power USB - Yellow port
ExpressCard slot - Hidden by the SD card reader, you have to pop out the reader to use the slot for something else.

 

I second this question. I don't know about Vinuneuro, but this is the first time I've seen anyone on this forum brag on how nice the T420s screen was.

 

Maybe it's just what I'm used to. It's just the 1600x900 screen, but I find it really vibrant and nice. Also Portal 2 has downloaded, is it a good idea to prop the computer up when gaming?

 

The Samsung (LTN140KT03401) is very good.

 

Nice to hear youre enjoying it so much!

Hibernate stores your session in your RAM while sleep puts yojr computer in a very low-energy mode.

 

I just want to update this review to say that Portal 2 runs very well and looks good.

I absolutely could not believe it, but I actually got Bad Company 2 running fairly well.

The computer does get very hot when gaming for extended periods of time so I will probably get a cooling pad.

 

Actually hibernate stores your session on the HDD! Hibernate writes the memory contents to the disk, after which the computer will shut down. Next time when the computer boots, instead of loading ecerything from the start, the session is restored from the HDD to the RAM, and you can continue where you left off. Because hibernate will turn off your computer, you can remove the battery/power, it will still work. This s because the data ison the HDD.

When you put your computer to sleep, your session is still in RAM. All other components are powered down by your computer, but it still requires a little power to have the RAM keep its contents, and to react to keypresses, mouse clicks, etc. Wheb it receives a signal, the computer just powers up the devices and it is ready to go. Because of this, sleep requires some power all the time. If you unplug battery/power, your session is lost.

This also explains why hibernate is slower and sleep faster. When hibernating, there is a lot of disk activity involved. In contrast sleep can happen without delay.

 

Thanks for the explanation +rep

 

You can use third-party software to move hiberfil.sys closer to the outer edges of the platter for faster hibernate/resumes.

A good defragger like UltimateDefrag (paid) or MyDefrag (free) goes a long way towards maintaining system performance in the long run too. The built-in Windows defragger is passable, but not great.