My final questions about T400

I'm going to buy a laptop tomorrow. I want to be sure about it, so I'm confused no more. . These are my question:

- Is T400 build quality as good as its predecessors, like T42/T43? Is it better or worse?
- Is its keyboard noisy?
- Is it different enough between a CCFL backlight and LED backlight?
- With 6-cell battery, P8600 CPU and integrated graphic, how long do you get with your T400?

These questions are urgent, thank you so much for answering them.

 

Hopefully I can answer these to your satisfaction.

1: While I think the fit and finish of the T400 is a little off from the earlier ThinkPads I've used(T21, several T4x both 14" and 15", X60s, and a 15" T60p), the overall durability seems to be on par if not a little more than the earlier ThinkPads. The design isn't as polished as previous models, but it feels as durable.

2: I don't find the keyboard all that noisy, although some people might. It's not the quality of the keyboard found on my previous T60p. However, the keyboards are interchangeable. If you don't like the T400's keyboard, get one for a T60(an NMB if you can find it).

3: Unfortunately I can't help you here. My WXGA+ CFFL T400 gets very bright, and is overall not that bad in the quality department. I wouldn't depend on it for photo editing or in cases where you need great color accuracy. In indoor use I find that max brightness is a little too bright, so I keep it turned down a few notches.

4: I have a 9-cell on mine and with my typical usage(integrated graphics, wifi on, surfing the Net, Office apps and usually have music on low volume) I'll get about 6-7 hours, depending. I'd expect 4-5 hours of realistic use out of a brand new 6-cell.

 

The keyboard quality meaning the "flex" of it... It flexes a lot more than my T30. However, thats if I intentionally press it. Even when I'm typing with considerable amount of force, it doesn't flex. Keyboard is noisier than the Macbook. My friend has a T400 CCFL 1280x800 I have the regular LED 1280x800. Mine has "cooler" colors stock, although easy chnages with the Intel Graphics Manager fixed that., and much better white when compared side by side. The LED is a lot brighter than the CCFL.

If you look at my sig, I have a P8700 integrated graphics and a 6 cell. It lasts around 4 hours (I have the processor all the way down but brightness around 60-70%)

It's very fast and responsive. I bought a 4 Cell battery becuase I don't use it that long anyway for school unplugged

 

1. The external fit and finish of the T400 is not as good as the T4x in some areas, but it is lot cheaper too. But with the internal magnesium alloy rollcage for both the screen and main body, i would take the T400 over the T4x type design any day.

The durability of the T400 is better than the T4x due to the structural design modification as mentioned before. However, due to the lowering of selling price of Thinkpads, the external fit and finish is slightly worse.

2) Keyboard is not that noisy, but some people may find the perforated keyboard have slightly different response as compared to solid backplate design of the older keyboards. If you are not an avid discerning Thinkpad connoisseur, usually you can't tell the difference.

3) The LED backlight version is brighter than the CCFL version, but colour quality wise it is about the same. The benefits of the LED backlight LCD, is that it uses slightly less power, but the real benefit is that the LED lights have usable service life around 100,000 to 150,000 hours, which is more than 10 years of continuous use. So usually you wouldn't need to worry about the LED backlight failing before the rest of the laptop decide to die completely.

While the CCFL backlight is around 15,000 to 20,000 hours, this gives about 2.3 years of continuous use. So if you leave your laptop on all the time (which i do), make sure you don't the LCD idle with the screen saver mode like some people do ( black colour in LCD uses the most amount of electricity, some people think screensaver mode in LCD uses very little electricity, which is incorrect, as the CCFL is still running), so switch the LCD off instead. Also if you intend to keep your laptop for a while, then there is a chance that you would need to replace the CCFL LCD once, since the CCFL would have burnt out long before the rest of the laptop dies (unless we get some defective components or you killed the laptop).

4) 6 cells battery i can get about 4 to 5 hours depending on what application i run.

 

your laptop is the first revision or the updated one? I read that the keyboard was flex, but is fixed by now