My first Thinkpad

Here's a little review, been playing with it for a few days and like it so far.

Pros
-Feels very sturdy in the hand, surprising light for its size. Comes at around 4.5lbs including the insanely small charger. The lightest Macbook is a 13 incher at 4.5lbs, sans charger.
-Screen is quite arite, I'm guessing I got the good one. Blacks are black, I watched a movie and there was some bleed around the edges. There are other problems with the screen though.
-People say Thinkpads are ugly but this is one very good looking machine. The material is really nice to the touch. A huge improvement from the T400 and its off centered screen. They cleaned up a lot of the lines and things are a lot neater when you open the machine up.
-The machine is quite speedy with the SSD and very quiet even at full performance. It does get warm under load on the bottom left hand corner so you can't use it on your lap for a long time. I have been cantilevering it on one leg from the right side to avoid the warm corner.
-Speakers are loud and the included Thinkvantage tools are nifty.
-Probably the best keyboard I've used on a laptop, absolutely no noticeable flex and very satisfying clicks.
-Really cool fingerprint reader where you can wake the laptop from hibernate using a finger swipe. I believe the reader hardware does the analysis as opposed to software in the OS, hence why this is possible.
-Camera is good, and dual microphones are quite nice. The combined mic/headset port allows me to use my iPhone headphones for calls.
-Really nice feel touch pad, but I find the Trackpoint more useful. More on this below.

Cons
-Horribly limited viewing angles on the screen. I constantly find myself adjusting the screen angle, whether I'm sitting at a desk or a couch.
-I though Thinkpads were immune to this, but I can form ripples on the screen by pressing on the back. Also when closed the lid has a lot of flex in it, specially on the edge between the hinges. Opened up, the same point can be pushed in quite a bit too. I watched a video where a Lenovo engineer was explaining how when closed you can't see light from the other side if you look at the gap between the lid and the main body...well I can.
-Multitouch track pad is horrible. Two finger scroll doesn't work all the time and I have to scroll multiple times before it would work. Pinch to zoom and rotate are nice touches, however sometimes you want to move the mouse around and a part of your thumb might touch the pad and things would stop working. Very buggy, I wish I can turn it off. Even the scroll bars along the edges are bad, when you start to scroll down, the page would jump up a bit before going down and sometimes it wont detect that you want to scroll and just move the mouse

Nitpicks
-It would have been nicer if Lenovo went a bit further and cleaned up some lines on the board. Lines right below and above the speakers could have been removed. The bar with the power button could have had the same level as the rest of the keys, it kinds juts out oddly from the top. Probably allowing bigger F keys.
-Different shades of black for bottom, top, lid and optical drive. Noticeable when looking edge on.
-Make the dot in the 'i' in Thinkpad glow.
-Don't know if battery is charged/charging by looking at battery indicator LED.
-MOST IMPORTANTLY: Very bare bones packaging, simple box with laptop suspended by cardboard and charger/manual thrown in. It did not feel like I was buying a $1300 laptop. Even my Dell Studio came in a nice box with a nice cloth case.

Order Information
Order date and time: 23/12/09 1:06 AM
==================================
Qty Product Description Price Total
1 2801CTO ThinkPad T400s - 1 Yr Depot Warranty $1,143.35 $1,143.35
1 51J0477 ThinkPad 15W Case Sleeve $16.99 $16.99
Tax: $150.84
Total: $1,311.18

Sleeve
Do not buy this sleeve, its too big and I have no idea why they recommended it. Its meant for much larger laptops and the t400s just moves around in it. Quite useless and a waste of money unless you get the t500. Any recommendations for a snug fit sleeve?

Picture
Couple hours after I got it, installed some programs and did some cleaning up. They installed Norton and Word despite me requesting not to...there was some other junk but not a whole lot. Only thing I left in were the Thinkvantage tools. I removed the stickers and stuck them behind the battery and the laptop looks much cleaner now.

 

Congrats! That's one sweat price as well. I am so jealous .

 

And a T400s at that for your first thinkpad. Nice .

 

Congratulations! The T400s is a very fine machine

 

Thanks. How long does it take for it to ship usually?

 

dont think about it too much, two weeks will pass by quickly if u get u'r mind off of it. Thats a great lappy, just read the reviews, but i would have waited for the new processors just to see what was out and all.
either way, congrats!

 

I'm not sure if the Core i5 will be the same, but the Core i7 runs rather warm even in full-sized 16" systems. The thinner design of the T400s restricts airflow more than most other laptops, so it will be interesting to see how the whole thermal management issue plays out with the new chips!

If it were me, I'd snag one with a solid P-series C2D processor (at a fire-sale price, no less)! Good job!!!

 

For me, shipping took about one week, including weekends. Your experience may vary - I know some past orders have often been stuck in customs for a few days.

 

i think we should be talking about TDP regarding the CPU selection and whether it is suitable for the task. The T7xxx in the X61 was a flop, and i think Lenovo is not going to make this sort of fatal mistake again.

 

lol, I've been checking it every day...It just went from "Order Submitted" to "In Process"

 

Congrats! Im sure you will be more then happy. I love my thinkpad ( this is my first too).

 

Ill be sure to post up pics and a review as the t400s seems to be lacking on these boards.

 

more information is better than none.... so yes please do post your review if you have the time.

 

Ships on the 8th, should have it by mid-Jan. Bit later than I wanted to have it...

 

Almost there...

 

Updated with review.

 

Interesting. All my ThinkPads have been "immune" to ripples on the screen, except one of my two X61s. One can form ripples in the upper left hand corner. The "tougher" one of the two also seems more sturdy and solid than the other. I guess it is up to quality control. Of the newer ThinkPads, all the X200/X200s I have had, have been very solidly built (much more than the X60/X61 predecessors) and no ripples are seen anywhere.

Perhaps the lid and screen protection is one of the areas engineers had to compromise due to the T400s lower weight compared to T400.

 

Hmm...now that I looked at it the ripples form on only two spots, regardless of where I press on the lid. Again, the area between the hinges looks kinda weak to me...

Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPQ6tidSEV0

 

I wasn't even aware that there are ripples...it's probably b/c of the thinness of the screen. regardless, I don't think it's the smartest thing to do.

 

You can. Go to your Touchpad properties - you can turn off the pinch to zoom, scroll bars, multitouch features in general, etc.

 

Really usefull. Thanks. I didn't know you could increase the width of the scroll bars.

 

Happy to help - a machine doesn't quite feel right until it, well, behaves right! Am loving my T400s - picked a goodie as my first Thinkpad too.