My sorrow xx40 story

I'm a loyal Lenovo customer. I've used fantastic T43p for several years (almost 4000$ spent for it) bought R61 and E420s subsequently for my wifey. Then powerful T510 FHD which was serving me for 4 years up to now. It's weight and my current projects forced me to look for a lighter machine (the power of t510 still meets my purpose of light gaming, movies, vmwares..).

I've been watching the xx40 line just from it's announcements last year and I'm still reading all applicable forums. I've been looking forward to the FHD touch displays, lightness and more important - haswells battery life. I've feared the touchpad (I'm a trackpoint user, it's just so precise cursor control...)

I've tried t440s in the october at first. Despite the low weight and gorgeous screen it didn't catch me much, the touchpad was hard to press and so much noisy, the size was not much different from the t510 and the model I've got hadn't dock connector even if it was model with integrated graphics and the dock connector was advertised. So I've returned it after two days.

In the meantime, I was lurking at lenovo showrooms, trying to get in touch with other new tp models. x540 keyboard is real joke. How am I supposed to sit in the center of the ntb screen and - as a right handed one - be still able to control the cursor far on the left, without the pain coming in five minutes ? I'm not an extended octopuss, sorry. But x240 seemed like a way to go. Touchpad travel was a bit better than on t440s, size and weight were excellent. All I wanted was the FHD option.

So I've waited for 3 months. The FHD touch i7 model emerged in my favourite shop, so I've jumped in. I've bought the x240 in the end of february. I've immediately started to use it as my workhorse.

What I liked : weight, fhd touchscreen (excellent for reading with the ntb laying on me in bed), power, battery life.

The x240 keyboard is bad. It's worse than t440s for example. it has different, blunt feeling. Backspace key was wiggling and spacebar was not sometimes registering the touch. End/Insert combo is dreadful. Imagine Total Commander navigation. Impossible.

But the touchpad is the worst nightmare that happened to Thinkpads. It's impossible - and I insist on that word - to use the trackpoint during full business day. The force needed to press the touchpad to trackpoint-left/right-click is so big that my thumb got fatigued after three hours at maximum, each day. Someone advised me to buy an external mouse. It was not a good joke.

The fhd display had terrible ghosting issues (the time from lockscreen in win 8.1 was still staring at me many seconds despite the fact I was already on desktop). This unit had to go back, after a month of heavy usage.

After some forum posts regarding the improvement of some tp components in february (tabook was updated in february), I've decided to try the same model.

To make a long story short - no ghosting, f1 and f4 keys were wiggling and touching the bezel, fan was creaking when stopping, touchpad was again a bit more shallow but still painful, the lower edge of glass screen was so sharp, that I've cut my finger a bit. Unbelievable build quality. 2500$. After two weeks, byebye.

I was pretty sure that I'm done with xx40 thinkpads. They look well. They have good performance and screens. But what they lack the most are the areas where the user physically interfaces with them. The keyboard, the touchpad.

Hey, it's my pickaxe. I'm earning money with it. My life depends on it.

I've looked also at Carbon. The new one is frankenstein experiment. The product designer must have been drunk when he was designing the keyboard. Old one has bad screen. Both don't have VGA. All presentation rooms have VGA's. Everywhere.

I was desperate. I liked the touch screen, I didn't want to go for older thinkpad models. I've looked at "trackpoint" enabled models from other manufacturers but HP, Dell and Toshiba are ugly rounded notebooks with bad keyboards and bad trackpoints. No, I'm the Lenovo guy, no need to buy me, I want to stay for the whole life.

I was even looking at old refurbished x301 and almost got one, but it was sold a day before I decided to buy it

So I took a deep breath and decided to go for a x230. I was angry, because I was forced to go for a ntb with such bad screen resolution. Touch is gone. No haswell.

But apart these it's complete relief. It's normal Thinkpad, unbelievable. The island keyboard is fantastic. I must say FANTASTIC. The tactile feedback is so much different (read better) than on xx40 models. Trackpoint buttons are better than on my T510. Battery life is excellent even with Ivy Bridge. The power of true mobile i7 is immense. RAM is 16GB. Everything is user serviceable (I've installed WWAN and RAM in ten minutes, with removal of three components - compare it to hardware maintenance manual of x240). The Lenovo experience in Windows 7 is also more genuine than in Win 8 (due to ThinkVantage software) - I've got the feeling that Lenovo brought an added value to the Win 7.

So this is my story. Quite settled for now. But will I be able to buy an usable Lenovo Thinkpad in next 3 years ? Will I be able to buy a notebook I'm able to easily operate to earn my money ? We'll see.

 

i agree with you 100%, people need to realize that hardware upgrades should certainty not be accredited to lenovo such as the screen and cpu power etc.. when people mention how much better the new thinkpads are because of these newer features, i laugh at them and feel sorry for them at the same time, in all seriousness, those features have nothing to do with thinkpads, anyone in the industry can add those on and adding them to a thinkpad does not make them better, there are features in thinkpads that other brands do not have that made them better in the previous generations, this is ultimately what makes a thinkpad a thinkpad, and now that many of these features/attributes are disappearing from the TP lineup, there really are no improvements that differentiate TPs from the rest of the crowd. people need to realize that these changes really mean nothing... i myself have been trying to go the same route as yourself, although i find the X22/30s to be excessively high in price even though being outdated, i can get a cheaper x240 on the lenovo outlet, i seriously wonder why these thinkpads are holding their value so well...