New T400s - problems

Hey Folks

Just got my T400s in the mail a few days ago. It was from the outlet, brand new.

So far I'm just not that impressed. The computer seems to run sluggishly and startup takes a while before the hard drive light goes out. The fingerprint reader only reads my fingerprint about half the time. The center scroll button for the trackpoint won't work if I press it even slightly off center (which is where my thumb naturally hits it). And sometimes it won't even work if I do that. It's like if you don't press it exactly in the center it won't work. Even the lid doesn't seem to like to latch shut when I close the computer.

I don't know. I expected a big performance increase from my ye olde T42 but it doesn't seem that much better. The battery life doesn't seem that great either.

ALSO: the outlet just dropped the price by $100 since I bought it. Do you think they will refund me $100 if I call them, because that's really farking annoying.


Here are the specs:
Condition New
Processor Intel® Core™2 Duo SP9600 (2.53GHz, 6MB L2, 1066MHz FSB)
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 - English
Keyboard/Pointing Device UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad)
Total Memory 4GB (2 X 2GB) PC3-8500 DDR3 1067MHz SDRAM SODIMM Memory
Hard Drive 120GB, 5400RPM Serial ATA 1.8" Hard Drive
Display 14.1” WXGA+ (1440 X 900) LED, W/ Camera
Graphics Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
Optical Device DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer
Battery 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (Up to 5.5 Hours Run Time)
Ethernet/Wireless Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi Link 5100 (1x2 AGN)
Mobile Broadband Integrated Wireless Wide Area Network upgradable
Bluetooth No
Integrated Camera Yes
Color Black
Fingerprint Reader Yes
Form Factor Laptop
Limited Warranty 1 Year Warranty
Manufacturing part number 2808A23

 

I was unimpressed with the T400s and returned mine.

Keep in mind the 5400rpm drive and 4500MHD are holding things back performance wise. A SSD drive helps but it doesn't fix the anemic GPU.

 

Is that what's holding it back? I know a decent bit about computers but when it comes to the technical numbers and specific hardware parts I'm a little hazy. I'll try to use this for a few more days, but man it's really not what I was hoping for.

 

Your hard drive is very slow, AFAIK there does not exist a single 1.8" spinning HD with a decent performance. Your system will run like 5 times faster with a 1.8" SSD. If you don't like the PC return it, but if performance is your problem you can blame it all on the hard disk.

 

my T410s with the intel xm-18 flies

 

As previous poster have indicated, you can fix the I/O bottleneck by pulling the current 5400rpm 1.8" hard drive and replacing it with a fast Intel X-18M SSD drive. The 160GB drive runs about $440, the 80GB drive runs about $230 I think.

It will certainly feel like a very different machine at that point.

 

Get the SSD drive, you will notice your lappy MUCH more peppier