T-400S First Impression

I just received my new T-400S on friday, and am really liking this laptop. I ended up getting the Enhanced T400S:
-CPU: S9600
-RAM: 4GB
-HD: 128GB SSD
-Multi-LED Panel
-Camera/Bluetooth/Fingerprint Reader

I'm super impressed with how quickly I got this setup out of the box! The only two pieces of bloatware installed that I could find was Norton and the Office trial. The Office trial was actually nice for me, because I actually have an Office 2007 key that I was able to instantly activate from my old laptop. I actually had to install Adobe Acrobat Reader and Win-DVD (this is the first laptop that I've ever bought that didn't have this installed already, which I'm not complaining about at all). After about 30~45 minutes of installing my needed apps and updating Windows 7, I was up and running! Now that I'm done, a cold boot-up takes 47 seconds! Ironically, a hibernate takes longer than a cold boot-up (which makes sense, but I've never had that happen before).

My first impressions about this laptop was how cool the unit is while I'm doing e-mailing and web-browsing. I have a corporate Lenovo T-61 that I occasionally use at home, for basic web-browsing, but after about an hour, I have to find a cushion or a phonebook to put on my lap. I had the T-400S on my lap for 2+ hours last night, and it was barely warm at the most. I'm also amazed at the responsiveness of the laptop. Applications like IE load up almost instantly, even when I have a Powerpoint, MSN, and Outlook already open. The last thing that I have to say about this notebook, is how light it is. At around 4lbs, this is the first laptop that I finally feel it is a "good" weight for it's size!

Bluetooth works fine with my Microsoft 5000 bluetooth mouse. The fingerprint reader also works fine, you can actually use it to turn the laptop on, and it will no longer prompt you for a login password(I didn't know you could do that). I own a passive displayport to hdmi converter. I plugged it into the displayport and tried to plug it into my tv, but that didn't work... I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but the d-sub port works just fine.

Overall, I'm pleased with my purchase. I know it's a little pricey (2529.00 - 30%) = 1770.30+tax, but the discount definitly made the pill easier to swallow.

 

Nice! Glad to hear you are happy.

 

Nice laptop but man oh man that is pricey :-(

 

how does that work to turn the laptop on with the fingerprint reader?


would my T400 also do that?

i got to play with the T400s at work, i must say its quite solid, but the battery placement is quite odd, no more extended batteries?

 

that's a new feature on the t400s unfortunately

and no extended batteries, yes. the only source of extra battery is the ultrabay battery.

 

The link you posted was to the T400 not the T400s.

And the T400S as I priced it was near $3,000 and I couldn't find a 30% discount.

Perry

 

Hi pkincy,

I don't remember actually posting a link to anything. But ironically, the T-series sale is still on for 30% off:

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...nding_pages/Promotions/2009/t-series-hot-deal

This sale is different from the one I bought mine on, I bought mine on some kind of "Thinkpad Sale", whereas, this sale is strictly for T-Series.

 

What country do you live in?

 

Congrats on the machine. Just curious, how's the touch screen? I don't think I've ever had a desire to touch the screen.

 

It does what it says it does... I bought it thinking it'd be a cool option to have. If I were to do this again, I probably would have rather saved the $400 and just got it without. My biggest issue with the touch screen, is the screen gets all full of fingerprints. It is kinda nice to be able to scroll by touching the screen or zooming in and out (though I don't really know why I need to do this, it's not like it's an iPhone with a small screen). My girlfriend likes it cause she can play Facebook games simply by touching the screen. There's this game where you try to get rid of jewels, and her scores have alledgedly skyrocketed because of this...

After having used it for a couple of days, I actually find multi-touching the screen kinda awkward when you have the laptop on your lap. Maybe this is just me, but when I have the laptop on my lap, I usually have one hand on the chassis to stabalize it. When both hands are off the laptop (doing the mutli-touching), I have to sit with my lap flat, and any movement of my lap or heavy pressing of the screen, and you risk causing your laptop to slide off your lap. Lastly, because of the screen resolution, some links that are close together are covered by your finger, so you don't know which one you're going to press. An example are the links to the left of Notebookreview's website. In the "Most Viewed Laptops", the featured laptop, and the price of the laptop above it are kinda close together, and I have trouble discerning between the two particular link. Whereas with a mouse, I don't have that problem at all...

Oh yeah, on other note, the touchpad is also multi-touch! You can zoom and scroll and do pretty much whatever the screen can do too.