T400 Feature question

I was aiming at purchasing my T400 later on today. After seeing the 7-in-1 Card reader, and hearing how flimsy the plastic on it was, I was hesitant about buying it. I only intended on buying this for the typical SD card that my camera uses. But after looking at pictures of the T400, there's a small rectangle that looks like a SD card reader on the front, which would make sense, as its a standard feature in most notebooks. So my question is, does the T400 have a camera card reader without buyin' the 7-in-1?

 

No, only the T500 has a SD card slot in front. For T400 you have to purchase the Media Card slots option.

However, if you choose that option, the hinge door from the PC card slot is fitted with cheap plastic around the smaller SD slot area. It adds flex to the left side and looks bad too. It would probably be better to use the USB cable provided with your camera to do the file transfers instead. I never really understood this obsession with card readers?

 

I thought it was not that expensive and might as well get one....too bad I can't change it now...will have to deal with it.

 

It's... uhhh... a feature... not a bug.....

 

How is there not flex if you order it with the PC Card slot... wouldn't you just have 2 empty slots then?

 

Go with the PC Card. Media Card Reader is slower than the PC Card bus.

With PC Card and a USB reader you have the most flexibility. You can also pop in a PCMCIA or ExpressBus card as well.

Out of all the options, PC Card is the one everyone should be getting. I made a mistake when I said the media reader option was best.

The PC Card option is the one everyone should be getting, then getting an addon USB or card for the rest.

Express Bus and PC Card is what it should have.

 

i dunno about other models, but for the T400 all the slot options come with the express bus/express card by default, not just the pc card..

expresscard & pc card
expresscard & smart card
expresscard & 4-1 media

 

Can anyone explain what a smart card slot would be useful for? I'm tempted to order the expresscard + pc card option after reading the comments here.

Thanks.

 

Sigh, great, i ordered the 7-1 media option so i wouldn't have to spend more on a expresscard/pc card reader... but hearing it is slow bothers me... has it been confirmed that the built-in 7-1 media reader is the older 16-bit pcmcia standard or does it use an internal 32-bit cardbus interface?... hopefully, i won't have to cancel my order based on this minor point...tia

 

It all depends on the type of media being read and what interface the Lenovo uses.

What Lenovo uses is unclear for the media card reader and what the advantage and disadvantage is between the existing media card vs pc card interface. This doesn't seem to be as easy to understand as I initially thought because of interface speeds and different types of cards.

For SD cards interface speed on pc card, its all the same. But other card types have different speed transfer rates.

480 Mbit/s is the top speed for USB 2.0.

 

OH! My mistake!... thanks for clarifying, adamj023... i agree, the pc card option would provide greater flexibility, but i don't have any old pcmcia cards that i'd care to reuse...if i were to get a pc card, it would just be a n-in-1 media reader anyways that would occupy the slot indefinitely... the built-in reader meets my needs...

 

Simple answer: if you don't know, you don't need it.

Smart cards are used for user authentication at some companies and government areas. Your badge slides into the computer and serves as your login/authentication.

 

Which option should I get for least flex and no flimsy plastic?

 

There are people who indeed use smart cards, there are people who use media readers and there are people who use PC Card format with their laptop.

Remember this is a business notebook and every business has different user needs. There is no one size fits all.

 

Exactly. And thus if someone doesn't know what they'd use a smart card for, they probably don't need it. If someone does need a smart card reader, they will order it as they know what it is.

 

Not necessarily. I am very familiar with what a smart card is and have studied the spec in some detail. In Europe smart cards are used much more than here. In the above post I was trying to find out if a smart card was of much use here (apart from the obvious authentication use). I don't know of a bank that uses Smart Cards unfortunately nor eCommerce sites like Amazon. It seems the PC Card slot will be provide for more options. One can always get a PC Card Smart Card reader in any case.

Thanks.

 

I appreciate the clarification -- your question of " Can anyone explain what a smart card slot would be useful for?" did not convey the same meaning as above.

I know of no consumer level usage of these -- doesn't mean it isn't out there, but I doubt having a dedicated smartcard reader would be particularly useful for a personal-use laptop at this time in the US.

-- Lew

 

Hi Lew,

I agree I was not very clear in how I phrased the question. Thanks for your advice. I have ordered the T400 with PC Card and Express Card slots.

Thanks again.