T410 screen & battery life?

Well, I'm trying to get a 12-14" laptop w/ i7-620M or 720QM w/ SXGA+ screen or better. What I very want to do is something like lightroom, so screen and CPU are the most important factor here and T410 seem to fit the job. What I come across and wonder is the screen, I mean, I see some of the reviews on some of the Lenovo laptops and the screens of those newer laptop appear to have less than satisfactory result compared to the competitor in equivalent models including T410. Also, it seem weird to me that how come laptop like T410 have significantly poor battery life(not shelf life but usage per charge). I mean, I saw something like X210 w/ the same CPU getting better battery time. Can somebody shed some light? Personally, I don't see 1366x768 to be high res enough for the usage like lightroom. I have to wonder, how other people think. Does the T410 good enough, or something smaller like X201 even w/ lower res screen is better. I don't plan to play any 3D games at all. May be something like the old UT2003 to kill the time, but mostly photo editing and media consumption.

 

If you get the WXGA+ screen you have 1440x900. It's a matte screen that doesn't reflect light. That's was a big selling point for me. Glossy screens give you better color but you also have to deal with the reflections.

I found a post in another forum that T410 owner's should know about -- it concerns adjusting the color settings in the Intel HD Graphics Control Panel > Color Settings:

forum.thinkpads.com • View topic - T410 display enhancement

These settings made watching movies much better and generally improved the screen for all purposes. Please note that the setting for brightness is a minus 13, not 13.

 

The only option for a 12-14" notebook with better than SXGA+ is the Sony Z, but they're kind of expensive.

 

You can save your money and stick with a i5-520M and not notice a difference compared to the 620M or 720QM. If screen is important though, the T410 isn't for you. Not sure why the reviews of battery life are reporting poor battery life since the T410 has very good battery life.

 

Can you elaborate on that?

 

he is saying that the Lenovo's T410 LCD quality is not good as some competitors. But i find them to be quite good as a business laptop.

 

They are decent for most business uses but terrible for any sort of image or video editing.

 

Which screen are we talking about though. The SXGA and SXGA+ are reportedly very different.
I also think it is unfair to pass judgment on a screen that you haven't done a hardware calibration to (if you haven't). My X201's screen wouldn't have been too good for photo editing out of the box, but following a hardware calibration, it's fine.

As far as cpu recommendations, if he is ever going to get into serious photo work, he's going to want the fastest CPU he can have.

BTW, even my 1280x800 X201 is fine for lightroom. Not ideal of course, but then, it's a 12" computer, obviously not the primary photo editing machine. It's gives you enough resolution once you set the taskbar to auto-hide and adjust the sizes of (and turn off the unecessary) panes in lightroom.

 

I'm thinking about that too, but are you sure X201 non-tablet is 1280x800? I now thinking between X201 vs E6410. Obviously I want as much CPU horse power as possible in the mobile form w/ as much pixel density as possible. E6410 have been reported to be better than T410. And in lightroom, pixel density help. Screen quality help too, but I probably will rely on histogram when I'm out. Obviously w/ X201 I'll be stuck w/ whatever the screen res as there is no upgrade path, while E6410 will have WXGA+ option which I'll obviously be buying.

 

The X201 is WXGA. If you want WXGA+ you'll have to bump up to the X201s, which can be harder to find.

 

And extremely expensive, I rather settle for E6410. I'm just wondering if X201, at res 1280x800 would it be good enough. Cuz I used to the 1400x1050 on both T60(14") and fujitsu T4215(12"). Both of witch have quite a good screen res, and text are sharp(easy to read also). Appearantly All newer lappies are wide screen 16:9 or 16:10. All they (all manufacturers) decide to sacrifice the screen resolution instead. I bet it's even cheaper for them to make too. It's all the mass market (and marketing) false that we all have to suffer.

 

Yep, it's 1280x800.
Believe it or not, I just happened to have a picture of it next to a 1400x1050 15" screen with lightroom open on both computers
http://davidson.smugmug.com/photos/888818627_KSDCT-XL.jpg
(man, that old screen on the T60 sure had yellowed...)
In actual use, I make the bottom bar much smaller when I use lightroom on the X201, but I wanted to leave it at the default size on both computers for the sake of comparison when I took the photo.

And yes, the widescreen thing was a cost cutting measure. Lenovo has said as much in one of their official blogs - that suppliers can make more profit on widescreens so all suppliers went to widescreen.

 

I think there is something wrong w/ your T60. Mine doesn't have such yellow cast. And looking at side-by-side, it's clearly show that the layout of the software & preview show perfect fit for 4:3 screen. 16:9 is a waste of screen real estate. I bet for preview w/ portrait pictures is even worse. I can't believe the market goes all the way to wide screen even if the only usage is pretty much just watching movies. I mean, web surfing, content creating and other application all designed w/ 4:3 in mind. I guess we all have to wait another year or 2 until applications get major re-design.

 

The X201 is 16:10, not 16:9, so 16:9 is even worse.

The T60 has the yellow cast because at the time it had my 3.5 year old, heavily used, LG-Phillips Flexview screen in it. Has so many hours on it that the backlight has gone yellow. I've since replace it with a 1600x1200 flexview. Also, to be fair, your eyes are pretty good at adjusting for a yellow cast monitor, so you don't notice it nearly as much in use as in pictures, unless you have something else to compare it to side-by-side

We'll need more than software changes to make 16:9/10 as good as 4:3, we'll have to change the way our brain works, the type of paper we print on, etc. Oh well...

 

The best ain't cheap. What's your other option? The Sony Z, which will set you back $2k.

 

The other option is bigger screen like E6410. But yes that's an option/compromise. At the time when I brought T4215, it set me back $2k back then t .

 

I was referring to the T410's WXGA and WXGA+ screen, which are both 6-bit TN panels. There are no such thing as SXGA and SXGA+ anymore since the T410 is 16:10 aspect ratio.

 

Yeah, sorry, WXGA/WXGA+, I'm still stuck in the old language.

 

I thought we all wish Lenovo stuck to the old aspect ratio also.

 

I don't wish that, I personally hated 4:3.

 

I don't understand that. The great thing about 4:3 is you could get 1050 vertical resolution on a 14" notebook. Since typical computer usage like Office and Internet is more likely top to bottom oriented, the extra vertical resolution is more useful than more white space on the sides in my opinion.

 

i know some people like to use the widescreen monitor because they can get two documents side by side, which is not conveniently done on the 4:3 LCD.

I guess this is down to personal preferences.

 

That may well be true, but on a 14" notebook, the best you'll do is 1440 for most notebooks, which is only slightly wider than the 1400 offered on SXGA+.

 

Even if that's true, it's quite a small niche. I mean for most people, human eyes doesn't focus that way. You get a single focus point and the rest kinda blur off. I suppose, if your job is to proof read something, then splitting left/right screen help look at formatting also. So, for viewing document in most case, people prefer to look at one page at a time. And don't forget web pages, i'm sure that most webpages still not designed to be view by 1024x600 or 1366x768. Can you believe that, notebook manufacturers sell netbook like candies w/ 1024x600 screen but almost all website are design for 4:3 w/ screen resolution of 800x600 or 1024x768.

 

actually the document side by side viewing style is not a small niche, lot of people do it. But as i said it is down to your personal preferences.

Regarding the LCD resolution and such, i think that debate has been raging on for some times now, and clearly the majority of consumer only cares about the price and don't worry about these viewing styles and factors, till much later (usually after they purchased the laptop and using it for a while).

In which case, there is not enough purists in the consumer markets to really persuade the LCD manufacturers or large Laptop companies to continue manufacturing or using the 4:3 LCD style. As the rate of return on these sort of capital investment is deemed to low or too high of risk.

Lenovo for a period of few years, really tried to cater to every part of the market, by offering both the 4:3 and 16:10 LCD format, but yet that hardily reflected in actual sale volume.

As most people rarely use more than one laptop at a time, and if they purchased a 4:3 laptop, then they would not have purchased the 16:10. So basically, Lenovo was competing with itself in the niche market, and at the same time Dell and HP was moving into the 16:10 market in a big way (they were also gaining a competitive advantage in lower production, inventory and marketing costs, etc.

So everything is relative, and while nostalgic values are good, but they are only relevant to a company if there are enough people whom share the same value and are willing to pay for it.

 

Side by side is just fine on 1400x1050.

I seem to recall on the lenovoblogs that when they were offering both wide and normal they talked about it as being being 4:3 was going the way of the dodo, but they wanted to offer it as long as they could, but had to recognize that it was going away.

 

side by side is slightly better and feels bit more natural on the 16:10 screen format, due to the extra horizontal LCD real estate.

But that is trivial, given that no matter what we say here, there is little likelihood that the 4:3 would make a Full comeback. You got your T60p with the UXGA screen, so everything is dandy.

 

Very true. This T60 will be my primary for a long time. As long as there are 16:10 screens I'll be ok, but it'll be years before I buy a new large laptop (I figure on making this T60 last at least 3 or 4 more years). The X201 really isn't that bad with 16:10. 16:9 is just plain terrible though. Whenever I see a 16:9 laptop, it seems like someone's idea of a sick joke. I saw someone using an enormous laptop (looked like 15" to me, but they're getting so wide these days for all I know it could have been 14"...thing had a frigging number pad alongside the keyboard) that had fewer vertical pixels than my X201. It looked like he was trying to write on a mailslot.