T410s questions

Hi all - I just ordered a T410s from ebay, and had a few questions:

1. Does anyone use the Ultrabay in conjunction with an SSD drive, as the sole and only hard drive in the machine? I assume this scenario works fine (with the exception being that you can't reuse the bay for other purposes).

2. Sounds like the battery life is crappy. Curious to know how many users bought the ultrabay battery, versus just lugging the AC adapter around at all times

and finally, I am hoping that the screen isn't as bad as everyone says, but I guess I'll find out

 

1. You can designate the 2.5" SSD in the UltraBay (with a slim UltraBay caddy adapter, of course) as your boot drive.

Note that the T410s takes a 1.8" drive in the main bay. It is difficult and expensive to find 1.8" drives. You could always use a "mSATA SSD + 1.8" mSATA adapter card" combo in the main bay as your boot drive. I did precisely that for my T410s.

2. Battery is crappy. Carry the power adapter with you.

The 1440x900 Samsung screen in the T410s is pretty good, actually -- better than the 1600x900 screens in the T420/s and T430/s.

 

Thank you for the response Kaso.

One final question. I was considering doing the mSATA +1.8 adapter in the main bay. What I am trying to determine is if, cost wise, it makes sense to do so. If I did make the change, then I could add the ultrabay battery - however, does the ultrabay battery really add much? If not, I'll just stick with the one SSD drive in the ultrabay.

 

You're likely to see some delay if booting from an UltraBay drive. Not a huge one, but it will be slower than from the main bay. Whether this is a big deal or not is really your call.

I've used a Crucial C300 1.8" in my (long since sold) T410s and was happy with it. YMMV.

UltraBay battery is not a worthwhile investment IMO, but I always drag an AC adapter anyway...

Agreed with Kaso in the respect of the screen - one of the very best offerings seen on a 14" ThinkPad of any era - just don't expect miracles...

Overall, I like the T410/s generation quite a bit. Enjoy yours.

 

A so-so main battery + a so-so UltraBay battery do not make the T410s more interesting. My main gripe with T410s has been the battery situation.

I have a 64GB mSATA SSD in the main bay (to speed up OS boot and program launch) + a 500GB HDD in the UltraBay. I did that upgrade 18 months ago. Anyway, it's your choice -- I just wanted to present a viable option.

 

Also note, the ultra bay battery get's cycled really fast since to date, we still can't tell power manager to use the main first then the bay. Seeing as how the bay battery is smaller, and will always get drained first, I killed mine at a rate twice that of my main battery. It does help, so I use it anyways, but be warned it'll lose max capacity pretty fast. I don't know if they're still around but I used an intel 80gb msata in the main bay and settled for an ultrabay battery and an external 2.5" drive rather than a ultrabay hdd.

 

Well, got my 410s in and I love it. Screen is nice, great machine...happy with purchase.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

 

Good to hear - enjoy!