T420 discontinued?

I just brought the T420 two weeks ago. It hasn't been delivered, but I see now that it has been discontinued with the T430 in substitution. However, I'm kind of regretting buying the T420 a bit too early, especially when the T430 came out to be about the same price. How much better is the T430?

 

Performance wise the T430 will be slightly better than the T420 but not by much in real world terms, overall they share a lot in common including the screens.

With the T420 you will have the traditional 7 row keyboard over the 6 row chiclet keyboard on the T430. Also the T430 can only accept 7mm hard drives if you don't have the ultrabay caddy, the T420 on the other hand can take 9.5mm drives as well as 7mm ones. Lastly the T430 batteries are vendor locked, you must use official batteries throughout its lifetime as they introduced chips to prevent third party batteries (even genuine batteries designed for the older models like the T420) from working, the T420 don't have such measures so it's a bit more flexible in that regard.

 

I'm in the same boat. When did you order? I got a killer deal on a t420 with Nvidia graphics. I was one of the last to order one before that option went away (6/22). My status still says "Order Received" with an estimated ship date of 7/22. When I chatted with Lenovo on their website, the rep said that that date may be pushed! I hope there's not a problem with getting shoddy parts since it was at the very end of the product life cycle.

 

T430 isn't that much faster, 10-15% CPU performance wise, but HD 4000 is far more potent than HD 3000, like 2-3x (8600M GT performance vs 4650 Mobility). As Hearst mentioned, you have to live with the 6 row keyboard layout and you CANNOT go back to the traditional 7 layer keyboard, there is no BIOS support for it.

 

At this moment in time.

 

Does the battery restriction apply to T430 only or all new x30 Thinkpads? I'm currently considerng x220 vs x230, so this would tip me over.

 

I believe all Ivy Bridge ThinkPads (x30 based ThinkPads) will require genuine batteries with the chip on for it to work and charge properly.

 

Thanks. The battery and keyboard certainly make the choice easy.

 

I ordered on Independence Day. I will receive the laptop in a few more days.
The only reason I'm regretting buying it so early is because the T430 has Intel HD 4000 graphics, which I hear is significantly better than the 3000. However, I'm planning to play games like Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft, which I suppose aren't too graphics intensive. So... maybe I'm just having buyer's remorse for no reason. :/

 

What does your order status say?

 

Why does it matter? It's shipped.

 

Modding the BIOS or using unapproved BIOS is the quickest way to void your warranty minus dropping it into a pool or having a Starbucks Latte spill all over it. The average business professional isn't honestly going to care all too much anyway, but for people like me who care about ergonomics, it matters alot.

 

Totally out of context. I never suggested that.

 

I fail to see what's out of context here, unless the suggestion is that Lenovo will somehow come up with an official, approved BIOS for using keyboards from the previous generation?

 

That's the rumor.

 

If that's the case sign me up for a brand new W530 rightaway!

 

Chiclet keyboard, new BIOS by Lenovo. Rumor: reinstated classic keyboard, newer BIOS by Lenovo. That's how it read it: there's no suggestion of changing the keyboard and modding the BIOS by the user. And...

But with the condition that the 9-cell battery doesn't wobble.

 

the t4/530's also lose the esatap port which i use