T430s owners'/would-be owners' thread.

Any news on the new FRUs for the displays mentioned by ibmthink? Mine was delivered on Friday but hasn't been processed through supply so I still don't have it.

 

For anyone interested in knowing: order status is working again. Trying to figure out what screen is in the rig, but can't determine from order status.

 

Finally...
I have the 04W3922 [Samsung, "Secondary" (?), not used in T430, but in T430s/L430/S430]. HWInfo32 calls it Lenovo B140R102 V1, and I was thinking it was the LG based on Googling... But, according to your table it's a Samsung. Qualitatively, after admittedly limited usage, I am not noticing much difference between it and the AUO that I returned with the exception of max brightness seeming to be lagging on this new panel. Note: I returned the other one because it was not configured properly; the AUO was fine for my needs.

 

Ok. I'm back. I apologize to those who have been waiting for me to post a follow-up on my T430s/Lenovo ordeal. Well I did receive a full refund three weeks after I first requested it, but then I made a foolish mistake. I ordered a brand new T430s with the idea that I could negotiate a decent discount from my Lenovo Customer Advocate afterwards.

Three weeks later, I received the new laptop - that's six weeks that I went without one for those of you are not counting. My new T430s looked pretty good at first glance so I went about testing it in particular for the dreaded STOP 101. During my test I immediately noticed that the keyboard backlighting had a uniformity problem. A minor problem I thought, but I wondered how something like this could get pass Q&A since it's quite noticeable - especially since my original machine had no such issue. Then it dawned on me. This is a "new" laptop but the keyboard is not new. It's been "remanufactured" - no further comment on this is necessary ;-( So I placed a service call online to have the keyboard replaced. I have next day onsite service. It took one week and four phone calls for them to finally tells me that there are no backlit keyboards in stock in the entire U.S. and my wait time for another one would be greater than three months. "Are you freaking kidding me?", I thought to myself. From my experience, the keyboard is the most requested replacement part in a laptop and with thousands of T430s out there, there is no availability? This utterly ridiculous! So I told that my case would be forwarded to a Customer Advocate so I could get a refund or replacement notebook. Seesh! Been there, done that!

I this point I am completely done with Lenovo and the T430s which is a shame because it's decent but overpriced IMO laptop. My rather b-tchy CA told me to go through the Returns department since the laptop is new so I filled out a RMA request online and waited. After nearly a week with no response from Lenovo (anybody else seeing a pattern here?), I called the RMA department which is in India. The call was excruciating since the lady I spoke to barely knew english and she could not understand me although I could hear her pretty clear. Anyhow, she said that she will arrange for UPS to pick for the laptop tomorrow and that I could expect a full refund one week after it's been received. Anyone want to bet on that? I didn't think so.

To sum up my experience, it is my opinion that Lenovo as a corporation is complete and utter failure. First of all, all the decision making regarding products and their availability are made in China. The U.S. people are merely puppets in that respect. Their job seems only to provide service and as you can tell from my five month ordeal (in which Lenovo has showed zero compassion), they are totally incapable of doing so. If you communicate with them via internet for anything other than sales, you will be more than likely be ignored. Also, there is little to no communication across departments within the company or with their service provider in my area, IBM.

To anyone reading this post, I ask you not to be a fool like me by not giving this inept corporation your hard earned dollars. I have dealt with several of competitors in the past and while there issues, none of my experiences come even close to the nightmare that is Lenovo. Oh and by the way, to anyone that was considering purchasing a T430s....don't. Lenovo considers this product to be EOL even though they are still selling it.

I will post again once I receive my final refund. Let's see how long it actually takes.

 

You want cheap prices. They give you cheap products and services. You are bargain-driven. So are they.

You come back for more. They give you more of the same.

Please, take your money and walk away. Best wishes!

 

This wasn't about getting a laptop for cheap although a love a bargain just like everyone else. When I talk about negotiating a discount, I'm speaking about restitution for the all crap I went through.

I recommend anybody who has a T430s to dump them on eBay for a decent price right now. Otherwise, if you ever require a replacement part in the future, you'll be SOL.

 

I'd say the same for any low cost PC or any other electronic product. These were $2000 machines being squeezed by consumers to sub-$1000 range, something has got to give. IBM sold its PC division for good reasons. The BSOD problem was unfortunate and should have been resolved better, but if you are willing to go through the hassle for something that yourself described as "minor", then that's your choice.

Apple is probably the only company that provide good service these days, then again, they are not going after bargain hunters. Their prices are actually pretty good considering the quality and services. Still, even Apple users have issues that people learn to live with (eg. having to hold certain phone "correctly" ).

 

How much discount would have made you a satisfactory customer of Lenovo? Excluding a reman keyboard of course.

Also, how did you find that the keyboard was a reman one? Can Lenovo put a reman keyboard on a new laptop?

 

You might want to go back and read all of his posts here. There are only 31, but you should be able to get the full context of why he's upset at Lenovo. I don't blame him.

 

I get what you're saying about the cost. Just to give you all some background, I have been using and servicing Thinkpad laptops for more than a decade. My relationship with IBM/Lenovo was always via a corporate clients so I was aware of the excellent service and support that is provided to those customers (sometimes by me ). The mistake I made was thinking that same level support would extend itself to retail customers since the support model is almost similar to corporate's.

You know at first, I thought I could just live with the keyboard issue because it really was that minor, but then I thought about all the crap Lenovo put me through. Also, I paid a lot for this laptop, $1400 may not be a lot of money to most people but it is to me and I want the best for what I could afford which is why I choose (wrongly) Lenovo in the first place. Also, my complaint about the keyboard lighting actually revealed something much bigger than I had expected i.e. that the T430s is basically an albatross to Lenovo. That's information (which I'm sure will be denied until about May) that every T430s owner and would be owners should be made aware of IMO.

Let's see for five months of unnecessary screw-ups, I'd say two free "top of the line", fully warrantied laptops would have me smiling at Lenovo again ;-)

The only thing I was ever offered was 10% off the best deal I could find on the T430s. Also, the discount did not apply to any warranties. Of course, I told them that I would never settle for that since the actual amount would had been less than $100. I figured I'd just buy laptop #2 and try to get my customer advocate to be more reasonable. He never bulged and it was never discussed again because of the keyboard issue. Had there been no issue, I would have tried to get the new laptop for free or at least 50% off. If that didn't work, I would have just returned it which ended up happening anyway so that one fight was avoided.

As far as the keyboard itself, I have no definitive way to tell if it was indeed pre-used. I do know from hanging out in the Lenovo forums that they do reserve the right to use remanufactured parts in "new" products . I made an assumption based on the fact that nobody seemed to notice such an obvious defect before the laptop shipped which tells me that the assembler just didn't care (because they knew the part was used). The funny thing is I probably would have never known that the T430s doesn't have crappy backlighting if my first laptop wasn't flawless (besides the BSODs). BTW, the second laptop did not exhibit those symptoms in the three week that I owned it.

Thank you, Thors Hammer. It was actually you that encouraged me stop complaining in the forums and to pursue some type of resolution to my BSOD problem. To everybody else, I like to say that my posts aren't Lenovo "hit pieces". In fact, I'm not even mad at them although they do deserve the wrath. The purpose of me coming here and spending hours composing these posts is to share my experiences with my two T430s' with both you guys and Lenovo. This wasn't one or two mistakes. It was a mistake at every point of contact over a five month period. There's literally nothing that I could look back on and say was handled appropriately or with respect to me the customer. As I said before, I didn't even get one sincere apology from Lenovo. The only person who treated me half-way decent had a b-tchy attitude and made sure to remind me of how busy they are. Also, I even left out one incident that happened because it's basically more of the same.

That being said, I'm now on the market for a new laptop. If guys have any ideas, I love to hear them via pvt message. Please no Apple and definitely NO LENOVO! TIA

 

Sounds horrific. Sorry to hear. I'm now anxiously waiting for mine to ship, which should be within days. I searched quite a bit for comparable laptops - Samsung prices are in the Apple range, and anything else looks flimsy and/or gimmicky.

 

Hi, I got my T430s yesterday with the following specifications:

ThinkPad T430s - 1 Year Topseller Express Depot Warranty
Processor : Intel Core i5-3210M Processor (3M Cache, up to 3.10 GHz)
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
Operating System Language: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 - English
Display Type: 14.0" HD+ (1600 x 900) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
System Graphics: NVIDIA N13M-NS Optimus Graphics 1GB, Intel Core i5-3210M Processor (3M Cache, 2.50 GHz)
Total Memory: 4 GB DDR3 - 1600MHz (1 DIMM)
Keyboard: Keyboard Backlit - US English
Pointing Device: UltraNav multi-touch touchpad & TrackPoint with Fingerprint Reader
Camera: 720p HD Camera Mic
Hard Drive: 320GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Ultrabay: DVD Recordable
System Expansion Slots: Express Card Slot
Battery: 6 Cell Lithium Battery T81+
Power Cord: 90W AC Adapter - US (2pin)
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0 with Antenna
Integrated WiFi Wireless LAN Adapters: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
Integrated Mobile Broadband: Mobile Broadband upgradable

I clean-installed to Windows 8 Pro on my new SSD and my 8GB Kingston RAM and everything was going smoothly. until I noticed only 2.73GB of RAM was usable.
I read the System Type as "32-bit Operating System, x64-based processor".

I do not recall of any option to choose between 32-bit and 64-bit during installation. Even if there was, I don't think I'm that stupid to choose 32-bit.

 

Where did you get the DVD? Windows 8 does not put the 32bit and 64bit architectures on the same disk. Look carefully at the disk you used.

 

mrsean, Looks like you were a loyal customer to go thru the ordeal for 5 months... Sorry to hear that.. which brand are you considering now...

 

Okay, I realize it is because I downloaded Windows 8 from my T400 which is 32-bit OS.
I re-downloaded on my new T430s, formatted my SSD, and re-did the installation and it is working well.

Thank you for the reply. I would've been a very sad user to utilize less than 3GB of RAM when I need to use Photoshop and Autodesk quite often.

 

Cool. Glad you resolved the issue. 64bit rocks.

 

Thors or anyone else, question for you and I know you have addressed this in other threads, but perhaps you can help me out as a newbie who's been away from PCs for half a decade. I will buy a Samsung SSD and want reinstall windows on it sans bloatware. It's my understanding that bloatware is substantial on Lenovos. You say in other threads that you wipe out the machine and clean install windows yes? Two questions, that have only been obliquely addressed:

1. How exactly do you clean install windows assuming you have only the windows version that comes with Lenovo (i.e avoiding purchasing a new copy)? Can you point me to a step by step process of clean installing windows without having to purchase a new copy. Also, how to you reinstall the Thinkpad drivers you deem necessary - do you have a list idea of those Thinkpad specific drivers you think are important?

2. Instead of clean installing, what about just thoroughly uninstalling all bloatware? What's wrong with that - since you don't do that on your machines.

Thanks. My Lenovo has shipped, should arrive within a week, although I won't get to use it until March as I work outside the US and will only return in a month.

 

Take a look at this helpful post and guide by forum member Hearst.

Hearst's Guide to Clean Installing Windows 7 on the ThinkPad.

 

Many folks are proponents of the approach that you mention. The major advantage to clean installing is knowing that you have an unaltered OS from MS with no program fragments in the registry or root directories as a result of uninstalling. So, I guess it depends on how clean you want your installation.

 

In addition to the other great answers, here are some additional thoughts:

1. The guide Hearst created is excellent. You can still download the .ISO image of Windows 7 and burn a DVD for doing a clean install of the OS. The guide tells you how to extract the current activation information for the machine and re-use it. I have never done that or worried about it. I always use a key from my MSDN subscription. Your Windows 7 ThinkPad will have a Windows 7 Certificate of Authenticity (COA) and product activation key under the battery.

2. Uninstalling bloatware is easier for a lot of people. It depends on how much is there. Lenovo put very little on the machine a couple of years ago, but it seems to have increased lately so I feel more comfortable installing from scratch.

NOTE: I highly recommend getting used to machine before making any changes. That also includes creating the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery disk set. Once created, it is advised that the disk set be tested on another spare HDD (or the new Samsung SSD) if you have one. After successfully restoring the Lenovo factory image, you know you can always go back.

 

Thank you all very much for this info. This is all very useful and gives me some food for thought!

 

One last thing: any good HDD caddy you recommend for the T430s? This one seems good

2nd HDD or SSD Caddy for Lenovo ThinkPad T420s, T430s [TP-T420s] - $43.75 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

 

You could save a few bucks on eBay here: New 2nd HDD SATA Hard Drive Disk Caddy Bay for IBM Lenovo ThinkPad T420s | eBay

 

Anyone who has a T430s with Thunderbolt finding the transfer speeds really slow? From internal SSD drive to Thunderbolt drive I'm getting ~85 MB/sec and it seems like it should be faster according to general Thunderbolt specs.

 

What device is the "Thunderbolt drive" ??? Is it a HDD or a high quality SSD?

 

Currently a LaCie Little Big Drive - LaCie - LaCie Little Big Disk - Thunderbolt - the spinning drive model not the SSD model.

 

What were you really expecting from two 5400rpm drives?

 

Hurry up through the door and wait at the kitchen.

 

That Lacie can be configured to RAID0 or mirror. The latter would yield relatively slow performance. You want the RAID0 setup to get the full advertised speed.

 

The fully advertised speed on the HDD drives is 190MB/s. That is using the AJA System Test synthetic benchmark. Real world conditions will be much lower than that. I do think it should be a little higher than 85, but not much. Maybe around 120.

 

That was it - I didn't realize that someone else had broken the RAID on the drive and set it has a simple disk partition. I changed both disks to RAID0 and transfer speed went to ~160MB/s

Also hooked up an SSD (Crucial M4) as a single drive and got ~200MB/s - the Crucial isn't the fastest SSD so I might try a Samsing 840 later today.

 

The drive capacity (as seen by the OS) should have also doubled. BTW, your result is very fast but I remember seeing a benchmark for the single 500GB 7200RPM drive that Lenovo puts into the current crop of T430s and X230... and its almost as fast as your RAID.

I haven't done any tests yet (just got my T430s today!) but my 840 Pro SSD seems insanely fast in this system, perhaps twice as fast as the T420s and the SSD that came with it.

 

See Acer Unexpectedly Introduces New SSD Form Factor In S7 Ultrabook | The SSD Review for an interesting article on I/O speed innovation.

 

I've got a T430s arriving this week, and I think I might have messed up a bit on the OS. I went with Win8 non-pro, since I've never used Win7 pro (except at work of course). I'll be adding my own RAM and SSD, and wanted to do a clean install of Win8, but can't find any legal Win8 ISO's around (don't have MSDN account)

I was thinking of doing the $40 retail upgrade, since I read that would work, but unless I am reading everything wrong, the $40 promo is for Win8 Pro upgrade, so it wouldn't work on my non-pro license. Anyone know if MS has a cheap non-pro Win8 upgrade? I haven't even seen non-pro upgrade listed....very odd.

Ideas?

 

Here's an idea:

1. Go to Lenovo Support - Home (US)
2. Notice the Windows 8 upgrade promo on the right side of the page. Click it.
3. When you get to the upgrade resources page, you'll notice the promotion called the "Windows Upgrade Offer" that goes to Windows Upgrade Offer - Landing Page. Click that. This is the $14.99 upgrade promotion.
4. After you pay the fee, pay very close attention to the upgrade and download options. See Download Windows 8 ISO From Microsoft Using Product Key for instructions on getting the .ISO.

Hope that helps,

Thor

 

Thanks....although technically I don't meet the criteria since my laptop isn't coming with Win7, but I guess $15 is better then $40 do get a real disc/iso. Pity MS makes this so hard to get a copy of install media.

 

Interesting piece on Lenovo if anyone is interested. Is Lenovo set to dominate the global user electronics market?!

Chinese industry: From guard shack to global giant | The Economist

 

Thanks for the support and I apologize for not replying sooner.

That said, I finally received the refund from my second mistake! If I had to say one thing nice about Lenovo other than the quality of their products, it's that their refund process is fairly smooth (though not too quick). They did not try any tricks in order to keep some of my cash and there was no hassle when asking for the refunds.

So I'm finally Lenovo free after 6 months of grief. I feels like I'm declaring myself cancer-free If anyone cares, I brought a Asus U47A-RS51 which is a consumer grade laptop. It has about 90% of the features of the T430s and it even feels lighter. Unfortunately, I do not like the keyboard or the huge trackpad, but for half the price of the Lenovo, I can live with it until something better comes out.

Thanks again, guys. You were actually the best part of this experience and I'm kind of sad that I will no longer be among your ranks. Take care.

 

My keyboard feels loose in the front left and right corners. When I press keys in/near the arrow cluster the whole keyboard platform in that spot moves up and down, creating a vibrating sensation.

Anyone else here experience this... or is your keyboard sturdy in these spots? Another person at lenovo's forum site seems to have a looser keyboard on his T430 than mine.

I'm gonna compare it to a T420s tomorrow.

 

Variations in the parts (in this case, keyboard) and in quality of product assembly (sometimes called "fit and finish"). Other people's experiences may not be the same as yours: they cannot deny nor confirm what you have observed.

The "keyboard flex" problem has been with ThinkPads over many generations. It indicates a persistent lack of improvement.

 

Better late than never to give an update but, i yust installed a SSD, RAM and the extra battery(3-cell) I have to say it's good and fast now. Batterylife is about 5-6 hours. Tried the distro linux mint 14 KDE on it and holy moly it's fast. Fun. So happy with the upgrades indeed. The SSD is a Samsung 830 and crucia RAM. Was about to buy 16bg but 8 bg is fine for my tasks. Happy with this when all comes to all.

 

Got my T430s in, haven't installed the 16Gb RAM yet though. (Went 16 instead of 8 since sometimes I run a couple of VM's, and it was only like $30 more, so figured it wouldn't hurt). HAven't ordered a SSD replacement yet, but will.

I initially tried the X230, but couldn't deal with the trackpad, so returned it for this. So far, I like it. Screen is OK, was worried by some of the stories here, but it's OK to use, not really noticing any problems with the LCD. Not too heavy either, which is nice.

Really wanted to get the X1C, but the cost and lack of upgrades was a killer. A X2C that is a bit thicker, with a normal SSD and RAM, would be awesome Plus it would probably help with cooling as well. Well, I can dream i guess. I could care less about a super slim laptop, weight is bigger deal then an extra .25" thickness..

 

See: T431s / X230s. Thats maybe exactly what you want.

 

Hi
I recently bought a lenovo T30s (uyet to receive it)

I am planning to get a SSD but have no idea about it
I will be using the SSD to install windows OS primarily. Not sure what kind of space I should be looking for?

Also what else do I need to install a SSD on my t30s?

Is there any instructions to install the SSD? (I have never opened a laptop)

I have read some the posts here and it looks like the Samsung SSD is best out there.

Please recommend. Any advice is appreciated.

 

They really need to get Lenovo products in stores - I blindly went with the T430s, unable to feel it in my hands and get a sense of everyday use with it. No worries as the thing is fantastic, weighs a lot less than I feel it should. I just got back from Office Depot and saw someone picking up one of their Ideapads and felt that if the T430s was sitting next to it, they'd go with it in a heartbeat.

Only annoyance is that I didn't get the backlit keyboard, when it clearly said it came with it (of course I didn't have a screenshot of the item on Lenovo.com and nothing in the receipt process shows you the specs of the machine once the process is done).


Anyway - anyone know what is required for getting an SSD in the DVD drivebay? Looking on Amazon for DVD Caddy's doesn't inspire confidence in compatibility with the T430s. Was probably going to go with the 830 (maybe 840) and the stock HD that came with the laptop.

 

UltraBay HDD caddy adapter for T430s? This one or this one or this one.

 

I think the newmodeus.com caddy is over priced. I would go with the second link from the nimitz ebay seller. I have their 12.7mm caddy for my W510 and it has been working very nicely for over a year.

 

Yeah, I just wanted to lay out the choices. I usually buy from the vendor behind the third link, in New York, as shipping from there is faster.

(To be fair, though, the newmodeus.com part is lighter and has better fit-and-finish. Irrelevant attributes if you only want something that works and is inexpensive.)

 

I bought a T430s last month, and I have a couple questions about how the build quality of my laptop compares. I've never owned a Thinkpad before, and I was wondering how normal these are (probably it's just paranoia about new electronics). Firstly, the trackpoint buttons are a bit looser than the buttons below the track pad, especially when I press or touch lightly the outer endges. Secondly, and this is a little hard to describe, but the screen doesn't sit exactly in place. It doesn't move when I type or affect my usage, but it does have a very small amount of wobble, maybe a milimeter or two, on its hinges when I try to move it lightly with my hand. This is unlike some other laptops I've used, where the screen sits in place pretty stiffly.

 

If one talks about general durability of ThinkPads, I may agree: B+.

But if one talks about manufacturing quality, in particular fit-and-finish, of ThinkPads, I must say that it is not consistent: C. Two ThinkPads of the same model sitting side by side (which is the case in my office environment) may feel totally different. There are noticeable variations in the stiffness of the hinges, the looseness of the latch, the tactile feedback of the keyboard, the creakiness of the palmrest, the noise levels of the fan...

So, I'm not surprised when reading your post. Trouble is, certain members may show disbelief, reporting that their ThinkPads are "fine." Worse, they may hint that you're a whiner.