Initial Impressions:
Keyboard: I enjoy the keyboard more every day. It is taking some getting used to as far as the new placement/shape of the Delete, Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys for me, but in a few days, this keyboard will seem like second nature.
The tactile feel of the keys is wonderful. They are even snappier than the keys on the classic ThinkPad keyboard from my T420 (which is actually a T60 keyboard... I replaced the T420 keyboard on Day 1 because I didn't like the slight spring that the perforated back design allowed). Overall, my typing speed has not suffered at all (with the exception of when I use those keys mentioned earlier, since I'm still having to relearn the muscle memory for those).
The keyboard sound is satisfying, but not overly clacky as some classic ThinkPad keyboards have been prone to. If you are a loud typist, you will make a lot of noise with this keyboard. Try to press more gently.
The backlit keyboard is very nice, and the ThinkLight may be a touch brighter compared to previous models. It certainly does seem to provide better illumination compared to my T420.
The audio quality is noticeably improved over my T420. The mid and high frequencies are much crisper and well-defined. Obviously, low frequencies suffer on such small speakers, but you can't expect too much from a notebook of this size.
Although the screen fails to reach the stellar quality of an IPS display, for typical usage scenarios (looking at the screen straight on), saturation is bright without being overly so. At the highest brightness level, the screen is somewhat overwhelming in even a brightly lit room. I find myself having to turn it down to 10 or 12 (out of 15) to use it comfortably. Outdoors, the increased brightness and lack of a glossy screen makes the T430s usable, even in direct sunlight.
As far as battery life goes, I let it run down last night with some mindless web surfing. Got about 3.5 hours with the low backlight on, the Power Source Optimized power profile, and screen brightness set at 7.
If you have a really light unplugged workload, you could tweak the power settings to get considerably more battery life out of this system. I wanted to test a no-tweak use case last night.
If you require significant spans of time without being plugged in with your T430s, your best bet is to get an additional 3 cell Ultrabay battery.
One welcome change that I've noticed is that the USB ports are not nearly as tight as previous ThinkPads. On my T42, T60, T400, and T420, I have at times struggled to insert a USB flash drive or other USB cable into the USB ports, due to extremely tight engineering tolerances.
The new T430 ports are not loose, by any means, but they do allow the insertion of USB devices with much less force.
One notable design change in the T430s (at least compared to my T430 - I've not had an s-designated model before) is the fact that the palm rest, speaker cover, and top rear panel (immediately under the opened screen) are all a single piece of plastic. With previous models, the palmrest was a separate piece. Overall, this provides a somewhat sturdier appearance, and eliminates some of the flex from the removable palmrest that I've experienced with previous models.
This does suggest, though, that replacing the palm rest might take a bit more time, compared to previous versions, since the keyboard will need to be removed. For most ThinkPad fans, this shouldn't pose too much of a problem. The ability to access both memory slots, the Wireless card, and the WWAN/mSATA slot from the single bay on the bottom of the machine is a welcome addition. It made the installation of the mSATA drive and additional memory very easy to accomplish.
A word of caution: I made the mistake of using a 16GB USB memory key to create my system Recovery Media. Unfortunately, the drive that the Recovery Media Creator produced was not bootable, so I was unable to restore the factory partition to my SSD. The Recovery Media Creator will only allow you to create one set of recovery media (likely an issue with Microsoft Licensing), so if it fails (as mine did), you are left with no alternative other than to request recovery media from Lenovo.
With previous systems, it was possible to restore the system to factory state through Rescue and Recovery, and then burn a second set of Recovery Media. With this system, however, that is no longer possible, as the system must place a marker somewhere on the recovery partition itself mandating that no further recovery media may be created. Overall, this is a huge inconvenience, especially since Lenovo's tool failed to create bootable recovery media. Word to the wise: Create your recovery media on discs rather than on flash media.
I ended up performing a fresh install of Windows 7 to SSD, then installing the drivers and necessary software from the SWTOOLS folder on the original hard drive. As has been the case with previous systems immediately after launch, the ThinkVantage System Update tool doesn't completely detect all of the hardware and supported software on the T430s. Many of the drivers and software need to be manually installed, as TVSU simply doesn't recommend them as packages.
With the fresh load of Windows 7 Pro on the
256GB Samsung 830 SSD, the system boots in about 24 seconds. 7 of those are before Windows starts to load, while the system is POSTing.
Overal, I am pleased with the T430s. Although the weight and dimension difference compared to my T420 seem slight on paper, in daily use, the machine is less of a beast to lug around.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
