T440s up on Lenovo website (IPS Screen, 1080p)

Hi guys. Could you confirm that this is a reasonable configuration to order?

i5-4300U
FHD
GeForce GT 730M 1GB
12GB RAM
512GB SSD
Inter wireless 7260AC
Backlit keyboard, camera
Smart card reader, fingerprint reader
3+3 cell barreries
Planning to install Linux on it (either OpenSuse or Ubuntu)

I'm in UK and it's showing £1,636.17 total. Quite a lot, but I'm considering this as a long-term investment (I'm still using the T42, was waiting for a decent screen on the T models).

I haven't seen anyone comment on the Nvidia version of T440s. Should I expect loads of heat and low battery life, or will Optimus handle it?

It seems popular to buy extra memory and a drive separately to save money. For me it's showing £69.6 for the 8GB of memory and £310.5 for the SSD. On Amazon the memory is £63.5 and the disks between £280-£350. Doesn't seem like a big saving. Or could you recommend specific alternatives that have a better quality/price ratio?

Thanks!

 

I am currently running ubuntu with an nvidia/optimus setup on my old laptop, and my battery life is terrible and I have constant problems with the drivers.

I went for the plain Intel 4400 configuration for my new T440s

 

I actually found it faster shipping when ordering directly online and even got a bigger discount. I believe the salespeople are on commission so they will not give you the best price they can find. That's why they always try to upsell you on accessories like laptop cases, extended warranties, etc.

 

I didn't order the 730M because of the same concerns you have. If you're planning to switch GPUs in Linux I think Bumblebee might be a bit of a pain to configure. Also the 730M isn't enough of an improvement IMO and you'll never be able to hook it up to a dock.

You can get an 8GB 1.35V SODIMM here for £51 delivered. And a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO here for £275 which should save you some cash and leave you with a 500GB 7200rpm drive for free.

Also, if you aren't already signed up to Quidco, do so and click through to Lenovo in a clean session. You'll get a 10% discount code and 3% cashback..

 

Anyone notice the US website seems to have gone crazy? The lowest base configuration disappeared, leaving a touchscreen $1400 version as the bottom, with a $1800 version apparently replacing the $1100 base model that used to be on there? I swear the configuration I looked at on Monday (FHD, 4300U) which was $1500 is suddenly priced at $2000, and now it would apparently be cheaper to get a touchscreen model!?

 

Clearly an error. They'll probably fix it soon.

 

Thanks for the very helpful suggestions!

Regarding Nvidia: The same configuration without Nvidia graphics is only £45 cheaper. My logic is that if I can get the drivers working properly (with Bumblebee), that's great; if not, I can just switch to using only integrated graphics from the bios and I'll be no worse off (I do hope T440s has that bios option, older T series seems to have it). If driver support improves in the next couple of years, I can try again. Plus, I intend to keep a separate Windows partition, and I can use the graphics there. I don't plan to use a dock. Does that sound like a sensible strategy?

 

I am also looking at this laptop to dual boot Linux/Windows, but I also don't want to be messing around with the Bumblebee drivers, or whatever, so I am just going with the Intel video (Besides I don't game, or need the extra power, or the extra heat, or the battery drain). I also want the 4300 because I will be running virtualization, FHD screen because I hate Lenovo's standard screens with the screen door effect, ordering the ram (Kingston) and SSD (Samsung Pro 256 due to its reliability/speed) separately, same wireless card as it doesn't cost much more, camera, readers, and 3+3 for the batteries to keep the weight down. I would be running Linux Mint Debian and/or Centos.

 

This option does not exist anymore. The new implementation of Optimus is greatly different from the old one.

 

If you are planning on running linux, I would definitely not be buying an optimus machine... its just not worth the PITA

 

Does anyone notice the price change on the T440s? The "base model" cost more than $1400. I am glad I got mine at $1150.

 

"soon", as in about a week if past website snafus are anything to go by!

 

I do not really understand what they are thinking..it was high before now it is prohibitive.

 

+1. I have totally lost interest at this point. It would have to be an absolutely perfect machine even at the previous price, which it is not. Light bleed, lack of separate touchpad buttons, etc. Once again I become very interested in a Lenovo product and it all goes to hell.

 

i wonder if its a move to make it look like $1400 is the msrp, so when Black Friday comes they can mark it down to only the pricing we've been getting now.

 

The base mode is now a touchscreen. WTH? I don't need a touchscreen in a laptop.

 

I agree completely, this is why I specifically waited for Haswell ThinkPads, to avoid dealing with discrete graphics. I think the nVidia driver situation is better than AMD on Linux but switchable graphics are still weirdly niche enough that support on Linux is just awful. As it turns out HD 4400 isn't a huge jump over HD 4000 but it's decent and I have a gaming PC anyway, my main concern was just driving multiple monitors at potentially high resolutions, as well as video acceleration.

 

That's a shame. I wouldn't want a touchscreen even if it was included at no charge. It's occasionally a nice gimmick, but it doesn't make up for the weight, thickness, power consumption, and reduced contrast ratio when compared to non-touch.

 

The model on the right next to the "base" model is a non touch. They got rid of the 500GB harddrive. But if you drop down to the 128GB the price drops 150. I would not hold my breath on the hard drive coming back. Ssd is the standard now. Sucks that it costs more but it makes sense to have SSd. So don't think anything is "clearly" a mistake as someone put it.

 

Actually, delivery was today Writing this on it now. A lot lighter than I thought it would be, even with the 6 cell battery in it. And the 6 cell doesn't stick out of the back, it elevates it a little bit, which is a positive thing anyhow

 

It's already been discussed why elevating the back creates a very bad angle to the keyboard for your wrists. It's not healthy like that.

 

Any laptop is bad for your wrists. lol Most importantly, the user said it was positive thing for him/her. Let it be.

 

Hi All, just realised the T440s I have on order is coming with the same Mobile Broadband card that was in my T410s!! Made in 2011!!. Yes there is no 4G card available - it is a 3G card being shipped.... anyone know how easy it will be upgrade to a 4G card if one becomes available?

 

Come on, guys. The $1870 configuration is identical to the one that was $1200 a couple of days ago. Would Lenovo consciously raise the price of that model by $670? That's just preposterous.

 

Holy cow they really did hike up the prices! I had a configuration spec'd out ever since the 440s showed up, and it was $2079... now the identical thing is $2740! What are they doing? It was already rather pricey.

 

Huh, really? That's kind of lame. Is it built in to all of them? I don't recall having an option to choose that when I ordered.

 

I think they changed some of the configurations around and eliminated the lowest cost non-touch HDD units. However the config that I ordered (FHD touch, 500GB HDD) still came to the same price as before (before applying discounts)

 

Okay, ignore the model listed on the far right - it's clearly messed up. I chose one of the others and ended up with the same $2079 as before.

 

The medical literature does not support any link between wrist complications and typing. I got bored and checked out uptodate and Gray's 40th. Just want to stamp out what seems to be a common belief here that 'bad typing posture' leads to problems like carpal tunnel syndrome.

I have the 6-cell as well and the amount it sticks out is quite small and I enjoy typing on it. The groupthink here seems to agree it'll make you hyperextend while typing! Oh well, should probably get back to studying. Anyway, type the way that is the quickest and feels the most comfortable for you and your setup.

 

The T440s has finally become available here in Switzerland and as I suspected, it's expensive. Yeah, I know... that's nothing that hasn't been posted before.

I've waited months for this laptop to become available (since the first page of this thread), and I've just priced-up the following spec:
Full HD with touch-screen (the only option available to us)
i7-4600U
12GB RAM
Win8 (not Pro)
Intel 440 graphics ( i.e., the non-NVidia GPU option)
256GB SSD
3-cell back battery (46.4 Whr)

Total price: 2510.68 francs (~£1700, $2740)

As a previous poster pointed out, the upgrades that I've chosen aren't that expensive when you compare them to external, standalone prices. Also, the cache drive option isn't available in this market.

If I compare this to the rMBP. Yeah, there's arguments about scaling on Windows, upgradeability, etc., but let's just compare the specs that we're getting for the price:

15" high-res screen
i7-4750HQ
16GB RAM
Intel 5200 graphics
256GB PCIe drive (~50% faster than standard SSDs)
71.8 Whr battery

Total price: 2469.00 francs (~£1675 , $2700)

So for a slightly cheaper price I can get a better spec... from Apple!

What I'd be missing out on:

Trackpoint (it's debatable how useable the trackpoint is on the current generation, now that the dedicated buttons have been removed)
Best-in-class keyboard (having used both, the Apple keyboard is about 90% as good as the ThinkPad's)
Touch-screen (a lot of posters here have said meh but everyone I know who has one says that it changes they way they use their laptop)
A lighter laptop (~0.7lbs)

What I'd be gaining:

Best-in-class touchpad
Larger screen
Faster laptop

As I wrote back in post 2545 on this thread, I had the previous-gen MacBook Pro and sold it because it was too hot and heavy as a consequence of being over-spec'd for what I use it for, but even now I'm looking at pretty much the bottom-spec rMBP (the only upgrade is the RAM) and this generation is lighter, thinner, and cheaper.

I'm really finding it difficult to not go back to buying another MBP, particularly when Lenovo are asking for more money for something with a touchpad that sounds like a budget Clevo.

I'm certainly not going to buy the T440s now. At this stage I'm going to try and hold on until the specs for the X3 are released. My hope is that something that thin might have a 'static' touchpad, that is one which doesn't flap up and down. I'd be prepared to pay this premium price for something with the thinness and lightness of the X3 - particularly if Lenovo have blessed it with a PCIe drive.

Edit: Of course, I'd also need to buy a Windows license if I purchased a MBP Though in my case I already have a valid Win8 upgrade license which is currently unused.

 

Wow - great tip - thanks.

Does anybody know if there any other Lenovo promos coming up for UK CTOs?

S

 

We just recived a couple T440s's - i7 FHD screen (not touch) 6 cell batteries, etc. Upgrade on my own to 12GB of RAM (for about 1/3 the price from Lenovo) and a 1TB Samsung SSD (for not much more than Lenovo wanted for a 256 - which was the largest offered at the time of order.) It saves a bit of hassle to buy them from Lenovo, and they get covered under the extended warranty, but RAM I'm not paying that kind of markup for and we needed more drive space than that. Since they stopped offering the platter drives, it makes pricing a bit harder on the drive because you have to buy an SSD from them no matter what (at least on the non-touch models). We'd buy them with no drives if we could!

Anyhow, if the Apple/Windows thing doesn't come too heavily into the equation, I'd buy the MBP for sure. This is a nice machine, but both of ours still came with bad screens (one with a line, one with a bright white spot) and you won't touch the MBP's battery life (looks like 4-6 hours for me, which is just enough to be useful, but not enough to totally change how you use the device). Keyboard is good, probably a bit of a step backwards from the old style (the left hand positioning is a bit off for me) but I've learned over the years I can adapt to different keyboards pretty fast and I don't worry about them as much as I used to. Overall this is a good one.

I like the new touchpad a lot. I've used the trackpoint exclusively for years, but I've grown accustomed to the Mac touchpad, and this is the closest thing I've come to that experience on a PC, so this is a big win for me. On that note, one thing this touchpad is screaming for is a mac-like gesture to show all programs. Can anyone recommend a way to do that somehow? I've used third-party apps in the past and the experience wasn't good enough for me to stick with them, so unless you have a great one even the alt-tab menu would be an ok trigger.

Edit: Nevermind - found it in the Mouse settings - it's already there with a four finger swipe! Seems to work ok too!

 

So I noticed a count down to the Black Friday sale on the Lenovo website, which looks like it will start a week early, but nothing on the Barnes & Noble site. Anyone that's followed this in previous years know how it's been handled? Don't want to buy the Lenovo website sale a week early if on actual Black Friday, B&N will offer a better deal.

 

Oh no

Are you 100% sure about this? I haven't found any references online confirming it, only people saying that it "should" have that option, as T430s had it.

 

Yes. The T440p does not have it either, and it is also not in the User guide, where all BIOS options are listed.

 

There go my hopes for having a decent laptop with discrete graphics...

One more question: Has it been confirmed or denied that the Samsung 840 Pro SSD is not compatible with T440s? I've read some rumors, and someone in this thread ordered both to test them, but I couldn't find the outcome posted anywhere.

 

840 EVO Series installed here. I almost ordered the Pro. What was the potential issue?

 

I think the "rumors" were from a Google translation of a Chinese forum post, and it was just one guy who apparently had the issue and a lot of people asking questions.

I believe the issue was that he couldn't boot from it. I doubt this is actually an issue.

 

The user guide does seem to confirm this but I wouldn't put it past Lenovo to not keep the documentation up to date. The Nvidia option has only recently been released after all.

I don't think anyone on the forums actually has a 730M machine in their possession yet who could confirm 100%? Probably too early - I think the first ones will be delivered around the 25th.

 

This is a known issue for the T440s and the X240s, and maybe more ThinkPads of the Haswell generation. There were mulitple people in the chinese forums with these problems, in the German forums some also already had problems with the T440s and the Samsung 840 Pro. This problem is real, not just rumors.

The SSD stops working and can´t be used anymore after some days.

T440p has the same implementation of Optimus and this option also does not exist there as well.

 

I think it may be more widespread than that and worse than just a boot issue:

Translated lenovo forum post

Hope they get it sorted soon as I have a 512GB 840 Pro waiting to go in mine..

 

Ouch! Glad I dodged that bullet by choosing the EVO. I hope these are OK!

 

Fingers crossed for you! It's a weird one because Lenovo use the OEM version of the 840 TLC as standard fit in the T440s. Maybe they have a custom FW? You'd think that with Samsung as a partner they'd have discovered the issues and ironed them out by now.

 

Oh damn, that second post seems to be with a regular 840, so it was not just the Pro with the issue. In that case it's not even clear if the 840 EVO might have the same issue since those are so new. Is anything known about why this problem happens and if it's limited to Samsung SSDs and which models? I was going to buy a 256GB 840 EVO but I guess I'll wait for a bit to see how it goes. Well, my desktop could use an SSD so maybe I'll just order one anyway and if it has issues hopefully I can just put it in my desktop. Otherwise I may just go with an Intel SSD instead, no offense to other brands but I really only have seen Samsung and Intel drives reviewed well with consistent performance and reliability. Intel is a bit pricier but peace of mind has some value IMO.

 

According to: Google Translate The EVO SSDs are not problematic. (to make it clear, Campuspoint is a reseller, they wrote him an E-Mail that they also had these problems with the 840 PRO and that they have no problems with the EVO SSDs).

 

I heard from the official website or at least lenovo page that the potential reason they don't have GPU available because the t440s don't have a heatsink. They don't want to ruin the US fanbase by selling one with that kind of problem or i'm I mistaken?

What is preventing me from buying this is because I can't get one with decrete GPU.

 

I don´t know from where this information is, but it is nonsense. The T440s of course has a heatsink.

The real reason to not offer the GPU is the lack of a Dockingport. I hope they solve this problem with the next Txxxs.

 

So I guess I wont be going for a Samsung SSD.

Hopefully I can get a 480gb M500 for less than $300 on black friday. But I may still pick up an Evo if the price is right.

 

any idea why they offer GPU in non-US countries? what is so special about the docking port?

 

Same here. Specifically less than $250 would be great.