T500 Initial Impressions

My laptop shipped 10 days before the estimated ship date, came straight from China, and got to my house just today. I've unpacked it and I'm typing this on it. I bought this T500 to replace my R51.

THE GOOD
-MAN, is this thing built solid!
-The fingerprint reader is cool.
-I like the "ThinkVantage" software as opposed to the old "Access IBM" stuff on my R51.
-The speakers sound nice. They're not positioned on the front of the laptop like they are on my R51.
-The thinklight is white and not yellow! Good grief, I hate yellow lighting of all sorts.
-I've got Bluetooth at last!

THE BAD
-The hard drive is making a constant, high pitched whine. It's irritating the hell out of me.
-The screen isn't anywhere near as good as my R51's, but I knew that going in.
-The keyboard flex on this is incredible. I thought they corrected this already...or is this the "corrected" version?
-Vista is seriously slow as molasses. My R51, with its 1.6 GHz processor and 512 mb of DDR1, and all of the Access IBM bloatware still on it, EASILY outpaces my T500.
-DIE, UAC, DIE! I =hate= these stupid "allow/deny" prompts.
-The Internet seems really slow for some reason and it drops in and out at the same places where my R51 holds on to the connection just fine.

To be honest, I'm kind of shocked. I knew it wouldn't be as good as my R51 in some ways, but I didn't think it would turn out like this. I'll have to contact Lenovo and see what they have to say. If I can't resolve it, I'll probably send it back.

 

Sorry to hear that you're disappointed with your new T500. There are a few things you could do to fix some of your problems though.

-You could call Lenovo and request a T61 replacement keyboard, though I think it's much harder to get one nowadays thanks to the "fix" they made.

-A clean install might help with Vista, but I just uninstalled a few programs and disabled some stuff; runs pretty well to me

-Turn off UAC

-Update the wifi driver. That seems to fix the internet dropping

 

do a clean install for sure. new lenovo computers come with 90+ processes running when you start it right up. Clean install very much helped me when it came to speed.

 

by clean install do you mean format and instal windows and not with their own return to factory condition format?

cause that will otherwise be no different.

 

Well, I gave Lenovo a call. The lady I talked with said that no issues exist with the T500 keyboard and that I couldn't receive a T61 keyboard as a replacement because it's a different model. Lucky me. She also said that no issues exist with the hard drive and that nothing could be done for that other than updating drivers.

This keyboard is just ridiculous. It flexes so much that it feels like it belongs on one of the crappy Acer laptops I saw on clearance at Office Depot. I guess I could just up and buy a T61 keyboard from eBay, but I shouldn't have to do that for a new machine!

Vista is a lousy, stinkin' pig of an OS. I'm going to wipe it and put 7 on. Betcha that cures my speed problem!

 

which country did you call from and did you talk to sales rep or tech rep. didnt we hear someone say recently here they got them to deliver a replacement keyboard

nobody should have to pay extra for a surposedly top of the line brand new notebook that, wouldnt you know it, is surposed to be thinkpad.

I also find how certain customers adding stubs and modding their laptops to create better support under the flexing keyboard to be very saddening and not to mention shockingly dangerous cause it can catch fire. Its just dispicable they would let their customers go down that route though, to modify their product and to self justify to themselves that it is ok to have a defective product when they had just paid from upwards of 1-2k USD for the product. which is why they should have designed the product properly from the get go. failing that, they should have at least continued to offer the keyboard fix that seems to do the job partially and at least shows due dilligence on the companys part that theyve tried all resolve.

I was following the developments before. I heard about the T400 problem. naturally the companys first response was denial in technical format: that is they have not heard of any documented cases, blah blah. Then they started offering T61 replacement keyboards and I thought wow lenovo is offering some first class service here. To me it was them acknowledging they had a design mistake and finding a best customer satisfaction solution. I totally respected that. I later find they added new changes to the design of new models. More respect. But sadly they failed to entirely fix the problem, and still ships out with the weak support keyboard. Now that I'm seeing them turn people down on offers of new T61 keyboards is kinda disappointing to me, especially if theyre going to go on the tried routine of denial too of knowing any problems.

Also, I disagree with the official line justifying the design of the extra holes in the keyboard as'weight saving measures'. First of all, its all about structural strength. True that you can use less material and still maintain relatively high structural strength to bending and torsion for these light loading applications compared to a solid block of the same material and cross section if you had designed it properly. This is why the 'I' beams are used to build modern concrete buildings. Minimal use of material while having higher bending torsion and shear strength to weight ratio compared with a full block of the same material and cross section. When people do weight saving measures by removing total material volume used they usually add rib like support structures that effectively increases or maintains roughly the same second moment of inertia of the cross section as it was before the materials were removed to effectively make the structure the same or close to the same compliance but with less material. I'm looking at these new keyboard pictures with I'd say 40% less material used in them compared to the T61 but with absolutely no thickness increase or any other measure otherwise taken to maintain a level of structural strength. To me that sounds like 40% less materials used which when you think about mass production is big bucks. Remember, mcdonalds take into consideration the making of their fast food to the accuracy of microseconds which sounds pathetic but on the grand scheme and on that global scale affects bottom line. Also, the 40% less material in the keyboard material (looks like its Al?) makes practically no difference in weight savings uespecially on a laptop well around 4-5 pounds and wont be making any headlines on being light weight any time soon.

However its not even about the strength of the keyboard as much, as it is almost entirely about the support under it. I took a look at my T43 keyboard and its the filled keyboard kind. same as the t61. I would say my keyboard is extremely flimsy. geez I'd wonder how flimsy the ones with holes will feel. Yet my keyboard is hard as a rock when secured on my laptop. Anyway its about the support under the keyboard which is whats the problem in the t400. They should have added the silicone support thing that the T43 has to prop up the keyboard and provide it with a strong foundation.

In this case of the t400 keyboard I think the issue is first terrible foundation support and second lower bending strength of keyboard leading to a terrible keyboard.

They could have done the whole material removal 'weight saving' measure if they had put up a solid foundation for the keyboard which they totally failed to do as is apparent in the videos i've seen of the keyboard flexing. They can do this again for their next designs but they better give it enough support.

 

I had a T500 and had the same keyboard flex. I talked to a tech support person and got the T61 keyboard replacment. You need the EXACT FRU model number. I don't have that here at work, but I can post it later if you can't find it. I was able to get a T61 keyboard sent out and it made a world of difference.

 

Any chance of getting that keyboard flex on youtube? I would love to see how it compares to mine.

 

I searched these forums for "T61 keyboard FRU" and came up with a thread where someone said that the "NMB" (no clue what that is) T61 keyboard FRU is 42T3143.

I called up Lenovo again. I'm calling from the US, by the way, and I always get put through to the Atlanta, Georgia call center. The guy I talked to this time was a LOT more helpful than the lady I talked to before. I gave him the same talk I gave the lady I called earlier and he was all set to send me out a T61 keyboard even before I gave him the FRU. Unfortunately, my registration information hadn't showed up in their database so he couldn't process the order and he told me to call back tomorrow.

In regards to the hard drive noise, he told me to try taking out the hard drive, powering on the computer, and seeing if the noise was still there. I took it out and, lo and behold, the noise vanished. Then, said that I wouldn't be able to get it replaced unless I ran the BIOS hard drive diagnostic tool and something went bad, so I put it through that. Well, guess what? Nothing turned up wrong. I guess I just got lucky and scored a noisy Fujitsu drive. Go me.

Oh well. Hopefully, I'll at least have a fast system once I wipe Vista.

I'll shoot a video of my keyboard if you're interested, hax0r. I'll post the link when it's up.

 

Good for you on the keyboard.

I'm looking forward to your video. I think it will help me decide if it's worth pursuing replacement for mine. Thanks.

 

Give Vista a few days to "settle down". Not only does it need to learn your usage patterns, but it's also likely downloading and installing updates in the background, and doing other background tasks that would make it seem really slow. My T500 is pretty much identical to yours, and it performs very very well in Vista - completely destroys any of my other computers.

Regarding UAC - I would suggest disabling it for the first week or two of using your new laptop, and then, when you've installed most of your software and moved around most of your files and stuff, re-enable it. UAC is actually a very effective protection measure that makes Vista much more secure than XP or earlier versions of Windows.

 

Lenovo doesn't give you a Vista disk, so you can't do a clean install.
The only way to do a clean install is to buy a Vista license.

 

I chatted with one of the tech, you can request a copy of the original OS. You have to call the tech support.

 

Operating system, or Recovery Disks? There is a big difference. The 3 Recovery Disks do not allow you to only install Vista. You have to install the factory set-up. There used to be a Custom Install option where you could select which applications you wanted to install, but no longer.
I was incorrectly told by at least 3 Lenovo techs that I would be able to do a Custom Install. The Help file, while using the Recovery Disks, even describes the Custom Install procedure, incorrectly. Lenovo's documentation and Tech's don't even have it right yet.

 

hi there, I recently got a T500 and I am experiencing the same problems are you are, but I did get my keyboard replace...and they finally sent me the right keyboard the 3rd time haha. The first one came bent anyways. But yea...about that high pitched noise, it annoys the crap outta me and it's not the hard drive. I thought it was my hard drive at first because it only appears when the HD light lights up, but after some more testing, I realized it's not. I can't tell you what it is though...I just sent my laptop in for repair and hope they can fix the issue. It's currently on "hold for customer information"...dunno why, but I'll call on Monday to see what's going on. Btw, I have a SSD.

 

No, that's the recovery disks, not the actual OS disks.

 

I confirmed that my hard disk was making the noise by removing it and booting the laptop. When I did that, there was no noise. I just ended up getting a loud drive and there's not much I can do but get used to it.

I wiped my Vista Basic partition and did a clean install of the Windows 7 RC and everything is running a lot better. It's not perfect - I'm having trouble getting my wireless working - but it's otherwise a lot better than what I had.

Hax0r, I tried shooting my keyboard's flexing but it just doesn't show up on the video like it does IRL for whatever reason. Still want me to put it up?

On an unrelated note, I happened to glance down at the buttons meant to work with the touchpad and I noticed that the left button is smooshed down. Lucky for me, I use the trackpoint almost exclusively, but that's a definite hardware defect and I'll have to bring that up when I call Lenovo back tomorrow for the T61 keyboard.

 

but did u put in another hard drive? I think the noise is not from the HD but instead whatever processes happen in the motherboard/cpu to read/write in the hard drive

 

No, just disable automatic updates and UAC and then run Windows Update manually overnight.

Also, Vista tweakguide:

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

 

Or maybe you simply don't know how to tame an OEM disk image? Vista is safe, stable, smooth and fast. And that's the majority consensus on NBR. Maybe it's indexing the drive? Right-click on C in Computer, properties, and uncheck indexing - bottom checkbox. Betcha that cures your speed problem!
Could also bo bloat, though that shouldn't be an issue on a ThinkPad... then again.

And listen to MinightSun. Good tips.

Vista is a self-optimizing operating system. It thinks for you.
It even analyzes it's own boot logs and modiies boot files for a speedier boot next time. And it preloads commonly used files into the RAM for speedier software access. And it offloads the RAM it takes when you need it. Free RAM is wasted RAM.

And UAC is vital. There's an excellent post somewhere summarizing why turning it off is complete idiocy... big, important security measure. Guess what, other major operating systems have their own UAC hardwired in.

Beware tweak guides, many are prepared by people who have no idea how the OS work. Don't disable any services, for Pentium's sake...

 

The one big disappoint I have with my T500 is the LED WSGA 1280x800 display.
I believe the problem is due to poor pixel resolution.

Bright backgrounds, like this web site, look grainy. Worse, when I use Excel and set the Zoom/font to 80% or lower the letters/numbers become almost unreadable because of the lack of pixels. On all my other Dell laptops I never had a problem with using Excel. I am not sure if this is because of the 1280x800 screen or the T500 pixel resolution. My Dell's native resolutions were all higher than 1280x800, but I always increased the resolutions lower than the Dell's native resolution to something similar to the 1280x800.

 

I didn't put in another hard drive, linh, because I'm 99% sure that this is just idle noise. It starts up from the moment you turn it on and doesn't stop until it's off. If I put my ear right on my R51's hard drive area, I can hear a similar noise, but it's much quieter. That hard drive is 5400 rpm. My new Fujitsu drive is 7200 rpm. I had assumed that a faster drive would put out more noise, so maybe this is just something ordinary.

I'm sorry if I offended your software sensibilities, EnterKnight, but there's really no need to be so rude. I got a bad impression of Vista when I used it before and I had almost completely decided on wiping it in favor of 7 before I even got my T500. I've used 7 on my desktop for months now and it's been very good to me. That's why I chose Vista Basic instead of something else. I really don't care what the "consensus" here or anywhere else for it is; people should use what they like. I don't like Vista. If you do, great. Keep right on using it.

Windows 7, on the other hand, I like. There are a lot of little things, like Libraries and the new taskbar behavior, that make it pleasant to use. I can even ratchet down the UAC without turning it off altogether. To be fair, though, I think the best defense against malware is a careful user. I used XP for years with no antivirus protection (and no UAC, of course) and never caught a thing.

Sorry to hear about your screen issues, joey. FWIW, I've started to like my WSXGA+ the more I look at it. It's not a Flexview, but it's nice.

 

Same here.

I came from a Macbook Pro with a beautiful LED screen. At first it was a bit disappointing but now I really enjoy the matte display + higher resolution.

 

what is the main difference between the two screens? Brightness/contrast/black levels? How are colors on Lenovo panel?

 

Macbook Pro:

Glossy
1440x900
Colors pop and contrast/black levels seem great to me
LED screen is very bright
Viewing angles are excellent

T500:

Matte
Option for higher resolution; 1680x1050
Colors do not pop; contrast/black levels seem good
CCFL is not nearly as bright as LED
Viewing angles are very good

I can put any wallpaper on the Macbook Pro and it looks beautiful. I couldn't find one to save my life on the T500...after the initial swtich. Now that time has passed however, I have no problem with the T500 screen. The matte and higher resolution options to me negate the screen brightness/drab color issues.

 

Same here...But I have and SSD and I don't think the sound that HHD makes would be high pitch, correct me if I'm wrong. The thing is, if you turn off CPU Power Manager via the bios the sounds becomes much lighter, at least it is the case for me. If that is also true in your case, I don't think it's the HD.

 

Uninstall everything that starts with "Think".

The sound suggest that something's wrong for sure. Send it in for repair.