Thinkpad T400 ? Thoughts after a couple of days from a previous Dell owner.

My previous system was a Dell Inspiron 9300. I had modded the video card and did a few hardware replacements on my Dell, overall it was a pretty nice machine.

I’m a PC tech and have worked around quite a few laptops but never really ran into a Thinkpad. I was in the market about a month ago and did my research extensively before purchasing a T400.

Here are the specs:

Ordered 08/19/08
Received 9/8/08

P8600
2GB DDR3
LED Screen + Camera
Fingerprint Reader
Bluetooth
80GB Hard Drive
AT&T WWAN Card
9-Cell Battery
Thinkpad ABG Wireless
4 IN 1 Card Reader
DVD Burner
Integrated Video

So far I would rate it at a 8 out of 10, but will raise to a 9 once I figure out all the XP drivers =P

The first thing I did was boot into Vista, play around with it for a few minutes, and then did a format and put XP on it. Since then I have been playing around with the drivers and plan on making a fully unattended CD that has all the drivers slipstreamed (will share with you guys later).

So far, here are my overall thoughts, keep in mind these are coming from a user who has never owned a Thinkpad

Keyboard is amazing, I’ve never even worried about “flex” in the past, so the issues with “flex” do not bother me. Under normal typing conditions, I feel like I could type faster on my laptop then my desktop keyboard. A+ on the keyboard.

Trackpoint and Trackpad are very nice. It is very responsive and nicely laid out. The scrolling function is a little wacked, but again I’m working with the utilities and drivers atm.

Overall build quality seems outstanding. Given the knowledge I have, the “flex” in certain areas does not bother me because I understand there is a roll cage underneath. If you push on the back of the screen, no warps or ripples are noticed. There is slight “flex” in the palm areas and around the ThinkVantage area; however it’s not a “deal breaker” by no means and is hardly noticeable to me. Coming from a Dell, this system is superior

My screen is an “LG” and I am very pleased with it. The viewing angles are nice and the colors are accurate. I used the laptop outside on a normal day, and had no problem viewing the screen, with the sun partially out. The LED backlight is fantastic and this is by far the brightest screen I have used on a laptop. I am not a photographer, so I can’t comment on all the “teckie” details of the screen, but I feel like it’s better than the 1920x1200 Glossy Screen my Dell had.

Cost – The most amazing thing about the laptop is the cost. It cost me right around a grand. If I would have configured a similar system on Dell, the cost would have been around $1800. The price per performance ratio cannot be beat, and I feel like I do a lot of shopping around to know this.

I had herd some bad things about the speakers and it concerned me. My dell had 5 speakers I believe, and even had a little bit of base. After receiving my laptop, I am happy to report that the speakers are more than adequate for normal use. Even for movies I have had no problem with them.

Weight and dimensions – It’s a lot smaller than I expected. I feel like it is very thin and just the right weight. With a 4 cell, I could see this being a laptop hard to beat as far as portability and power.

Anymore questions on comments, please ask me!


Now for the bad, the things I do not like…

The 9 cell battery! OMG this thing is huge and ridiculous. I have been used to Dell 9-cell batteries for quite some time, but I feel like the size of this battery should put it around the 18 cell range. It makes the laptop feel bulky and awkward. It shakes a lot and does not feel very “flush”. If I would reorder, I would go with the 4-cell battery for sure, and consider the ultra bay battery as a backup. However, I can see me getting about 6-7 hours of battery life doing low tasking things.

The DVD-Burner is really thin which I like, but it’s performance is a little on the lacking side. During a XP install (I have done this like 8 times already testing my slipstreamed CD) it takes awhile to copy files and cabs to the hard drive. While this isn’t a huge concern, it should be noted.

So there you go, hope this helps clear up some of you “first time” Thinkpad buyers. I even showed my girlfriend, who isn’t very teckie and she wanted to order one just like mine!

 

Thanks for the thoughts. I just picked up a dv5z primarily for the the bright screen and cheap Blu-Ray drive. My R60s screen is too dim for my tastes anyway, but it's well built and gets great battery life so it serves its purpose. Congrats on the machine.

 

Glad to hear you're happy with your purchase!...in regard to your slow optical drive performance, do you have the Power Manager installed?...if so, there's an advanced setting that lets you select 3 different performance profiles for the dvd-burner--Max Performance, Normal, and Silent...my T400 had it set to Normal out of the box...i didn't find it slow, so haven't experimented with the Max Perf setting...hope that helps!

 

Thanks for taking the time to do a little write-up. I agree with much of what you have, but installing Windows 2008 on this laptop was superfast—perhaps 20 minutes in total. I feel the speed of the DVD drive is good, but you might be able to tweak a bit more out of it by configuring it for performance in the BIOS, instead of the default, but this might come at the expense of a bit more noise.

Cheers.

 

I have been having both a Dell m1530 & T400 with similar setup sitting on my desk for the past few days. I haven't used either brand laptop for at least 3-4 years(i had a panasonic), while I could tell that both companies have improved quite a bit with their laptops' overall design & functionality in the past few years, the thinkpad feels quite a bit more robust & sophisticated when I used them. thinner design, less flexing, better keyboard, clearly number function keys on the keyboards, more sensitive touch pad etc... it's those details that made me decide to keep the t400 and return the dell.

it's a pity that the quality of worksmanship dropped so much at Dell in the past decade. I remember a friend of mine had a 15" dell in 1999, while it was expensive, it felt so much more robust than today's dell laptops & Dell was the brand everyone went at the time for quality.

 

Just curious - why would you install server 2008 on a laptop? Isn't it just Vista tweaked for server use?

 

Its the Vista Core without the bloat and is a bit more stable. For a workstation and daily task OS, its just fine. Plus with the 180 day free trial, why not try it.

 

Thanks for your comments on the T400.
I was looking at the Dell E6400 and the T400 and have
decided to go with the Thinkpad now.

Hoping the screen issues are just a calibration issues that I can
adjust.

Thanks for your input!

Sean

 

I found this comparison by Brimstar over at ARS Techinca of the T400 and E6400 quite interesting. The T400 is the first post and the E6400 is a few posts below.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/579009962631/m/899001024931

 

Wow, I never even thought about installing 2k8 on my laptop. Thanks! (and thank you TechNet )

 

again 2k8 is Vista at its core.

 

Thanks for the write-up mate!

Now the only thing that bother me is the freakin shipping :S

 

One question for you:
What card types does the 4-1 take?
I could not find it on their website.


Also just ordered mine a few minutes ago, but just realized I
didnt select the 4-1 reader and trying to figure out if would even
use it.

Thanks,
Sean

 

thanks for the write-up mate, it's very informative

 

The only way for me to work with Microsoft’s new Hyper-V is to run 2008—as Microsoft has not made this available for Vista. And while 2008 is designed for server use, there are ways to get it to be more Vista-like. At the end of the day though, I’d recommend Vista over 2008 unless you know what you are doing and have good reason not to use Vista.