Thinkpad T400 - First Thoughts

Beautiful!......what did you expect, details?....that about sums it up!

Well this is my first Lenovo, and I have to say....MAC users....***?....you must be out of your mind. Excuse my enthusiasm.

So, IBM delivered the laptop as promised....however, my other Lenovo did arrive a day earlier. Below you will find my configuration, and yes I do have the LG screen.


Price as configured (excluding Tax): $1,124.53

INT.CORE2DUOPROCP8600
MS WIN VISTA BUSINESS
14.1 W X G A +TFT
INT.GRAPH.MEDIAACCELX4500
3GBPC3-8500 1067MHZ2DIMM
100GB HDD/7200RPM
DVDRECORD.8XMAXDUAL,ULTBAY
EXPR.CARDSLOTXN4-1M.CARDR.
INT.WIFI LINK5300
ERICS.F3507GUSA-WIWANCARD
9CELL LI-ION BATTERY


Screen:
Yes, I did get the amazing LG screen everyone has been talking about. I do not have any dark spots as some of the members have reported. LED brightness at 100 percent is extremely bright, Bright enough to comfortably work outdoors, and leave your coworkers/classmates in awe indoors. But don't expect to use 100% during long-term use. Overall, I don't know what the Samsung screen looks like, but I'm more than satisfied with what I got.

Keyboard:
The keyboard is extremely precise and comfortable to type on, the touchpad is placed perfectly in the center. Keys have that awesome click/feedback that I've heard IBM is famous for. Warning!, this feature may distract your neighbors in the library, that's if he/she falls asleep next to you for 6 hours!

There is MINOR flex in some areas of the keyboard, but c'mon guys do you really push down on the keyboard that hard. I mean i don't understand users dishing out $60.00 to replace the keyboard. How can something so minute, be that bothersome. The flex in no way affects your typing; unless of-course you are Superman and can poke holes through the keyboard with your fingers.

Complain: Occasionally, it is possible to hit the Track-button while typing. However, this can be easily corrected with a dome button if it gets annoying.

Temperature:
I noticed some heat in the bottom-left part of the laptop, but this is only noticeable after an hour or so. My palms are perfectly fine, and I can type all day if I'm comfortably sitting on a desk.

Noise:
The fan is amazingly quiet and discrete. I'm typing at a library and it is hard for me to notice any changes in fan levels. Better yet, it is almost humorous to hear my neighbor's fan circulating air for the entire library, while waking up sleep deprived students.

WWAN:
I have yet to activate this feature, but will add details as soon as i get it to work.

Battery (9-Cell):
The battery life is amazing! A fully charged battery showed 24% at the end of the day! (1:00 - 7:00p) I have had countless "system update" restarts during this time. Not to mention turning the laptop on and off from time to time during travel and my friends messing with it!

Weight:
The 9-cell will add some weight to the laptop, but it is an entire 1.5 pounds lighter than my previous 15" Toshiba! No complains on the weight here.

ThinkLight: Complain
This feature is acceptable. The thing i noticed is that you almost have to keep the screen around or below a 90 degree angle. Don't want to?....let the great white Think-light change your mind. You WILL listen to what it says!

I believe this was an intentional design because, i noticed that the light is in-effective if you have the screen beyond 90 degrees.

Pictures:

(coming soon)

Notes:
I have yet to find a gap in the screen. Many users have posted pictures of this flaw. If I was stuck with such a screen, I would contact Lenovo immediately and demand a new laptop. You do not have to put up with such craftsmanship on an expensive product.

Final Thoughts:
Great Product!...great features! If you haven't read the entire article, you missed my pros and cons so read and re-read, I do not want to summarize good features as entirely good, and bad feature as a curse from hell. Wait, that's not a good way to end an article right? Here ya go ..Seriously, Excuse my enthusiasm for this product!

Good Night!


Amazing Battery Life!


Homescreen


Think Light at <90


Think Light at >90


LG 100%


Boot Screen








9-cell

 

awesome. I got mine today morning and I'm loving it already. this is a keeper

who spends 2000+ for a fruit-company which doesnt have a home-end-pageup-pagedown keys in their keyboard

I'm a PC

 

Congrats!!

I'd be interested to know if the Turbo Memory helps with a 4GB machine. If it does I may add it.

 

You can easily disable the TrackPoint or TouchPad via the Mouse or ThinkPad Configuration icons in the Control Panel. Enjoy your new laptop!!!

 

yes please take photos, mid range, of that 9 cell. i want to see how large it is or else i'm getting the 6 cell.

 

I haven't seen these posts, where are people seeing a "gap"?

I agree with a lot of what you said in your post, I really am liking my new t400. Many of the issues that I saw people talking about are extremely minor. Things like the flex around the 4 in 1 card reader. Yes, it flexes, but I would have never noticed this if I hadn't read about it here. I tend to be on the obsessive compulsive side, but things like that and the off center screen I had been worrying about now seem like total non-issues. Even vista seems good, at least after changing the configuration here and there. It doesn't seem to have much of an advantage over XP, and it's pretty absurd how much effort they must have put into developing those flying windows (alt-tab is just as good), but it seems fine. The system also didn't seem as bogged down with bloatware as I had feared. The only problem I have had so far is firefox and the fingerprint reader, but I got a patch from lenovo's website which seems to have fixed that. Anyway, just wanted to add I'm also very happy so far with my t400.

 

whoever doesn't want to deal with Microsoft/Linux trashy OS and hardware failures

I have 3 Lenovo but my 1 Apple beat them all

 

What issue did you run into with FF and the Fingerprint reader?

 

then why are you spending time here then? someone got too much time on his hands ..........

 

LAWL at not having hardware failures. Everything will break at some point. Even $500,000 cars have problems. Your Macbook is not immune to anything.

OS preference is completely objective so that's a useless point.

 

I ran into a problem when trying to use lenovo's password manager with FF 3, but this patch seems to have fixed it so far:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-70132

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my post that while I really like my t400, there is one really annoying thing -- the location of the Ctrl key! I just remembered this while pasting that link.

 

Alright guys new pics are up!...check them out, I'll post some details on the WWAN card tonight.

 

Nice pictures! I cannot wait to get mine!

 

nice pics. man that 9 cell is huge.

 

Thanks, the nine cell extends out at an angle, so its really not noticeable, I mean you are gonna be busy looking at the screen anyways, right?

I do want to mention thou, that the 9-cell fits in the laptop perfectly! There is no movement!...I'm thinking IBM finally listened to the fitment issues and fixed the problem. This, plus the three notches in the battery that lock onto the system make it feel solid.

 

Would it be a bother too much to post some 3/4 shots with the display on? Just interested in how the viewing angles are.