Thinkpad T420s Owners' Thread

I've had my T420s for about a week now and i'm loving it. It's a work machine, and has everything I need in it. After lugging around my trusty T61 for 4 years (well trusty... I went through 4 T61s in 4 years...but they did have a hard life), the lighter weight of the T420s is a great relief. I'm still a bit disappointed with the battery life though - I'm getting 2 - 3 hours, but I do do some heavy lifting with my laptop. But that still wont be enough to get though a medium haul flight. Especially next to my colleagues who have X201's and X220's and can run most of the day on battery.

I thought it was just me who thought the keyboard was different from the T61... glad to see I'm not alone. But I'm getting used to it now.

At first i also thought the ports at the back would be annoying, but now I think its great. I don't plug things in and out every 5 mins so its no big deal to reach around the back. But the reason I think its great is that cables are no longer in the way and all over the desk. With my T61, there was the power at the back, LAN cable on the left, head phones in front, and mouse in the USB on the right. Which meant all 4 edges had something plugged in. If I actually wanted to use my desk for writing there was always a cable in the way somewhere. Or even if i wanted to shift my laptop to show someone something it was annoying. The LAN cable especially was most annoying.
Now all the cables except for the headphones are in the back. It looks neater and I have more desk space. There's the single USB on the side, which is what i use for temporary stuff like memory sticks. It really all works for me.
The video out at the back is better too. I'm on client sites in different meeting rooms with different projection equipment all the time, with cables that don't quite reach etc. and on the T61 it was on the left. Which was great if the projector was there and the cable was long enough. Not so great if I'm on the wrong side of the room.

My DVD doesn't have any lateral movement in it, so maybe they've addressed that. There is still some vertical play, but doesn't bother me at all, and doesn't rattle like some others have reported.

 

Yes they definitely can detect which power supply is being used. I have both a 65W and a 90W, and the power manager does show which one is in use. Whether it affects performance, I'm not sure.

Does anyone know?

 

You should be able to do some further tweaking to get that to 4 hours, possibly a bit more. Also get a bay battery. I'm using one of the previous generation which I found new on ebay for a very reasonable price. With main + bay battery and working offline I can get 8 hours of light usage.

John

 

You have to put yourself and the laptop in a proverbial straightjacket in order to get 8 hours! Then again, are people constantly in a remote forest for eight straight hours?

I do not see the battery situation improving from T410s to T420s: around 3 hours for the main battery, plus one's unnaturalness in using the tool.

 

4 hours would be great? what kind of tweaking?

Kaso, yes agree 8 hours without power is less common. But for me 4 hours without power can easily happen. A 4 hour flight + departure can mean no power depending on the airport. Running around the client site with a presentation, a couple of meetings. On a bad day from Jakarta airport to jakarta can take over 2.5 hours....
So right now 2 hours is not quite there.

 

Try sitting in an offica all day without any electricity.

John

 

yes with 8 hours i could do a day trip and not have to bring the power pack.

 

Has anyone ever experienced complete black screen after resuming from standby? I have to restart the computer via hotkeys (start, right arrow x2, R) for the display to show stuff again. It rarely happens but I have no idea what causes it. The event log shows no warning or error.

 

My Power Manager settings are:



Then use the processes page in Task Manager to see what is using the CPU. Maybe it has changed now, but previously having some animated Flash running on an open web page, even if off-line, could have a serious adverse effect on battery time. I use Firefox with FlashBlock (and AdBlock Plus) to minimise the unwanted web content. Bluetooth can also use significant power even if not connected. I also have my Windows without any bells and whistles (eg no Aero). 7W power drain when on idle is a fair target and then only 8 to 9W under light usage.

I don't remember seeing this problem. Have you go Intel only or Optimus graphics? Make sure that you are using the latest BIOS and graphics driver. Historically, it was the latter that sometimes couldn't handle suspend to RAM correctly, although hibernation worked OK.

John

 

Are you using BitLocker?

 

I currently have a T420s and don't have this issue. But let me relate to you when I had my T61 as I had the same issue.

I used 5 T61s over 4 years, and 2 of them had this problem. Whenever i swapped machines, I would take my HD and transfer it to the new machine. Therefore the software was exactly the same. From that I don't think its drivers or anything like that.

I never figured out why this happened. I suspect it may have something to do when the display is changing modes. Sometimes the screen would come back from standby for a second, then change modes and go blank. Other times it never came back. The laptop was still there, just couldn't see it.
As a thought, have you tried keeping the same refresh rate all the time, and not lowering it?

If you have work open, rather than restarting, i found that hibernating (Fn +F12) would work. The screen would come back from hibernation.

 

After some adjusting I found myself to be completely satisfied with my T420s, to the point even that I am starting to consider selling off my X220 i7-2620M IPS. The T420s simply handles and travels better and more comfortably than the X220s, judged at least from my own perspective and requirements. Pairing it with an Ultraslim AC Combo adapter and predominantly flying with airlines that offer on-board power sockets on long intercontinental flights really contributed to my productivity.

(and what I now know about the T430s only makes me more convinced that this will be the line I will stick with ;-)

 

For those who wanted to use their T420s for external GPU or were annoyed by the low temperature threshold for the fan to spin at 4K RPM, the 1.30 BIOS update addresses both of these issues:

Betreff: T420s Fan noise Issue - Page 61 - Lenovo Community

Drivers and software - ThinkPad T420, T420i, T420s, T420si, T520, T520i and W520

 

Thanks for the screenshot John. My settings were almost the same as yours, just you dimmed your display a few minutes before me. 2 mins is a little short for me, as sometimes I'm reading and reviewing work so i need a bit longer.
I also use firefox and adblock plus. If i'm on battery I wont have flash running unless i need to (i listen to music on youtube a lot if i'm plugged in at a desk....). My bluetooth is always off unless i'm using it. I've had windows 7 over a week now, so i'm still learning it. I do like the "peek" function though. I often have multiple Excel and powerpoint files open, so its great just to look up something without having to actually switch to that file e.g. a calc in Excel. I think that is part of the Aero functionality?
I couldn't get it down to 7W. The sun is pretty bright where I am so i need the screen brightness up a bit. The best I could get to was about 9 - 10W. Yesterday I probably could have got maybe 4 hours out of it (according to the power meter - i didn't use the battery till it was flat), but that was light usage, as i was in meetings. Under normal work circumstances I would have multiple excel open which is using power i think.

 

Not using BitLocker. I updated to the latest graphic drivers and bios and it still (rarely) happens.

Maybe happens like once a week on average but I use standby a lot.

 

I use visual settings of Best performance + smooth screen fonts. You might want to try this to see if it drops the power consumption. Also try different GPU power settings.

John

 

Hi all,

New poster here - I have a problem with my new T420s and I can't find any other posters with a similar issue.

Problem: Skype on external mic is unusable.

Soution: found partial solution – wrote this post during 24hrs – posting for the benefit of others. Please excuse any tense inconsistencies.

Details: When on Skype and on speakerphone + external mic the person at the other end of the line consistently complains about my sound being dismal, to the point they ask me to "pick up the phone" or want me to call back. Problems are background noise, garbled words, submarine effect, and/or extremely low volume (mic too quiet). Of course when the mic is too quiet there is no background noise problem, its either one of the other.

My setting: I have a ThinkpadT420s with a fresh install of Win7 Ultimate 64bits, latest conexant drivers (8.32.23), and skype 5. On skype I have the microphone handled by "internal microphone (conexant 20672 smartaudio).

Tests:

I played with the settings on the communication utility, to no avail (options I tweaked are keystroke suppression and my voice vs multiple voices optimization). I did not change the mic's volume because I am allowing skype to automatically adjust it, as I have always done. Doing this manually should help a little sometimes, but I don't want to - that would be just a patch, and not a solution.

So I just made another experimend, and updated conexant drivers to 8.32.23.2. Result: listener first said I sounded horribly grainy. Called again: too far away – pumped up manually the mic boost to its maximum 40db – still too far away.

Another experiment following what I found on a similar thread for the X220 here: x220, mic, skype and Conexant 20672 SmartAudio HD ... - Page 3 - Lenovo Community. Went to sound/recording/properties/advanced and unchecked “enable audio enhancements”. It changed something, but it did not improve nor solve anything.

Next experiment. Went to SmartAudio and changed the setting from Voice over IP to Voice Recording. Problem solved!!! Still sound a little far away than I did on my prior computer (a T410s). Then unchecked “enable audio enhancements”, and my voice got louder. Still not as good as it was with my Thinkpad, but better.

Problem solved? Not really. Not fully. I keep on making test calls and the sound is terribly inconsistent. Connection certainly improved after making the prior changes, but background noise comes back on some calls, on others my voice dims away, and on others the background noise / rain becomes so noticeable I can here it myself … nothing changed on these further tests (although I see Skype adjusting levels automatically). Mind that I am making all these calls always from a desk in a quiet room with full wifi signal.

Good example of the inconsistencies: on the SmartAudio utility I changed the setting from Conference Room to Private Room and the level of my voice improved – then I changed from Private Room back to Conference Room, and it improved again. This just makes no sense.

Final test: I tried another alternative solution offered on the link above: Under Advanced tab, set the default format to the highest. It required me to restart skype and made the listener hear the background noise as loud as my own voice.

Bottom line: this truly sucks. I am considering going back to my T410s, which I still have. On my T410s I never tweaked any settings and calling on skype using my external mic was such a pleasure I would regularly call phones from skype instead of from my phone.

If anybody has any words of wisdom, please do share.

Feel free to relocate this to a different thread if appropiate.

Best,
G

 

Seems like my prior post was too long - nobody wants to read it. Mic of my T420s is absolute crap ... fixed the voice but get constant rain and weird noise when talking to other computers. And on top of this the people on the other side can now CLEARLY LISTEN TO MY TYPING - this was not the case with my T410s. Does anybody have a fix?

 

I purchased a Thinkpad T420s with Optimus graphics along with a Mini Dock Plus Series 3 (4338-10U) to replace my triple monitor desktop setup. So far I’ve been unable to replicate Lenovo’s quad digital monitor setup described in the following documentation:

NVIDIA Optimus - ThinkPad Multiple Monitor Configurations

Technical Brief - Thinkpad Multiple Monitor Configurations Using nVidia OPTIMUS Technology

I’m trying to connect three Dell U2410’s (1920x1200) in the following fashion:

• Thinkpad Display (1600x900)
• Monitor 1 – DisplayPort (Thinkpad T420s) (1920x1200)
• Monitor 2 – DVI1/DP1 (Dock) (1920x1200)
• Monitor 3 – DVI2/DP2 (Dock) (1920x1200)

According to the documentation above, this configuration should work. The problem I’m running into is the nVidia NVS 4200 controls all the digital outputs (DVI & Displayport) and will only allow two displays. The Intel IGP controls the T420s display and the VGA outputs. I am able to get the setup running using the VGA output in place of the DVI output on the dock, but this is not an optimal solution.



According to the latest Readme.txt for the Optimus drivers:

NVIDIA Optimus Technology

…

DISPLAY TOPOLOGY

Since Optimus Technology has the ability to use two display adapters, some
display monitors (or displays) are assigned to specific adapter. Below
describes which display adapter controls the display connector for a certain
display monitor.


ThinkPad T420, T420i, T420s, T420si, T520, T520i
NVIDIA NVS 4200M
- Computer's DisplayPort connector
- Docking Station's DVI connector(s) or DisplayPort connector(s)

Intel HD Graphics Family
- (Computer's LCD)
- Computer's analog VGA connector
- Docking Station's analog VGA connector
​

So if the nVidia NVS 4200M controls all the digital outputs on the Thinkpad and dock, but only supports two displays, how can one use a quad display setup as described in Lenovo’s documentation?

So far I have been unable to get an answer from Lenovo Tech Support, which I have spent more time educating them on what their product should be capable of.

Latest BIOS (1.30)
Latest Optimus Drivers (8.17.12.7593)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Well I will soon be switching from the X220 brotherhood to the T420s brotherhood. The small screen size eventually wore on me and with the good cyber monday deal running on a T420s with an Intel SSD I decided to jump on it!

Ordered my T420s with:

-Win 7 Professional
-Intel i5 2.5GHZ 2520
-4 GB RAM
-1600x900 display
-160GB Intel SSD
-Intel Centrino 6300 3x3 wireless card
-720p HD webcam

Should be receiving it in a few weeks so I'm pretty excited! I'll be grateful for the bigger screen yet still lightweight chassis.

 

hi John, thanks for the suggestion. Only issue is, I can't seem to find these settings in Win 7. Sorry, can you tell me where they are?
I've used it more times now on battery, and seem to be able to consistently get 3 hours+. But nowhere near 4 hours. In the next couple of weeks i'm flying all around, so we'll see when the rubber really hits the road and i need battery the most .
I have the integrated GPU, not the Optimus one. Not sure if thats making the big difference.

 

My Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Performance.

See if that helps. Otherwise we will have to dig deeper. Did I share my Lenovo Power Manager settings?

John

 

Very cool, wditters. I noticed your sig says you have a T420s with 16GB of ram... how'd you manage that? Is there something special you have to do to get the machine to recognize 16gb?

Thanks!

 

Same here, there were some great deals to be had this past week.

 

Soon-to-be T420s owner, checking in! Upgrading from a T60.

EDIT: Hm, I appear to have posted right underneath myself. Maybe I mixed up my tabs or something....

 

Nope it just did with Samsung M471B1G73AH0. Mind you I cannot give a full guarantee on that. However, Matt Kohut's comment on Lenovoblogs.com may reassure you a little bit. Mind you, it will also affect battery life.

Matt Kohut said on February 23rd, 2011 10:05 am :
"Petr — Yes they will support 16GB of RAM, but I think we’re not qualifying the 8GB sticks for them as of yet, so for now you’re on your own"

http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/2011/02/thinkpad-t420s/

 

How negatively will 16GB of RAM affect the battery life?

 

I see no dramatic changes compared to 8Gb

 

Hi again, im back after using t420s a couple of months and wondering if you guys figured out what SATA ports does this machine really have? for main hard drive and cdrom? It was meant to be SATAIII but some people says that it's only SATAII.

 

The Ultrabay and Primary bay are SATA III. The PCIe mSATA implementation is SATA II.

 

Well just opened my new T420s up!

In the process of cleaning it out and installing all of my stuff/transferring files.

Will post a review of it hopefully later tonight in the main thinkpad forum

 

Correct. Successfully installed another SSD 7mm disk with UltraBay adapter.

What about PCIe? What can I put in there? Is it accessitble? First time I hear about it

 

Intel® Solid-State Drive 310 Series ? Compact Size, Big Performance

 

The Ultrabay accommodates both 7mm and 9,5mm drives

The PCIe slot accommodates 3G UMTS HSDPA WWAN cards and mSATA Solid State drives. I usually sell Renice X3 (preformance) and Intel (lower power reqs), but there are quite a few brands out there nowadays.

The slot is located under the keyboard, only two screws have to be taken out in order to install a PCIe card.

Note: For WWAN cards, your machine needs to have WWAN option listed in the specs (since WWAN requires antenna and simcard slot). If it isn't then you will not be able to make a WWAN card function properly.

 

Hi John, yes you did share you settings. Have played around with them, and found they don't really make much difference in power consumption to my settings. Now i've been travelling a bit, i have been able to get about 4 hours out of the battery. I was only reviewing docs and making updates to docs in this case. Also i was on a plane so i have the wireless turned off. So i think it really depends on what i'm doing. If i'm using excel and powerpoint (we use a powerpoint add in that is based on excel for charting) with the wireless on, then the power consumption is higher. I was around 8W - 10W on the plane. It seems wireless takes about 2W, and it was rarely below 10W with it on. Also i do like the aero peek as it allows me to refer to different docs without having to switch to them.

I have noticed a curious thing though now i'm using the battery more. On battery, the HDD light is always on. At least i think right now thats the pattern. It was on, on the plane, and every time since i've used battery. Doesn't occur when i'm plugged in. Looking in the task manager, there was no process continuously running. I have a 160Gb SSD.
Has anyone noticed this before?

 

Resource Monitor (you can get to it via a button on Task Manager > Performance) has a disk usage page. Click on the disk activity heading to see what is reading and writing.

And make sure that you don't have anything plugged into the USB 3 port (the one with the blue tab) when running on battery.

John

 

Thanks John. Have checked it. I have nothing plugged in to any USB port. Not 100% sure how to interpret it.
In terms of the charts on the right, the top one labelled "Disk" is quite empty, with only a periodic activity. The bottom one labelled "Disk 0 (C Queue length" has more activity, and looks like a mountain/sawtooth, but the valleys are at 0.
In terms of processes, there's SearchprotocolHost.exe, System, firefox.exe, and svchost.exe twice.

On the plane the HDD light was always on, but definitely did not have firefox open then.

 

1. SearchProtocolHost.exe seems to be the windows search. Is it doing background indexing? I've disabled indexing.

2. See if you can replicate the disk activity by disconnecting from the internet and working on batttery. If it happens then use Resource Monitor to see what is accessing the disk.

John

 

Which of course breaks finding email quickly and easily in Outlook or files on disk. I could see making that recommendation on Windows Vista but it is better to let your content be indexed with Windows 7. The initial overhead usually isn't intrusive and after the first build completes, you hardly notice. Anti-virus is a much bigger hit.

 

You may try taking out your DVD drive and replace it by an empty bezel (or the ultrabay 3-cell extra battery). I've read somewhere that DVD drives can trigger this behaviour. Aside form that, I use SSD Tweaker to optimize my W7 settings for SSD use. You should also disable the W7 built-in disk defragmenter. The only thing I always leave running actually is that index engine you mention. Being able to search an indexed outlook folder outweighs the reduction of disk writes for me.

 

I would like to leave the indexing on - i think its a great function, especially in Outlook.

I played around with different combinations - with/without internet, and on battery/on AC power. It seems to be related to the AC power. Internet on or off doesn't make a difference. On battery, the HDD light is always on. As soon as i plug in, it goes out. When i remove the AC power, it comes on again. Nothing is really changing in the resource manager as i plug in/out. There are no new services starting/stopping.
The light blips for a minute or two before coming on permanently on battery. So if i boot off battery, it boots, then blips a few mins, the comes on. Same when i pull the AC out. Blips, then on.
I'm not convinced it is actually reading/writing. I think the light is just on. It doesn't seem to be draining the battery faster.

wditters, i'll try taking the DVD out. I don't have another battery, or anything else to plug in, so i'll just try it empty. The disk defragmenter is disabled.

 

Another question in regards to color management of the display. I think the default one I have is little too "blue-ish". Do you guys use any custom made color profiles? If so, please share ;-)

 

Try the ICC profile in this thread.

John

 

I used it but the color profile is reset with every reboot. I noticed I only can save the colors if I change them in Intel properties.

 

That's a bit of Intel lunacy. Run msconfig and then disable igfpers.exe in the startup section. Reboot and reapply the profile.

John

 

So how's everyone's T420s holding up?

Only had mine for a couple weeks so I can't comment on anything longterm.

However my battery life has been great, getting over 7 hours of battery life average. Easily lasts all day for me at school.

 

After 8 months there's a little bit of slack in the hinges, the lettering on the "A" key has lost its bottom right leg and one core of the CPU throttles slightly under sustained full load. Otherwise it's in good shape.

Using main + bay batteries, I presume.

John

 

That does not sound so good though. I also used to have the lettering on the KB fading out, but then it hasn't happened till date on either the R400 or the X201 and I've had the machines for around as long as you have yours (give or take a few months)...though you never know, I guess.

I wonder though what causes the problem with the CPU throttling that you are referring to?

 

It looked like it chipped off (the lettering is stuck on). Perhaps zapped by a finger nail. One of hte advantages of backlit keyboards is that the lettering is in, not on, the keys.

Thermal, pure and simple. One core runs several degrees hotter than the other and, under full load and moderately high ambient temperature it can just get over the 95C that triggers slight throttling (instead of a continuous 3GHz the speed oscillates between 3GHz and 2.8GHz). However, I've just run wPrime 1024 twice and couldn't get the CPU above 90C, so maybe that's the difference between winter and summer.

John

 

John when you said slack, did you mean the screen lid moves about when you reposition the system or is it that it just don't feel as tight as it did initially?