Thinkpad T420s Owners' Thread

Mine's an LG panel and the problem is gradually getting worse. I've endeavoured to take a photo of the current situation.


The blobs are approximately 20% in from each side and almost in line with the rubber pads at the top of the screen. There is a noticeable line of smaller blobs running up the screen from the biggest blob in middle right and a similar pattern is emerging on the left side.

I haven't tried dismantling the screen but I would not be surprised if there are some strengthening ribs in the display back which are putting pressure on the back of the LCD panel. ie it is Lenovo's roll-cage that is causing the problem, not the users. Are other people with the white blob problem getting the blobs in the same place?

I haven't yet tried arguing with Lenovo support but I will be wanting to get this problem fixed at some stage.

John

 

My laptop is at Lenovo's support center, hence I can't check the spots' exact positions. From what I remember, I have a white spot located very close to your left one, albeit slightly lower, and a smaller one on the center/right side of the panel, which I think is slightly more centered than your big blob.

These spots are in fact annoying, hence I complained when they told me that they won't change the display under warranty, especially since many users already had it changed. I'll let you know how my complaint ends.

 

Hi John,

I am having the same issue as well towards the left center of the LCD. My T420s is barely 6 months old.

I was actually thinking of filing a complaint myself to bring up the seriousness of this issue lately. How should we proceed?

Jason

 

Let's first find more people with the problem and see if there is a consistent pattern to build up evidence that the problem is the machine, not the users.

John

 

I'm sorry to hear that some of you guys are having the same problem I had with my screen. I hope you can get a solution soon!

If any of you have a laptop that is out of warranty and don't get this resolved by Lenovo, be aware that you can fix it yourself quite easily. Screens for this laptop can be bought for ~$70 and replacing it takes less than 10 minutes. It's quite easy actually.

 

I bought a new T 420s recently & Loved It but the HD crashed within a month and i returned it, But I would love to buy the T 430 s ..i am sure it will have several improvements over 420s But I cannot wait too long ( need to buy by July 1 ) Could Any body please indicate any rumored intro date for 430s ??
you can send me a private email on dicksethi at yahoo dot com....thanks !

 

Is it just me or is the search broken? Tried to search for temp, temperature, temperatures and always get no results?

I noticed my T420s temps have been a lot higher than normal lately. I didn't run temp monitor regularly before when I felt it was "normal". But on my lap now, it can get blisteringly hot.

I ran real temp for 30 min and the lowest temp I get is 62 and highest 95.

I'm indoors with air con (in Asia), where the ambient temp is between 21-23.

I remember before if I didn't use the laptop, temps would go to about high 40's, low-mid 50's.

I installed tpfancontrol after I noticed the heat problems and even at 7, the temps don't go much below mid 60s.

Should I bring it in to have them redo the thermal paste/reseat the fan?

 

Regarding white spots, this is the response I had from Lenovo, after complaining that the panel should be replaced under warranty.

"First of all let me apologize on behalf of Lenovo for the problems your have had with your computer. Although, after reviewing your case and verifying the engineers report I must inform you that the issue with your LCD (monitor) has been taken as customer induced damaged.

I kindly as you to accept the quotation from the repair center.

Thank you for understanding"

I replied, irritated, saying that seeing that the problem is widespread and that some users had their display changed, their decision seems heavily unfair and I'd like to escalate the ticket further.

I'll keep you posted

 

Alexcriss, have you posted your problem at the Lenovo forums to get a second opinion on this? If it's a widespread problem but it seems Lenovo singled you out for some reason then I would see what the people at the Lenovo forums would say.

I had the similar kind of response from IBM (who deals with Lenovo repairs in UK) when my hinges went loose after 5 months and wanted to charge me for it despite having a 3 year warranty. It felt a bit unjust where people in the US/AU can get their hinges repaired on a similar problem but not here in the EMEA region. The people over at the Lenovo forums are helpful and managed to convinced IBM UK to repair it as a manufacturer defect in the end so I would try it if you haven't done so.

 

Nice idea, I'll try as soon as I can. Thanks a lot for the suggestion

EDIT: reported here:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T420s-white-spots-on-display/td-p/730935

Add your story if you have spots and you feel like helping getting my panel (and possibly yours in the future) replaced

 

News from spots land, if anybody interested.

Lenovo support insists that they cannot change my panel under warranty. The representative from Lenovo who is handling my case was very supportive and passed links, pictures and comments to their engineering team. Unfortunately, the engineer replied:

''I can confirm, that there is no known issue on these monitors, nor on this system, which would meet the below described situation.
Therefore , the statement from the service center is to be followed as they had the chance to view the machine physically and could therefore judge what the root cause is''

''at the same time I would like to note, that internet forums are not an official information source. They also cannot be accepted as any kind of statement of a quality issue.
Any quality issue, that Lenovo identify on its products, is listed internally and there is none on this exact model.''

I tried pointing them to their Forum (see link in previous post), where some users said they had their panel replaced, as a last resort move.

I have to say that I am highly disappointed in being treated differently than other people, and being said that such people don't exist or have a different problem. It appears that European support really operates and behaves differently than other ones.

I'll let you know if they reply to my last inquire, but my hope is lost, ans so is the reputation I held of Lenovo.

EDIT: apparently the fact that no T420s with my exact configuration had this display issue means that I won't have warranty support. This is ridiculous, as if the quantity of RAM affects or induces spots on the LCD panel. Irritated, I replied to Lenovo's engineering team, saying that I'll post my reply on the web, so here it is, if somebody cares, otherwise it will only fulfil my need of ranting:

Dear Lenovo's engineers,

I understand that the T420s has a lot of knobs for configuration, with
respect to memory, CPU, graphics, etc. However, I fail to see how these
may be related to white spots on the display. I am highly disappointed
in hearing that my exact model "is not under any known issue", while
many people reported white spots on the display. Being an engineer
myself, I find it completely hilarious being told that my exact
configuration doesn't show white spots, while the one with a different
CPU or GPU does. This is a poorly thought comment from an engineering
point of view, and clearly goes in the opposite direction of any good
support and repair practice. Particularly, it seems to be a mocking
excuse for not having to deal with my support request, sparing a T420s
display. It is such a un-justified decision that I call it support
fraud. After all, my laptop doesn't show any sign of user misbehaviour
or bad handling practice, however Lenovo's support fails at fixing it,
ultimately failing at providing a service that I paid for.

I sincerely hope that your support procedures are enhanced in the
future, replacing the poor and "scammish" current behaviour of Lenovo's
engineering team with an adequate level of support for premium products
that people buy spending premium amounts of money. The quality of a
technology product lies not only within the product itself, but also in
the support the company offers for fixing and enhancing the users'
experience, and I consider the handling of my request from Lenovo's
engineers as a wake up call in evaluating the true quality of Lenovo's
business products.

 

This seems really odd. If there is no obvious abuse to the system, why wouldn't they replace a defective panel under warranty?

By abuse I mean dents and scratches on the outside lid, or obvious scratches or cuts to the LCD panel surface.

If both of those are clean, then it sounds like a pretty clear case the materials and workmanship of the panel is below any reasonable quality bar.

What is wrong with Lenovo? They keep screwing up left and right.

 

My laptop is indeed in perfect conditions, I am keen in keeping it as in well shape as I can. Even Lenovo said that pictures of my screen do not show signs of misuse! Given that I put extra care in handling and using it, I am totally disappointed in seeing that they refuse to replace my panel.

Then, adding that my T420s is noisy due to a bad fan control algorithm in the BIOS, which Lenovo failed to fix in a year time, I got to the point where my next laptop will be branded differently.

I am so irritated by their engineers' attitude that I'm considering selling the machine even if it is still functional (albeit "spotty" and loud), since it reminds me everyday of such a horrible support practice. Bah.

 

I would if I were you. I actually did already.

 

Alex, I really sorry that you got such a disrespectful response from Lenovo.

Fact 1) next thinkpads will have a different keyboard (not the unique keyboard most of us value so much)
+
Fact 2) lot's of "ultrabooks" on the way and the possibility of improvements in the average design found in the market

Result: YEAH! maybe it's time to try something else...

 

I've now got round to signing up at the Lenovo forum and reporting my white blob problem.

John

 

My T420s had 5 white spots on its LG Phillips display. Got it replaced under waranty (3 years NBD ThinkPlus) after a single phone call to local service center (in Czech republic). Got AUO panel (B140RW02 V1), but after some adjustments, it looks surprisingly good.

 

I'm not yet getting a positive output in the Lenovo forum (they suggested that the display is being pushed against the keys but I've responded that there are no marks on the surface) but I have another issue which I should also be trying to get addressed.

It's been an issue for many months, possibly since new but usually once per day, sometimes twice, my T420s (when running on mains power) thinks it is running off battery for about 15 seconds and then goes back to being on the mains. It's happened with 3 separate PSUs so I can't blame the PSU. I had wondered if it is a bug in the BIOS or power manager but since there is unlikely to be more updates for these then I now wonder if it's a bug in the internal power system. Sensibly I get that fixed at the same time as the display. So has anyone else seen this problem?

John

 

Not on my T420s. Last power manager, old BIOS - 1.24 05/2011.

 

Hi guys, anyone had any troubles with the Expresscard slot on your T420s? Mine is not working from the first day, and win 7 could not find any hardware(no tone when pluging in the Lenovo expreecard smart card reader)... Help please..!

 

I've been having this issue as well. I assumed it was from the bios. I tend to ignore it since it's for a few seconds, but there are those rare times where it thinks it's still in battery mode and hibernates.

 

I've got the SD card reader in my slot and it works fine. Did you check in the BIOS to make sure that the ExpressCard slot is enabled: The BIOS includes options to turn the hardware on / off.

I've also had the computer hibernate with a half-full battery, but not any near as often as the temporary switch to battery (but I don't run on battery that often). I had assumed that Power Manager was responsible.

John

 

John,

I have liked your laptop reviews over the years. You posted a review of the T420s not long after you bought one. Would you post an update to that review after approximately a year of constantly using your T420s? Do you still feel that it was a "good" purchase? Or have you become a bit more "reserved" about the product?

Cheers.

 

Considering the white dots on his screen, I'm guessing the recommendation is going to be a bit more reserved.

 

Yes. It appears that the white blobs are caused by pressure on the back of the display so the display back isn't providing the protection I would expect of a machine with "Thinkpad" in its name. Then there's this other little problem of the occasional temporary theoretical switch to battery power (the actual power from the mains socket is unchanged). And I've been underwhelmed by the ThinkLight - it reflects off the keys which have developed a bit of shine over the past year. However, the T420s does have its good features, most notably the Ultrabay with the ability to slot in an extra battery or a second HDD.

I haven't yet tried to tackle the Lenovo UK support people regarding the above problems. I remember Hearst's problems with getting a pair of floppy hinges fixed so it's my impression that they do their best to evade providing the service I would expect and have paid for.

I was also thinking of writing an addendum to the review. My NP900X3B review contains the sentence "While my Lenovo T420s has provided nearly a year of service it is not a machine that I could fall in love with." which drops a strong hint.

John

 

The T420S lid is one of the reasons I sold mine. I didn't feel it would stand the test of time. I certainly didn't feel the lid would protect the LCD panel under the everyday rigors my wife dishes out. She has a T400 that is built like a tank and really needs a machine that has strong structural integrity.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes I did check the Bios and expresscard is enable under I/O managament.

I have called Thinkpad and they have arranged someone to pick it up tomorrow for checking.

Will keep posted

 

Hi, I've just bought a T420 at a really good price to run Ubuntu 12.04 on (in fact, I largely bought it because it seemed to be the most interesting 'Ubuntu certified' machine. It works great, particularly with an SSD inserted as main drive.

However, I'm thinking of adding an HDD in the DVD bay. Can anyone comment on the merits and disadvantages of this? My main motivation is that the SSD is too small to store all my data on, and I'd like something large enough so that I needn't worry about storage all the time. My worries are mostly about the consequences for battery life and fan noise - more the latter than the former, since I wouldn't mind purchasing an extra battery if necessary.

Anyone?

 

1. You say T420 but this is the T420s thread. Which do you mean?
2. Plenty of people put a HDD into the optical drive bay as a way to supplement their storage.
3. I think the impact on battery life will be quite small but will depend on the amount of read / write activity. You can see from the Tom's Hardware Chart that most 2.5" HDDs use less than 1W when on idle and if you use the timeout in Windows power management to turn the HDD off completely after a few minutes of inactivity. 1W is around 10% of the notebook's idle power consumption.
4. Extra heat and fan noise is not a worry. A 2.5" HDD undern maximum activity may use around 3W, which is around 10% of the CPU power under full activity.

John

 

Ah, mine's apparently a T420 without the 's'. I wasn't aware of the considerable differences between the models, being a newbie to Lenovo.

 

I'm using this setup myself on my T420 and there isn't much disadvantage from what I can see since power consumption is still relatively low as pointed out by John. I still get a good 6+ hours on the 9 cell battery with my Samsung 830 SSD and Fujitsu 500GB 5400RPM drive in the caddy. Of course you have to forego the DVD Drive but I rarely use it myself so it's not much of a hindrance.

And yeah the T420s is slightly different to the standard T420 since things like the drive size (7mm max for T420s) and Ultrabay drives are different between the two. You might want to head down to the T420 thread here to minimise confusion in the future.

 

Thanks, will do and sorry for the mishap. Coming from the Apple side of things, I'm still getting used to ... choice.

 

In case you weren't aware, you can actually have three storage devices in the T420 at the same time. The full size primary drive bay is one. Using the 12.7mm Ultrabay is another. The third option is to use the WWAN PCIe slot for a mSATA SSD drive. Micron recently announced they'll have 256GB mSATA SSD drives on the market under the Crucial brand. There are a number of smaller capacity mSATA SSD drives on the market right now. The Intel Series 310 80GB drive is probably the most popular.

The 12.7mm Ultrabay hard drive adapter I use was purchased at 2nd hard drive Caddy F Lenovo Thinkpad T420 W520 T520 | eBay

 

lenovo now offers a 12.7mm version of the ultrabay HDD adapter for those bothered by the gap left with the standard version.

ThinkPad 12.7mm Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter III | 0A65623 | Lenovo (US)

they're slowly making their way into reseller channels.   0A65623 is the retail part number.

 

^^^ Yeah, we saw it sometime in March. Took Lenovo a while...

 

hi there,

is there a guide how to install clean windows 7 on T420s , enable rapidboot and uefi bios and get startup time around 15-20 seconds or faster ?

Thanks

 

well..i have a question before decide to buy T420.this is a simple question.How about battery performance?
thanks all

 

How much battery life do you need?

 

Do you mean the T420s or the T420? The T420s has a relatively small battery which will run for 3 to 5 hours (depending on how you are using the computer and the backlight brightness) but you can add a battery in the UltraBay to extend that time by 2 to 3 hours.

The T420 has two main battery options which can give around 4 to 6 hours or 6 to 9 hours (again depending on usage).

John

 

okay thanks for your information

 

Did you study this guide for Windows installation on Thinkpads?

John

 

Dear friends. I have a T420s with integrated graphics only and am trying to use the 3 screen configuration that is said to be supported without the dock, but cant get it to work. The software Intel Graphics and Media simply doesnt seem to support 3 screens.

Anyone here that has done the setup and knows how to go about to make it work?

regards from sweden

 

I was under the impression you needed the Optimus config for three or more screens.

 

sandy bridge integrated graphics doesnt support 3 displays. You need ivy bridge or sandy bridge + nvidia.

 

I am using T420s with the 3 antenna and would like to install mSATA SSD. Upon open up the back, I saw 2 of the 3 antenna laid within the mSATA bay. Is there anyone install the mSATA SSD in 3 antenna model? any impact on the WIFI reception as you move? Which is the mSATA model used? Thanks for your advice.

 

The two antenna wires you are referring to aren't for WIFI. They are for a WLAN cell card. Installing the mSATA doesn't effect WIFI.

 

Hi guys I just bought a T420s from the outlet and already got a shipping confirmation, now I'm just waiting. My big question is is the t420s able to be equipped with a 9 cell battery and/or one of those slice batteries that go under the laptop? I already know that i can swap out the dvd tray for an ultra-bay battery but it seems the slice battery is superior.

 

Neither one (9-cell) nor the other (slice); I think you're stuck with the 6-cell battery.

LE: speaking of the battery, I have realized that my (T420s' Panasonic) battery has now a full charge capacity of 36Wh after 2 months of use and 6 cycles (charging thresholds at 75-95%, design capacity 43Wh). It looks very bad to me, did someone else notice same (poor) behavior? Or it's just mine? I have not performed any battery reset yet, maybe it will fix this.

 

With mSATA SSD and without RapidBoot, my ThinkPad T420s boots from first access to boot device to Windows desktop in about 10 secs. (RapidBoot only helps with HDD.)

I have the Intel 310 series 80GB mSATA SSD installed with the Intel 6300 (3x3) Wi-Fi. Works great.

Your only option is the Bay Battery 57Y4536, which extends run time by about 50%.

That's normal. My Sanyo battery has a design capacity of 39 Wh, currently 35.37 Wh after 17 cycles.

 

I've never seen that on my T420s. Might be a flaky power socket. I've seen similar problems on other machines that were solved by replacement. Try wiggling the power connector to see if that has any effect.