Water and serviceability on the new models

Can anyone with hands-on experience comment on a few questions I have relating to durability and serviceability of some of newer models I'm looking at?

My most recent experience is with a T410, and prior to that a T61. Can I expect the same durability and ease of service to extend to the T440s, which is the model I'm considering.

* Are keyboards still water-resistant? Are there still drain holes?

* Is the keyboard on a T440s easy to swap? I can change out my T410 keyboard in ten minutes or less. It's a trivial operation. I've heard that the X240 requires complete disassembly and removal of the screen and the main board just to swap a keyboard. That's pretty awful. Is the T440s any better?

* Are parts readily available? Will Lenovo make it easy for me to keep a spare keyboard onhand?

* What about that internal battery? Are replacement readily orderable? Is it just a matter of unscrewing the back of the case and swapping in a fresh one?

The ability to swap in a fresh battery is kind of important to me. I've tended to replace mine every year or two, and it makes a big difference to be able to swap in a fresh battery after a couple years of heavy use.

Keyboard swaps and dealing with water also matter to me a great deal. I wish I could say I never spilled anything, but the reality is far from that. Last year I dumped a full class of Coca-Cola onto my T410. It swamped the keyboard, and overflowed across the speaker grills. I actually was able to keep right on working through that entire incident. Didn't even shut the machine down. Next morning I took 10 minutes to swap in a fresh keyboard from my collection of spares, and I was off and running. No loss of data. No loss of productive time. Hit my deadlines.

The foregoing was an extreme case. More recently I had soda splattered on the laptop by a flight attendant handing a drink to the person seated next to me. So things happen, and the ease of dealing with such things has been for a me a strong point of the Thinkpad brand. It is, for example, why I tend to rule out the very nice but apparently unserviceable X1. Just being able to swap in a fresh keyboard really matters.

 

1. Yes. The keyboards are still spill-resistant, the spil-holes are still present. The T440s is even more water resistant than the T410, since the speaker grilles at the sides of the keyboards are gone and the mainboard is completely isolated from the keyboard (the keyboard-cable is protected by a rubber seal). According to Lenovo, the new design can easily take 500 ml of water.

2. Yes, the keyboard is very easy to swap. See the HMM: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t440s_hmm_en_sp40a25360_02.pdf

3. Since keyboards are CRUs, Lenovo should send them out to you if the keyboard is broken while your machine is in warranty

4. The internal battery is just screwed with normal screws and not glued or something like that. It is replaceable, but since it is not a CRU, you are not allowed to swap it while the machine is in warranty. However, you can buy an extra battery warranty, which includes one battery swap in 3 years. However, based on my experince with the T440s until now, the internal battery lasts much longer than the hot-swappable external battery (just 2 % wear after 6 moths of usage)

 

All the new generation of thinkpads (including TP Yoga) are water-resistant.

 

Thanks guys.

That's a bit off-putting about not being able to swap the internal battery on my own terms. I'd rather be able to just buy one whenever infect like it, and swap it in.

Good to know about the water though. Thanks for the link to the maintenance manual.

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Oops. "Whenever I feel like it" . Auto correct got me.

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