What do I lose if I go T400?

I had tried quite a lot of variations but I just cant get my T221 working fully. I am thinking that the T400 with the Advanced Dock and a FireMV 2400 would be a good solution. Simpler than a DIY or even a real Vidock for sure. Docking/undocking expresscard is not alluring to me. Also, with the new keyboard the T430 got, I am seriously thinking on not upgrading past the current laptops. Ever.

Now, what do I lose if I downgrade from the T420 to the T400? From what I see it has a somewhat (marginally?) slower CPU, it can handle 8GB, it has SATA (OK, not SATA 6GB/s but then again I doubt my current SSD is 6GB/s anyways), the screen resolution is 1440x900 (which is what I had with the T400s when I had that and not much less than the 1400x1050 I had before), the graphics is slower but I do not care. What am I missing here? Is the battery life much worse? Anything else glaringly obvious I am missing? I never used the DisplayPort on the move only the VGA and with the above arrangement I will have DVI ports by the bucketloads... eSATA? Surely that can be fixed with a simple ExpressCard, I have seen even flush models.

 

Depending on the CPUs you're talking about, it could be marginally, or somewhat noticeable difference between the T420 and T400. If all you're doing is basic computing (Office, internet, etc.), I wouldn't worry about the CPU choice anyway.

You could tell me the SSD model and I can tell you if it's SATAII or III . Anyway, I find SATAII SSDs to be fast anyway, so no worries there.

The only things you'll definitely notice between the T400 and T420 will be the GPU (but you don't care about that) and the 160 horizontal pixels you'll miss between the T400's 1440*900 and T420's 1600*900 displays. Battery life on the T400 will depend on how good of a battery you receive with the laptop you buy, though it'll probably be less than the battery life offered on the T420 (~6-7 hours on 6-cell).

 

T420 -> T400: you'll get a narrow notebook with a better LCD ratio (16:10), slower CPU, slower GPU, pci-e 1.x expresscard slot. Battery life will be worse but when undervolted a core2duo gets more battery life than say a T410 with it's 1st gen i-core. T400 will likely have little if any remaining warranty. I like both the Sandy Bridge and Core2Duo systems. 1st gen i-cores I skip due to their poor battery life. Would love to see a 12" X200s with the 1440x900 LCD.

Some system's expresscard slot appears as an item in the Safely Eject Hardware systray so docking/undocking is easy. If it doesn't appear then can add a devcon script as a desktop shortcut to disable/enable the eGPU. One it's disabled it can be safely ejected.