any T400s owners around?

share your experience , thinking to get one replacing my X300

 

my assessment after 4 months with T400s: Very nice laptop with a very crappy screen. Weight, form factor, thickness are as good as they get, while the screen is total crap.

 

I'll second that.

 

I'm waiting for mine...screen that bad? Any improvements 6 months down the line?

 

I'm loving mine. As for the screen, perhaps I'm not as sensitized to the issues as others, but I don't see anything to complain about there.

 

I like the 14.1 inch size with Displayport and eSATA, while at the same time very light.

 

I seriously don't understand what's going on with the screens. Like some professional reviewers found the screen great, while others found it absolute crap. It's the same thing with users, some say it's extremely bad some say it's good.

I was on the verge of ordering but before I order, I saw some extremely bad posts about the screen and I don't know what to do.

After lot's of searching I've found the following problems mentioned by a lot of users (hope it helps you).

1) Crappy screen. As I said others like it others hate it (never seen this before)
2) CPU whining noise. A lot of ppl complained that the CPU makes an extremely annoying noise, while the rest of the laptop is very quite. Again some people have this, while others say their laptop is dead silent.
3) Random shutdowns, there is a 30page thread over at thinkpad forums with ppl complaining about this. To my eyes Lenovo seemed unable or unwilling to spend money and solve this issue. People would get their MB's replaced up to 3times and the problem was still there. The solution came by some HOME USERS who thought of downgrading the Video Card drives. In all cases this solved the problem.
*Considering this problem lasted for about 4-5months, I find it ridiculous that Lenovo couldn't assign a single engineer to solve this. It affected a huge majority of T400s users which is a flagship of the Thinkpad brand.

I'm not sure is there are any more problems (can't remember anything else atm). I'm not sure if T400s worth buying now, as T410s is coming in which I hope these problems will be solved. I would have bought T400s a while ago, but I don't want to spend so much money and end up with a laptop that has a crappy screen and a whining noise!

 

For what it's worth, I don't have any of these problems. Running Win7x64, with all the most recent drivers.

 

I've noticed CPU buzzing on and off, louder than my T61. It's worse on AC, which is annoying (T61 is the opposite).

My brother also owns a T400s, and his only complaint is that the trackpoint nub has made a permanent mark on the screen after only a month of use, carrying it in a sleeve.

I'm returning my T400s because the screen quality is simply unacceptable to me. I have the Toshiba/Matsu$hita panel (as reviewed at notebookcheck.de), which is apparently worse than the LG Philips version a lot of reviews are based on. The only other T400s I've seen in person is my brother's; his has the latter, and it's definitely not quite as bad. It's still a really lousy low contrast LCD, but at least I can find a viewing angle where the whole bottom of the screen isn't washed out.

Before I send in my T400s, I'll take some photos comparing it to my brother's T400s, my T61, and a Flexview T42 (just to be cruel ).

 

notebookcheck did actual measurements on t400s screen. here they are:

InformationMaximum: 297 cd/m²
Average: 255.9 cd/m²
Illumination: 76 %
Black: 2.88 cd/m²
Contrast: 98:1
Brightness on battery: 246 cd/m²

I've never seen any screen with lower measured contrast ratio than that.

On the other hand, I didnt have any other problems at all. Under Win7 64 I never had any random shutdowns and Win64 seems to have cured the CPU buzzing problem.

 

I think you got the good screen and not the one with the 98:1 contrast. They get their screens from 2 manufacturers, the panel from LG seems to be ok.

p.s. Can you check your panel manufacturer? Thanks

 

there are two screens right? one is multitouch and one is normal

any difference/better ?


btw for the trackpoint (nub) even my W500 has the same issue and i believe the X300 but i don't recall my T42P having such issue , so i think its normal with new lenovos...

 

I have a t400s with the multi-touch screen running Windows 7 (64-bit). I've owned mine for about 3.5 months now. I really enjoy using mine, and would still buy it if I could do it all over again (maybe not with the multi-touch cause it cost quite a bit).

It seems fast enough for what I'm using it for (web-surfing, skype, and power point slides). My laptop that work gave me (T61 running windows XP) takes about 3 minutes to boot up and about a 1 minute to shutdown. My t400s cold boots in approximately 45 seconds and shutsdown in 5 seconds. Apps open really fast, and I don't think I've ever truly had to wait for this laptop to do anything.

I do have the whinning issue on mine, but can live with it. In my opinion, the laptops I've owned before have had some sort of noise whether it be whirring from the fan or clicking from the HD. The t400s is the coolest (temperature wise) laptop I've ever owned, which to me is a big plus since the fan doesn't spin up much!

I've never had the random rebooting issue happen on me, so I can't comment.

As for the screen, well, I've been given several thinkpads in the past to use (all corporate PCs), and still have an T61 and I don't think the t400s' screen is any worse than those laptops, and actually find the t400s quite a bit brighter than the T61. However, I'm not really a screen expert per se, and my standards are probably pretty low. Besides, I have TONS of fingerprints on my screen anyway. I've never seen a non-multi-touch t400s, so I'm not sure if there is any difference.

All in all, I'm happy with my purchase.

 

I have the cpu whining on my t400s but I find the screen to be fine.

 

Do you see any major improvement from T400s to T410s?

 

Well i dont have a t400s, rather a t400 and I do have to say I LOVE the laptop. But I wish I went with either an x200s or a w700. 14.1 is a great size and all but matched with an already large 17in makes me wish I had gotten smaller for more mobility or replaced my current 17in with a quad core workstation. Great size for a single laptop user though.