Ah, that wasn't there last time I looked.

They are offering WiMax on the elite T400 model. My father is buying a T400, so I couldn't resist checking it out when I was using the configurator for him.

Yes, I see what you mean. Very odd, as it's pretty obvious it's physically impossible to insert old ultrabay devices into a T400. The reviewer certainly missed the boat on this one! On the up side, if you're always plugged in, the ultrabay battery isn't particularly useful. But I hear your pain, fel...

Also, I should mention my T60 docking stations and AC adapters work just fine with my T400. And I haven't seen a review yet that confused Ultrabay and Ultrabay II devices. (Not doubting there is one, but I haven't come across it.) Finally, Lenovo makes it quite clear the two standards are incompatib...

My old T60P ultrabay battery had long since died (ultrabays are used first), so I needed to a new one anyway for my T400. You should expect the ultrabays to have relatively short lifespans if they undergo frequent discharge/charge cycles. (I.e., you sleep and recharge often.) I mainly use them to pr...

Agreed. It's not lightweight at all.

However, the 65W adapter for the T400 is excellent. It's genuinely tiny and easy to carry. (I believe it won't charge the batteries and run the machine simultaneously, but that's a minor issue overall given its portability.)

Ok, interesting. I've never had trouble getting recovery disks from Lenovo, but have used them only once, and I delete the recovery partition almost immediately. I remember once trying to recover my T60P, and the image was so old, it required 97 (!) critical updates to reach the current state of XP ...

It is a good idea to recover the system right out of the box, or very early afterward. Don't let anyone tell you different. Later may be too late. ... JDH JDH, can you say more about this? Why do you view this as necessary? I tend to reinstall machines every year or so to keep them clean, but I don...

Today's new bios release has fixed my fingerprint reader. Working perfectly now. (It says version 1.15 but the listed date is 9/8/2008, so I'm not sure if the number is correct.) They still haven't fixed the WAN modem turning itself on randomly, but progress is a slow thing with Thinkpads... :) P.S....

Shelby, my T400 has exactly the same "play" when closed as my T60P. There is some movement when it's latched, but not a whole lot. By and large, the T400 feels sturdier to me and better assembled.

Hi edcard, Sure, I've used octave but only casually. I use Matlab on a daily basis. As far as I know, octave doesn't have a standard built-in benchmark command, although there have always been some standard ones floating around, developed by 3rd parties. Octave is generally much slower than Matlab, ...

Hi Tony, I'm afraid there may be a misunderstanding! The old T60 ultrabay devices will not work on the T400, period!! You will break something if you try to force them. I was talking about the new ultrabay II devices specifically made for the T400. My ultrabay II battery wasn't working until I gentl...

Edcard, if I had to chose a single, portable machine to work on, it would be a T400. So, I think you selected well. I do use 8-core Dell linux workstations with 32GB of ram for heavy number crunching, but I could always log in to those remotely. (Of course it doesn't hurt to have two in my office :)...

Tony, yeah, none of the old ultrabay devices from the T60s work on the T400. There is a piece of plastic poking out near the internal connector that makes this point very clear. I ordered the new ultrabay DVD burner and battery. At first, I thought they sent the wrong model battery, as it didn't reg...

Yup, I've cleaned it. First thing I tried. Didn't help.

The reader does work in one sense, i.e., it can learn and read my fingerprints. However, it constantly receives spurious inputs. Given how many people are complaining about this, it seems like a widespread problem.

Hi Tony, I thought I'd add a few more comments! 1. For a matte finish screen, I've never seen its equal. I can't stand glossy Apple-type displays because of the glare, and this easily matches (and surpasses) my wife's Mac Book for brightness and color accuracy in a side-by-side comparison. Who ever ...

The lighter it gets, the closer you're going to get to "piece of junk" status. Nonsense. I suggest you keep up with the supply chain industries a little better. Composite plastics, improved battery and display technology, and SSD storage should reduce the weight of this class of laptop to less than...

wswartzendruber wrote:You want this thing even lighter?

What? You want it heavier? Sure, I want it lighter. Who wouldn't? (I didn't say to turn it into a piece of junk in the process!)

Last I checked, the 15" only had CCFL backlighting, not LED, so that completely rules it out. Reviews for CCFL have not been good. Regardless, 15" is simply too big for me personally. I wouldn't want to schlep it around. 14.1" is fine for my needs and I still wish it were lighter. In my view, this i...

Yes, the Matlab numbers were from the third run...

Here are some initial random impressions of a T400 from a hardcore CS guy. This isn't a review. Just some comments from a long time Thinkpad user. (This is my ninth or tenth.) I have a discrete T400, 2.8GHz, WXGA+ TFT, w/ LED Backlight and Camera. 200GB 7200 RPM drive, 3GB ram running XP, Verizon WA...

Given that people have reported replacing the hardware didn't fix the problem and I was elevated to a 2nd level tech support person, I'm guessing it's either software or they simply don't have a hardware fix yet. Regardless, I'm stuck typing in my password until they work it out. Now, if they could ...

I placed a service call with Lenovo over the broken fingerprint reader everyone, including me, seems to be experiencing. It pops up every two seconds with a "scanned too quickly" message. (This problem has been reported all over the internet.) I have same-day, onsite service, so I expected they woul...

Just regarding your shipping time question, I ordered last Wednesday. It arrived on Friday, so it took a total of 9 days for a fully tricked out T400.

Somewhat disappointing that David Hill hasn't seen fit to respond to the comments on his blog about the keyboard problems.

I'm upgrading soon and it'd be helpful to have a statement one way or the other regarding whether Lenovo is going to address this.

Just because something has been 'just so' for a long time doesn't mean that its the best way to go forward! True enough. But given the enormous number of people who stick with Thinkpads for the keyboards (and TrackPoints), Lenovo is playing with fire here. The old keyboards have been vastly superio...

I always purchase the 3 year on-site support option for Thinkpads. My T60P, with its wonderful active protection system, had its hard drive die with a month of my getting it. (And I certainly don't drop my laptop.) But it's only had two service calls so far. My previous T40 required well over a doze...

In case it's unclear to anyone, most Thinkpad users can pick any laptop we want. This is not bargain hunting at CostCo we're talking about. The crowning glory of the Thinkpad line has been the keyboard and Trackpoint. One can get the Trackpoint from Dell. So, why would Lenovo mess with the only sing...

dkchen wrote:I was going to write a rebuttal to the previous comment, but its clear that it'll be like talking to a wall.

So, why did you even bother writing that?

(And conservative? Please. Obama'08!)

Here was my response on the blog: -------------------- I appreciate your documenting the testing process, but it misses the point entirely. This rings of the classic “engineers presume they understand HCI” because they use computers. If your customers are unhappy, it doesn’t make a whiff of differen...