From T410 To X230

[TheMagicT410]

Hey All!
its been a while since i last posted on here (Ive been slacking :p but im going to try and be more active on here)

So ive owned my T410 for while now and has served me well, she was needing to get replaced soon anyway so i was extremely lucky getting the chance to get a new laptop for my birthday that is (Birthday in 8 days so 20th January), i just had to have another Lenovo laptop as they are simply just amazing machines that are extremely durable and perform very well.

with my budget and what size of laptop i was looking for as i was looking for something smaller and can fit in my bag easier ect so i started to look in the x230 section i wanted something with a fast processor (Even better than my i7 640m which runs amazing) and with a much faster IGPU compared to the terrible Intel HD 1000 IGPU which came with my T410.

with the cpu i was looking for (A 3rd generation i5 3320m) with a minimum of 4GB apparently i could swap my ram from my T410 which has 8gb ram installed at the moment so it would save some money as ram at the moment has skyrocketed for some daft reason i dont know of.
but anyway back to the elegant x230 i was able to find a X230 for £200 or $243 if your in america it came with the i5 i was looking for, the 8gb ram and also to my surprise a 128gb Intel SSD (i dont know what model yet)

i couldn't believe what i found for such a low cost, the machine looked to be in pretty nice shape too as when i was looking for X230's on ebay some for £160 were in terrible shape with only 4gb ram and the i5 3320m! BUT their is one thing that im rather sceptical about and that will be the keyboard, its in nice condition small marks ect but its the american format which i am not used to what so ever so if i don't like it i can buy a new back-lit uk keyboard for £24 but i think i will like it, but i think the keyboard looks so beautiful anyway compared to the old fashioned T410 keyboard which makes it look very dated.

other than that i think its a steal for what im receiving a amazing laptop with great performance and in good shape for only £200!
my plans with the T410 on the other hand is to swap my main ssd which is a 240Gb Drevo X1 Sata 3 ssd into the X230 and put the 128Gb one in the T410 install windows 10 on it and give it to my brother as he needs a new laptop.

i seriously cannot wait to get the amazing machine for my 15th birthday i can actually play some of my favourite games such as for example Rust Legacy, Minecraft, Need For Speed Most Wanted 2012 and some other games that are not too demanding so i think this machine will be more than fine with what i throw at it for the next few years, i might even buy more ram to max it out, and throw in a msata ssd for a laugh and even the i7 motherboard (depending on price ect) but i am not sure as the i5 3320m is faster by around 30% and my i7 640m is pretty quick!

im sorry for this being very long but i wanted to post something and give some updates when it comes to my current status with my laptops (Only lenovo of course!) i appreciate you reading this

of course there will be some updates to come with the X230 which i shall post here when i do indeed receive it for my Birthday in 8 days time!

Have a great day!

[emtee3511]

Happy Birthday (on the 20th)
I'm betting you will like the size of the X230 and also will not notice an appreciable difference in the i5 vs. i7.
Post back when you get your new machine.

[TheMagicT410]

Thanks!
i was lucky enough to get a look at the machine when it arrived on Monday just to see if its in good condition which it is in deed, just the keyboard is very warn but i can get a cheap one for around £25
with the i7 640m Vs The 3320m it is a bit faster which is a very nice addition but my 640m is plenty fast for me anyway so im not too worried about performance, here's some links of comparisons. The single core performance is better which is good for gaming as they say aswell as multi core and so on, feel free to check the links for the full comparison!

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-6 ... e-i5-3320M
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/433/In ... (BGA).html
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php ... %5B%5D=850

Have a good day!

[TheMagicT410]

i can truly say that this laptop is hands down one of the best laptops i have ever used in my life.
the keyboard is amazing, it has the perfect amount of key travel and is extremely easy to get used to (only took around an hour or 2)
the display on this thing looks even better than my T410's one which was 1440x900 which is good to see as that display was indeed pretty good.

with the i5 on the other hand its always very quiet (i do have everything on max performance including setting on the bios) and is also noticeably faster than the old 640m.
The ram so when i took the ram cover off it came with one stick of 8gb which will save me some money as if i plan to get 16gb and came with 2 x 4gb sticks i would have to shed out a lot of money but now it wont be as much.

battery life, it seems that this machine has an issue with its battery its charge cycle time is only 373 times and its original capacity of 62.16 Wh is now a measly 22.14 Wh! so now i will need to get a new battery. but at the same time this american style keyboard need to get replaced too, the bottom left corner is harder to press compared to the rest of the keyboard aswell as it being very shiny (some of the keys, most of them)

with the lid its in almost perfect condition but after 5 miniutes of owning it the "e" in the lenovo logo has lost a bit of its letter. the trackpad isn't the best ive used but i guess it gets the job done, can have issues recognising if ive clicked the right or the left part of the trakpad.

over all its a pretty good machine and when i get the chance to fix it up a bit, i think it would be a great little machine!

Thanks for looking!

[RealBlackStuff]

If you stay with the X230 keyboard layout, get one without the built-in backlight.
Those backlit ones are cheaply made and turn shiny in no time.
And of course they have this atrocious layout.
I would suggest to get the classic keyboard from the X220 and a matching X220 palmrest, and put that on it instead.
You'll need your weekend to digest this long how-to thread: Installing classic keyboard into X230 with EC firmware mod

[TheMagicT410]

Thanks for the advise about not getting a backlit keyboard, i dont really need on like that anyway.
with the swap you said about i extremely like both keyboards and so far this keyboard seems to be better for my taste.
í can get a new X230 keyboard for only £20 which is very cheap and will fix the annoying issue with the space bar's bottom left corner not wanting to work at times.
Thanks For Reading!

[TheMagicT410]

Hey all!

just a very small update.
so its been 10 days since i got this beautiful machine and so far it has run everything i throw at it with no issues at all!
i have already masted the keyboard and am really enjoying this machine as my daily driver!

today for a odd reason i started to lookup about ram effecting speeds of intel igpu's and slowly found out that it does. with this x230 it came with 1 x 8gb DDR3 stick of ram at 800Mhz that got me thinking as my old T410 has some ram so i placed one of the 2gb sticks in but nothing happend, i found out that it was not right as the machine booted by didn't show anything on the screen as well as some oft the ram specs were not the same.

then i remembered i have my mums old laptop from 2013 which has 1 stick of 4gb ddr3 at 800Mhz i looked at both sticks and everything looked the same just not the dates they were made only 3 moth difference.
i placed both sticks in a behold it booted straight up to windows within seconds.

i could instantly tell a difference in responsiveness when putting the laptop into sleep mode or when it comes to opening programs ect. so then i started to play some games and i opened bandicam at the same time and i could see a huge performance increase compared to what fps i used to get before i can easly get a additional 10 - 8 fps increase in games for just adding 1 4gb stick at the same speed! with this addition i can now record games at higher settings a hey i could even crank up the settings now.
for example one of my all time favourite games "mafia 2" used to run at lowest setting 640 x 480 around 40 - 50 fps i can now run it at 720p at 35+ fps compared to the 29 - 26 fps i used to get before hand!

With minecraft i used to have everything on almost max just not the render which was on 8 as well as anti aliasing and mipmap ect i used to get around 80 - 70 on average now i can get over 100 fps, even when cranking the render to 10 i can get almost 160 fps! insane i must say!

So if you own a laptop with shoddy integrated graphics Amd or intel, maybe consider getting more ram, i.e dual channel not single channel or fast clocked ram e.g 1600mhz and even more ram it will give you a nice boost in performance and loading times for certain programs ect.

Thanks for reading!