T420s thoughts after 3 months
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 9:34 pm
Here are my random thoughts after living with a T420s since Sep 2011.
Specs: i7, Optimus, 8Gb RAM, 160Gb SSD, Fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, camera.
It’s surprisingly smaller than I expected. The photos showing the speaker grills on either side of the keyboard made it look larger than it actually is. The box it came in iss small. Minimal elegantly engineered packaging. Very much in keeping with the “for people who do” ethos.
Very light! Almost forget I have a computer in my bag sometimes. When reading on-screen documents, rotating the document into portrait mode and holding the computer like a book/folio is surprisingly practical.
More rubber paint goodness all over. Very square and boxy. Like! Build quality is excellent as usual. No creaking keyboard, no flapping screen, all tight tolerances.
Where is the ExpressCard slot? Oh, the card reader pops out. Push in either side and it pops out like an SD card.
The Ultrabay eject mechanism is now completely manual and not spring loaded. I have to push and hold the release lock, while at the same time pushing a lever to push out the Ultrabay device. Easy and smooth enough. Just without the satisfying click-snap of the previous bay implementations.
The old travel bezels from my T43 and X60 Ultrabase fit perfectly. These have the chamfered bottom edge that Lenovo designers have thoughtfully continued in the T420s. I have this in all the time now as I seldom use the optical drive.
The screen is bright, sharp and clear. The max brightness is too bright actually. Absolutely delightful to use. It seems even sharper than the 14” 1400x1050 of my T60p. There is no noticeable screen door effect. I use it at 75% brightness. It is quite usable outdoors in the shade.
I am glad I went for this 1600x900 screen than the 1366x768 of the X220. The lower res would have driven me bonkers. I have set up all my apps and Windows with vertical menus/buttons to maximise the vertical screen space. Comparing 2 windows side by side is very doable, and made super simple by Window 7’s bump-to-the-sides function.
The Caps Lock and mute keys have LEDs now. Really useful touch especially on the Caps Lock key. A complete removal of this key would suit me even better…
Windows 7 boots fast. And even faster after I put in an SSD. I removed the spacer from an old Intel X-25M and it fitted perfectly in the bay. I used the rubber rails to hold the SSD cover on!
Hibernation sleep and wake are slow. Slower than cold boot. I have read that this is a Windows 7 issue. Sleep/Suspend is very fast. Just about instant-on.
Swipe the fingerprint to power up and logon is cool. But the green light on the fingerprint reader is on all the time which may suck up power when not plugged in. This can be disabled.
Installing a Wacom tablet gives me access to handwriting recognition with Windows 7. Out of the box this is fast and amazingly accurate.
Only 7.89Gb (out of
memory is usable by Windows 7 – because of the Intel HD3000 graphics.
Speech recognition using the twin noise cancelling microphone array in a quiet room is still not as good as with a dedicated headset. They seem to have some difficulty picking out certain sounds like “th” I guess they are really not intended for this level of use.
The microphone array and camera are excellent for Skype. Work as advertised. Flawlessly.
In certain very quiet circumstances, the i7 CPU does emit a high pitched squeaking noise. This seems to correlate with high CPU load and high disk access – such as Outlook checking the integrity of a PST file. Funnily enough when running a radiosity render (max sustained CPU load) I did not hear the squeaking at all.
The speakers are great compared to the T60p. Loud, good stereo effect, and the to-be-expected limited bass. But more than good enough for YouTube and DVDs. I normally keep the volume at 60% which is more than loud enough to fill a small room.
Battery life is not brilliant but is an acceptable trade-off for weight. With the optical drive removed, screen set fairly dim, wifi/Bluetooth off, and aggressive throttling back with power manager; I get about 2-2.5 hours of use. Even with the processor throttled down, the machine performed amazingly well and fluidly – word processing, basic Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Excellent keyboard. The closer-set keys do seem to keep more crud out of the computer. The occasional cat hair still gets in there however, but I think that is one of the magical qualities of cat fluff.
The fan does come on all the time in slow revs. Not terribly noticeable. Perhaps if I had the i5 processor and non-Optimus the fan would not come on at all? When the i7 is running full pelt (eg rendering a radiosity image) the fan can get much louder s expected.
I love being able to hook up 2 external monitors (VGA, DisplayPort to DVI converter) and use those concurrently with the built-in screen for 3 simultaneous displays.
The ports along the back is tidier but can be surprisingly annoying to get at for frequently attached/detached USB devices (2 of the 3 USB ports are on the back). I use a USB hub to get around this issue.
The touchpad movement detection is somewhat lacklustre. Edge scroll, two finger scroll, pinch to zoom works, but nowhere as fluid as on my Galaxy SII phone. Palm rejection is good. Touch to tap is good.
All in all, a very happy purchase and more than worthy upgrade to my T60p workhorse.
Specs: i7, Optimus, 8Gb RAM, 160Gb SSD, Fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, camera.
It’s surprisingly smaller than I expected. The photos showing the speaker grills on either side of the keyboard made it look larger than it actually is. The box it came in iss small. Minimal elegantly engineered packaging. Very much in keeping with the “for people who do” ethos.
Very light! Almost forget I have a computer in my bag sometimes. When reading on-screen documents, rotating the document into portrait mode and holding the computer like a book/folio is surprisingly practical.
More rubber paint goodness all over. Very square and boxy. Like! Build quality is excellent as usual. No creaking keyboard, no flapping screen, all tight tolerances.
Where is the ExpressCard slot? Oh, the card reader pops out. Push in either side and it pops out like an SD card.
The Ultrabay eject mechanism is now completely manual and not spring loaded. I have to push and hold the release lock, while at the same time pushing a lever to push out the Ultrabay device. Easy and smooth enough. Just without the satisfying click-snap of the previous bay implementations.
The old travel bezels from my T43 and X60 Ultrabase fit perfectly. These have the chamfered bottom edge that Lenovo designers have thoughtfully continued in the T420s. I have this in all the time now as I seldom use the optical drive.
The screen is bright, sharp and clear. The max brightness is too bright actually. Absolutely delightful to use. It seems even sharper than the 14” 1400x1050 of my T60p. There is no noticeable screen door effect. I use it at 75% brightness. It is quite usable outdoors in the shade.
I am glad I went for this 1600x900 screen than the 1366x768 of the X220. The lower res would have driven me bonkers. I have set up all my apps and Windows with vertical menus/buttons to maximise the vertical screen space. Comparing 2 windows side by side is very doable, and made super simple by Window 7’s bump-to-the-sides function.
The Caps Lock and mute keys have LEDs now. Really useful touch especially on the Caps Lock key. A complete removal of this key would suit me even better…
Windows 7 boots fast. And even faster after I put in an SSD. I removed the spacer from an old Intel X-25M and it fitted perfectly in the bay. I used the rubber rails to hold the SSD cover on!
Hibernation sleep and wake are slow. Slower than cold boot. I have read that this is a Windows 7 issue. Sleep/Suspend is very fast. Just about instant-on.
Swipe the fingerprint to power up and logon is cool. But the green light on the fingerprint reader is on all the time which may suck up power when not plugged in. This can be disabled.
Installing a Wacom tablet gives me access to handwriting recognition with Windows 7. Out of the box this is fast and amazingly accurate.
Only 7.89Gb (out of
memory is usable by Windows 7 – because of the Intel HD3000 graphics.Speech recognition using the twin noise cancelling microphone array in a quiet room is still not as good as with a dedicated headset. They seem to have some difficulty picking out certain sounds like “th” I guess they are really not intended for this level of use.
The microphone array and camera are excellent for Skype. Work as advertised. Flawlessly.
In certain very quiet circumstances, the i7 CPU does emit a high pitched squeaking noise. This seems to correlate with high CPU load and high disk access – such as Outlook checking the integrity of a PST file. Funnily enough when running a radiosity render (max sustained CPU load) I did not hear the squeaking at all.
The speakers are great compared to the T60p. Loud, good stereo effect, and the to-be-expected limited bass. But more than good enough for YouTube and DVDs. I normally keep the volume at 60% which is more than loud enough to fill a small room.
Battery life is not brilliant but is an acceptable trade-off for weight. With the optical drive removed, screen set fairly dim, wifi/Bluetooth off, and aggressive throttling back with power manager; I get about 2-2.5 hours of use. Even with the processor throttled down, the machine performed amazingly well and fluidly – word processing, basic Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Excellent keyboard. The closer-set keys do seem to keep more crud out of the computer. The occasional cat hair still gets in there however, but I think that is one of the magical qualities of cat fluff.
The fan does come on all the time in slow revs. Not terribly noticeable. Perhaps if I had the i5 processor and non-Optimus the fan would not come on at all? When the i7 is running full pelt (eg rendering a radiosity image) the fan can get much louder s expected.
I love being able to hook up 2 external monitors (VGA, DisplayPort to DVI converter) and use those concurrently with the built-in screen for 3 simultaneous displays.
The ports along the back is tidier but can be surprisingly annoying to get at for frequently attached/detached USB devices (2 of the 3 USB ports are on the back). I use a USB hub to get around this issue.
The touchpad movement detection is somewhat lacklustre. Edge scroll, two finger scroll, pinch to zoom works, but nowhere as fluid as on my Galaxy SII phone. Palm rejection is good. Touch to tap is good.
All in all, a very happy purchase and more than worthy upgrade to my T60p workhorse.