Thinkpads Forum

Hi
I have been offered a T420, for my X220T. Im very unsure, if it is a good deal for me, or not.

The X220T have these specs:

CPU: I5-2520M @2.5GHz
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
GFX: Intel HD 3000
HDD: 500 GB HDD
Screen: 12.5" 1366x768 IPS, 300 NITS

1 year old, very good condition.

The T420 have these specs:

CPU: I5-2410M @2.3GHz
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
GFX: Optimus with nVidia Quadro NVS 4200M and Intel HD3000
HDD: 128 GB Plextor SolidState
Screen: 14" 1600x900

Very good condition, nearly 1 year old.

At first i wouldnt like this swap, since i was just going to sell the X220T, and i think its worth more than the T420 in a clean sale (Can anyone confirm this?)

However.. It seems like the T420 can be upgraded with a I7-2720QM.

IF we Exchange laptops, and i swap to an I7-2720QM, then i thought about selling me W510, and then just use the T420. Would that be possible? Or is the T420 too cramped with a quadcore?
Or will the T420 be worth more when selling, than the X220T?

Best regards

My employer supplies me with a T420. At first, I did not like the screen AT ALL, the 85 square inches was a huge downgrade from the T41 that I used to use from my employer,, with 101 square inches. And, I could not seem to get the OS to display the icons at an appropriate size.

But the T420 does have a much brighter screen than the T41/T42 series. I just hate HD displays as the aspect ratio ruins my productivity for writing documents or for programming or writing patents (I'm a wireless systems engineer).

Here are the downsides of my T420 :
1. The 802.11 turns itself off at random times. You'll be surfing the net just fine and then ... NOTHING. You go to the Win7 diagnose panel and it churns away for 20+ secs and then it says, "did you consider turning on the 802.11? Shall I do it?" You say yes and you're good to go...once upon a time, though, it turned off my 802.11 just 60 secs later !!!
2. The CD is badly designed and it's impossible to avoid hitting the eject button on the CD when the pick it up. I have taped my CD SHUT to avoid ejecting it all day long.
3. It's chunky (compared to my T4x's, upon which the X220 is based)
4. The scratchpad is horrible compared to a T4x or an X220 pad made by Synaptics. The nubble surface makes it difficult and slow to move quickly and accurately across the page. And, the multi-touch doesn't really work reliably enough to make the nubbles worth having on the scratchpad.
5. On my first one, the eject-latch for the ultrabay lost a chunk of plastic and then the entire eject-latch eventually would fall off (only when ultrabay is empty - when it was full the eject-latch was safe.)
6. Quite frequently all the volume controls (up/down/mute-unmute) sometimes become disabled while web surfing and I never remember this being possible with my T4x machines.

Here are the upsides of the T420 :
1. This the last of the "great keyboard" thinkpads. We have a new chicklet keyboarded Y580 and while I struggle to make typing errors on that keyboard, I know it's inferior I just cannot put my finger on Y ... lol ...
2. The screen is very very bright, probably 250 nits
3. The battery life is astonishing, over thanksgiving i forgot my power adapter and never needed it as the laptop lasted for 8 hours !!!

QWERTY Andreas wrote:Can anyone confirm this?

Something is worth what another person is willing to pay for it in a given moment in time. That can vary quite a bit. Much will depend on when and where it's sold. Sometimes you get lucky and get full price, and other times, you have to discount it. It's difficult to say with any certainty.

I'm no expert buy I wouldn't trade a X220t for a T420. The nvidia graphic card its not that better. If you can live with a 12" screen (And its really cool sizing for travelling - I have a x41t). I would pay more for your x220t. But they are different machines for different tasks...

I wouldn't make this swap and I also wouldn't count on the T420 running reliably with a quad core processor installed. I know some folks online have done this and it will technically work, but it'll run quite hot and, under load, those folks have admitted it pushes the CPU temps right up to the limit. If you do decide to try it, I'd seriously consider disabling the discrete graphics in the BIOS (if you can't get an integrated only machine) to try and reduce the heat to be dissipated.

I have the T420 and X220t, and i would say don't swap if you intend to use the i7 quad core. Since i think the quad core won't be able to support HT when you install it in the T420, it will also run significantly hotter.

lead_org wrote:Since i think the quad core won't be able to support HT when you install it in the T420, it will also run significantly hotter.

I wonder why HT wouldn't be supported? I thought it would be significantly hotter because the T420's heatsink is designed to remove only 35W of heat while the quad core i7 requires 45W of heat to be evacuated, not because of HT.

From what I read at Lenovo's Thinkpad forum about the quad core in a T420, the hyper threading worked. The big issue was heat dissipation - the fan had to run at high RPM almost constantly and stressing the machine pushed it within a few C of redline on the CPU.

I did mean the HT caused the i7 quad core to get hot, but rather the quad core itself runs hotter than a dual core CPU.