Thinkpads Forum

Hello.

If I want a machine for mobile office work, for example surfing the web and writing some mails, outdoor using the battery, which is cold (not hot, never overheating) and quiet (I never want to hear the fans while working), with a good display for working outside, which one I have to choose?

T400s or T410s.

Thanks.

I don't know how realistic it is to expect to never hear the fan. If low CPU usage tasks, the fan should mostly remain quiet. If you can find one, the T400 came with an optional 680 nit LCD, which much brighter than the standard LCDs and therefore more conducive to working outdoors. The X220 or X230 might be worth a look too. They've got a 300 nit IPS LCD option that should work better outdoors too.

Thanks for the answer.

I just have to decide between T400s and T410s there are no other options for me at the time.

With "never hear the fans" I mean at the described work. Web surfing and a little bit text communication like instant messaging.

So the question is: Is the T400s more cold and more quiet at the described work than the T410s?

And is it true that I can work much longer with the T400s using the battery then with the T410s?

I have the T410s, and I can tell you with typical usage, it stays very quiet. I also use TPFancontrol in the Smart Mode 1 setting. The fan almost never comes on, and when it does, it spins at a low rpm.

The battery life is not that great. That was one of the main reasons that I upgraded to the Sandy Bridge based T420s. With average use, I get 2 hours of runtime on the battery. That is without modifying the "Balanced" power settings. You can tweak the settings to get more runtime out of it, as high as around 3 hours. Any CPU intensive task greatly reduces these numbers, of course. The optional UltraBay battery gives you one additional hour with average use.

I never owned the T400s.

I have had every T4x0s series laptop, i have to say the T400s is the coolest and quietest running of all the T4x0s machines. Apart from the plastic problem with the palmrest (which the T410s also have), i think the machine is almost perfect. The latter generation ThinkPad T4x0s maybe faster due to the full voltage i Core CPU, but they also chew through battery very quickly, and when you run anything intensive on it, the laptop heats up faster too (so the fan spin up more).