Thinkpads Forum

Took delivery of a T400s a few days ago, XP Pro factory install was defective, but reinstalled and working fine. But I just realized the body of the notebook is subtly warped, sufficient that the lower left hand corner sits a millimeter or so off the table on any surface (checked to make sure it wasn't just one particular table). So when you type or rest your hand on the notebook, that part moves up and down. And while it's subtle, it's also annoying, and in a $1600 notebook, I'm not inclined to ignore it. But I'm curious, do others have similar issues? And how receptive do people think Lenovo is going to be to exchanging or refunding it? I'm a bit worried a replacement would have the exact same problem. Any thoughts?

I have a brand-new T400s and I have the same issue - the lower left part moves up and down.

Does it bother you, or is it not a big deal for you?

The T400s has very unusual rubber feet on the front part of the bottom, they have a little 1mm protrusion that's very soft and flexes into the main body of each rubber foot. I was puzzled by this when I first got the laptop, but now I'm realizing it was probably a last-minute engineering fix for the problem we both have, i.e. if the laptop warps one or two millimeters on one corner, the feet can compensate, or at least partially compensate. Assuming my hypothesis is correct, this doesn't bode well for finding a replacement that's not warped, i.e. it suggests they may all be warped, and this may be an engineering flaw and not particular to our computers.

niccolo wrote:The T400s has very unusual rubber feet on the front part of the bottom, they have a little 1mm protrusion that's very soft and flexes into the main body of each rubber foot. I was puzzled by this when I first got the laptop, but now I'm realizing it was probably a last-minute engineering fix for the problem we both have,

I don't think that's the purpose of the two-part feet. My X61s has the same type of feet in the front. IIRC the design of the feet was made with the intent of reducing the shock caused by putting the laptop down less-than-gently (such as if you put the back part of the laptop down and then kinda careless drop the front a couple inches from the surface of the table.) I don't remember where I read that, but I think it was on one of the Lenovo blogs.

At any rate, point is it's not something unique to the T400s.

My T400s was also warped a bit when I got it. The lower left was a just hair off of a flat surface and it moved up and down when pressed there.

After a couple weeks it flattened itself out. It is perfectly flat now.

G

Interesting, and appreciate the responses. I'll keep my fingers crossed that mine also un-warps over the next week or two.

ThinkRob wrote:

niccolo wrote:The T400s has very unusual rubber feet on the front part of the bottom, they have a little 1mm protrusion that's very soft and flexes into the main body of each rubber foot. I was puzzled by this when I first got the laptop, but now I'm realizing it was probably a last-minute engineering fix for the problem we both have,

I don't think that's the purpose of the two-part feet. My X61s has the same type of feet in the front. IIRC the design of the feet was made with the intent of reducing the shock caused by putting the laptop down less-than-gently (such as if you put the back part of the laptop down and then kinda careless drop the front a couple inches from the surface of the table.) I don't remember where I read that, but I think it was on one of the Lenovo blogs.

At any rate, point is it's not something unique to the T400s.

I also think that the design of the rubber feet was made with the intent of reducing any shocks.

niccolo wrote:Does it bother you, or is it not a big deal for you?

Yes, the fact that the body of my t400s moves up and down is quite annoying. Now I'm helping myself with a folded piece of paper placed under the lower left feet.

This will be the second reason for sending my T400s to Lenovo in spite of the fact that maybe all T400s are warped, because I also have high frequency peeps that I can't get rid of.

I was checking my friends T400s 2 days ago and it had the same problem when I put it on the table its not stable the left side is always up not touching the table surface its a design flow I think my previous T61 had the same problem.

My T400s (ordered one day after release) has no such issue. I also concur that the rubber feet are not unusual; my X200 Tablet had them as well.

Have two T400s systems (different part numbers) and the both have the issue, left hand front of the NB is slightly higher than the right and moves down when pressure is applied.