Thinkpads Forum

Ordered my new T420s but have a couple of questions....

Should I be worried about the battery life? I heard it wasn't so good and I ordered the one with the nVidia graphics. Does the new Ultrabay Battery III get used before or after the main battery? I remember the one for the T61 got used before the main battery therefore had severe degrading issues.

What RAM should I buy? Crucial, G.Skill, Corsair, Kingston? Price differences are that much.

I ordered the standard HDD however want to migrate to a SSD. How do I go about doing this? I want to keep the Experience 2.0 features installed etc because I heard that it helps boot your computer quickly etc.

What software should should I use for this? What SSD should I consider for the T420s considering it can only use ones that are 7.5mm high?

There is no bay battery for the T420s. Lenovo removed the connector with the T410 et al. Perhaps the 9 cell is worth a look if you need a lot of battery life.

Some older Thinkpads could be picky about memory, but the new machines are not. As long as you're buying a decent brand, you should be fine. You can always RMA it if need be.

I don't know much about EE. Perhaps if you install it with the recovery discs you'll get it. The T420s can use a msata drive. It's a SSD that plugs into one of the mini PCIe slots. You can't use WWAN with a msata drive if you need it, but it would allow you to keep the existing hard drive for extra storage. That's what I got for my X220i. The 320GB 5400RPM drive and a 80GB Intel msata drive. The speeds aren't quite as good as existing drive, but it's still a SSD.

Yes, it's a 7mm drive. Some Intel and Crucial drives are 7mm drives with the spacer removed if you want to use the bay.

The T420s has the ability to use the 3-cell bay battery.

Lenovo website: "Bring along the 3-cell battery for 10 hours of computing". It's also mentioned in reviews etc and sold with the laptop as an available accessory. I don't think they offer a 9-cell either for the T420s?

I heard something about alignment when installing an OS onto a SSD? Would I have any problems when using the recovery disks?

FredGarvin wrote:There is no bay battery for the T420s. Lenovo removed the connector with the T410 et al. Perhaps the 9 cell is worth a look if you need a lot of battery life.

Some older Thinkpads could be picky about memory, but the new machines are not. As long as you're buying a decent brand, you should be fine. You can always RMA it if need be.

I don't know much about EE. Perhaps if you install it with the recovery discs you'll get it. The T420s can use a msata drive. It's a SSD that plugs into one of the mini PCIe slots. You can't use WWAN with a msata drive if you need it, but it would allow you to keep the existing hard drive for extra storage. That's what I got for my X220i. The 320GB 5400RPM drive and a 80GB Intel msata drive. The speeds aren't quite as good as existing drive, but it's still a SSD.

Yes, it's a 7mm drive. Some Intel and Crucial drives are 7mm drives with the spacer removed if you want to use the bay.

There is no 9-cell for the T420s. It continues to support the UltraBay battery whereas the non -s ones don't.

Brain fart on my part. It seems you're right on both counts. I don't know much about the recovery discs as I never use them.