My opinion of the T43 (5 months now)

[Eddo]

Just thought that I would share my thoughts of the T43 with every one. I have had many laptops and this is my first IBM. I bought the 15 SXGA+ model 266884U.

Screen
The screen is quite nice. I think the whole flexview thing is bogus though because I have had Xbrites with good viewing angles also. Anyhow, I like it. I think that the brightness is only sufficient on the highest setting (personnel preference) though. I don't like it dim, especially with the smaller fonts that an SXGA provides. I do have slighty dark bottom corners which is supposedly normal on this screen, hardly noticeable.

Upgrades
I upgraded to 1 gig ram no problem. Where I did have a problem was with the hard drive. Error 2010. You guys have it, or have read about it. I put a 5400 100 gig in it. The last bios update made the problem tolerable with only an annoying beep on every startup. If I were in a board meeting I would probably find this problem quite embarrassing, but luckily I'm just a student.

Battery
I got both the regular and extended batteries. With the extended on full brightness, I get about 4 hours of run time with bluetooth and wifi on. Impressive, my Sony only got about 2, pathetic.

Build Quality
Not bad, but not super either. The lid of the screen does not close perfectly, I have to push the lever to make sure it locks. The lid also does not fit 100% snug like they do on the 14.1 models. I have seen both and the 14.1 seems more tightly built.

Fan noise
You can hear it, but it does not bother me. I had an Acer previously with a fan that put off a high pitch whine and really really annoyed me. However, I could see where it could annoy some people, depends on the room noise and personnal preference. I can live with it.

Keyboard
Is nice, but I'm not sure what all the hype was about. It's a keyboard, I type on it, I have used other keyboards that were just as good. Navigation is made really easy with the trackpad. I don't use the regular pad anymore. The red dot on the keyboard is the way to go, makes scrolling easier too.

Other complaints
The CD rom sometimes make loud noises until the CD is reseated. The case is strong but yet still creaks slightly, the same as most other laptops.
Boot time is sluggish, but that does not concern me too much. The thinklight is a neat idea, but about useless it most settings as it does not produce a significant amount of light.

Other praises
The software that comes with the T43 is excellent. I am referring to the presentation director, which I use for my external monitor configuration. The extras from IBM are really useful, intuitive, and time saving. The 64mb x300 does everything that I need it to and more with external settings. I am not a gamer. BTW, the look of the computer is really nice (metal hinges) and it beats the heck out of those big fat ugly looking Dells.

I know it sounds like I have alot of negative things to say but I really like my computer. The price was OK @ $1700 but the 3 year warranty made the difference. I would recommend this computer to others, however I would not make it seem like this computer is gods gift to the world like some seem too.

[christopher_wolf]

Welcome to the Thinkpad Forums

That is a pretty good review and touched on quite a few points; many thanks for sharing it with us. I find the ThinkLight really useful in low, really low, lighting conditions. I have used it on a long airline flight to illuminate my keyboard and some paper I was reading from and it worked great. The 2010 Error isn't always manifest on all the HDDs out there (check the Thread here and ThinkWiki about which drives seem to work without the 2010 Error)

[DIGITALgimpus]

Upgrades
I upgraded to 1 gig ram no problem. Where I did have a problem was with the hard drive. Error 2010. You guys have it, or have read about it. I put a 5400 100 gig in it. The last bios update made the problem tolerable with only an annoying beep on every startup. If I were in a board meeting I would probably find this problem quite embarrassing, but luckily I'm just a student.

Agreed, big downfall IMHO.

Build Quality
Not bad, but not super either. The lid of the screen does not close perfectly, I have to push the lever to make sure it locks. The lid also does not fit 100% snug like they do on the 14.1 models. I have seen both and the 14.1 seems more tightly built.

My 15" does the same thing! I guess it's not just me then... hmm. It's almost like the spring isn't strong enough.

Fan noise
You can hear it, but it does not bother me. I had an Acer previously with a fan that put off a high pitch whine and really really annoyed me. However, I could see where it could annoy some people, depends on the room noise and personnal preference. I can live with it.

Most of the time it doesn't bother me, but occasionally, it really gets on my nerves. Depends on ambient noise mostly.

Other complaints
The CD rom sometimes make loud noises until the CD is reseated. The case is strong but yet still creaks slightly, the same as most other laptops.
Boot time is sluggish, but that does not concern me too much. The thinklight is a neat idea, but about useless it most settings as it does not produce a significant amount of light.

Yet again, must agree.


IMHO my old A31 was better build quality, though had design flaws (mainly it's weight). The T43 is still good compared to many (especially Dell).

I just wish Lenovo would really step up and address these concerns. Not far from the perfect laptop.

[draco2527]

PS: The "metal hinges" are actually Stainless Steel!!!

[leif]

Since I bought my T43 in Jan 24th, I've heard lots of claims that there are many problems in T43. But, to be honest, who can buy one that there is no any problems in? By comparison, maybe as in this high price, a IBM machine should have no issue after releasing. Yuh, but I think that if it give you some features in other aspects such as the tough crust, aps, thinklight and so on, it couldn't be more perfect because it's only a man-made machine.

If there are any problems with my writing, plz forgive about ti for my poor English.

[fullauto]

Eddo,

I am at the 5 month mark myself, although it took two T43s to get here.

I agree almost word-for-word with your appraisal.

At the end of the day I am slightly more negative, I suppose, because my expectations were so high...

Plus the fan and heat issues seem to annoy me more than most.

I started out with one of the first Digital laptops (Ultra HiNote 2000) eight years ago, and, geesus, that machine set the bar pretty high in terms of build quality and design.

[bzzz]

At the end of the day I am slightly more negative, I suppose, because my expectations were so high...

Plus the fan and heat issues seem to annoy me more than most.

That's my impression as well. But I tend to think this is not IBM's fault, rather it's Intel who has released poor designed chipset. IMHO, of course.

[christopher_wolf]

At the end of the day I am slightly more negative, I suppose, because my expectations were so high...

Plus the fan and heat issues seem to annoy me more than most.

That's my impression as well. But I tend to think this is not IBM's fault, rather it's Intel who has released poor designed chipset. IMHO, of course.

An even bigger factor that one must consider with reviews is also user perception and preferences when qualitatively, not quantitatively, analyzing it. Everybody differs in many ways, so it is not much of a suprise that people can experience differnt things with something that, theoretically at least, shouldn't have variability.

[bzzz]

An even bigger factor that one must consider with reviews is also user perception and preferences when qualitatively, not quantitatively, analyzing it. Everybody differs in many ways, so it is not much of a suprise that people can experience differnt things with something that, theoretically at least, shouldn't have variability.

That's true. Though I have numbers as well

for example, I managed to get down to 7.6W on T42 and only 11.5W on T43. notice that on T43 I use ati drivers with PowerPlay enabled while T42 has downclocked 7500 with open source linux driver that doesn't support PowerPlay feature.

[christopher_wolf]

Very interesting, indeed...Not all that suprising since the T43 uses a different ATI card than the 7500 on the T42 and I imagine that there would be differences as well since, if I am not mistaken, the 7500 uses AGP and the x300 is on PCI Express. I don't know if the ATI PowerPlay feature has unified the power levels for all the cards, perhaps not since it is used on many differing cards for various purposes and probably goes off of a little table for each chipset.

[bzzz]

Very interesting, indeed...Not all that suprising since the T43 uses a different ATI card than the 7500 on the T42 and I imagine that there would be differences as well since, if I am not mistaken, the 7500 uses AGP and the x300 is on PCI Express. I don't know if the ATI PowerPlay feature has unified the power levels for all the cards, perhaps not since it is used on many differing cards for various purposes and probably goes off of a little table for each chipset.

indeed. but I buy the whole thing, you know ... and, of course, choise depends not on power consumption only.

[Eddo]

Like I said, for me the fan is not a real issue. The temp on my T43 doesn't get hot, atleast on the palm pad or bottom. I never checked the internal temp.

If my lid closed more solid, the creaks were a bit less, and the CD rom never had issues, I would have no complaints what so ever.

I guess I expected perfection, and with any consumer electronics, that is too much to expect. I am a very picky person (never satisfied with anything) and could probably find faults on a new BMW, so I suppose the average Joe probably wouldn't even care.

One thing about the build, it is just a tad flexy and creaks in a few spots. However, I played with a $900 HP that was completely solid which was impressive. It was a cheaper lappy but built like a tank (seriously). That is what I expected from IBM, and that is what I got, almost. But that was the best part about the HP and I wouldn't trade it for my T43.

[christopher_wolf]

Yup, my HP ze5170 was pretty sturdy...But that was the only thing that was remotely good about it; it had all the thermodynamic prowess of a steel slab in Death Valley amongst other issues; plus, it was almost twice as thick as my T43 and it had a *huge* heatsink (which, by the way, only covered half of the GPU which could get hot enough to crash the system.) The HP wasn't bad in the role of a desktop; the only problem, however, is that it had *made* itself a desktop without even giving a thought to ask me about it.

[fullauto]

I can get as quantitative as you want to...

From your several posts it sounds like we have wildly different temperature profiles when our machines are running in Maximum Performance mode. My fan screams, and blows like a freak'n torch at idle.

Sure it is unreasonable to pay for a Porsche and expect a Ferrari, but it shouldn't ride like a Ford either.

BTW, the variability between the first T43 I had and the second T43 was significant. Their manufacture dates were 1 month apart.

Look, Chris, sounds like you got one of the better machines out of the batch. I am not that picky (really) and both T43s are going back...

[christopher_wolf]

Wha? You are sending both a Porsche and Ferrari back?! For goodness sake, send one this way!

Oh, you mean the Thinkpads; well, I don't know what to say...If they are going full throttle at *idle* then you should probably see what IBM/Lenovo can do about it. The fan should throttle down at some point, if it doesn't then that is a problem; it has to be since it is given as an option that, through the power manager, is indicated "controllable." Did you give IBM a call about it?

[dr_st]

The screen is quite nice. I think the whole flexview thing is bogus though because I have had Xbrites with good viewing angles also.

That's because Sony's XBrite also uses an IPS panel, like Flexview, whereas the vast majority of notebook manufacturers use the cheaper TN panels. It's by no means "bogus".

I do have slighty dark bottom corners which is supposedly normal on this screen, hardly noticeable.

Yep, same here. Except that for some people the corners stretch several centimeters above. That's already not normal.

Not bad, but not super either. The lid of the screen does not close perfectly, I have to push the lever to make sure it locks. The lid also does not fit 100% snug like they do on the 14.1 models. I have seen both and the 14.1 seems more tightly built.

No lid problem here (T42 15"), but I do have one problem with the bezel not sitting tight above the audio ports on the left. Minor, really. Actually, one thing to say about the 14" vs 15" is that the 15" with the gaps between the keyboard and the edge of the laptop looks nicer to me than the 14" which has no such gaps (due to fitting same size keyboard in smaller form factor). The 14" looks a bit as if it was chopped to fit.

Keyboard
Is nice, but I'm not sure what all the hype was about. It's a keyboard, I type on it, I have used other keyboards that were just as good. Navigation is made really easy with the trackpad. I don't use the regular pad anymore. The red dot on the keyboard is the way to go, makes scrolling easier too.

One of the good things is that the really is no flex with the keyboard. Some laptop keyboards do have it and it's annoying. But here most laptop manufacturers have been steadily improving. To me the great thing about the keyboard is that the keys are full-size, don't feel crammed, and most importantly - enjoy a standard layout. Not uncommon to see manufacturers stick the Ins/Del/etc keys in some God-forsaken places, so that they interfere with Ctrl or Alt. It's bloody annoying. And like you said, the trackpoint is so much better than the touchpad, that it alone makes this laptop worth the money.

BTW, the look of the computer is really nice (metal hinges) and it beats the heck out of those big fat ugly looking Dells.

Tell me about it. Beats me how some people can say that a Thinkpad looks ugly, while looking at those Dells or HP Pavillion monstrosities.

he thinklight is a neat idea, but about useless it most settings as it does not produce a significant amount of light.

Completely right. In some settings it might be useful, but 99% of the time, it's pointless. A webcam would have been a much better addition to the laptop.

[fullauto]

Chris, I did give Lenovo a call and they said send it back.

Twice.

No question, their customer service is absolutely tops.

I not leaving the fold BTW, just moving on to a T60.

If I have to drive a Ford, at least it will be able to peel out...