New Thinkpad T400s

[Matrim604]

Hi everyone, just ordered a Thinkpad T400s (SP9600/Win7Pro64/4gbRAM/128GBssd). I've been reading through laptop review sites for months now and this is the conclusion i've come to, and I must say i'm very excited to get the new machine. While this is my first Thinkpad in over 10 years, i'm not completely new to the line. The first laptop I ever owned was a Thinkpad 380ED back in the mid 90s (which I actually still own today and it still runs!), and since then i've been all over the place--Toshiba, Dell, HP, and Sony. I've really enjoyed some of these other laptops, but the one thing that brings me back to the Thinkpad is the keyboard--i've never found a keyboard more comfortable to type on. I suppose the indestructibility of these machines also has something to do with it. I still have one with Windows 95 installed on it which runs fine, and i've been seeing a lot of 4+ year old machines in the wild lately with happy owners productively working away on them. Most other laptops seem to be productive for 2-3 years tops until they kick the bucket (at least in my experience). The only other notebook manufacturer that i've noticed so many old units kicking around is Apple.

Anyways, one question I have about the Thinkpads is how the Thinkvantage software and the "blue button" work. Does this software automatically keep itself up to date, or does it eventually become out of date and redundant on older machines? I've been reading a few customers on this forum who have been having problems upgrading to Windows 7 because of this software or having a "useless" blue button after the upgrade. I personally hate any kind of "bloatware" on my machines, and usually do clean installs of windows after buy any laptop, but I think it would bother me to have a non-working blue button if I did it in this case, so I was just wondering what kind of experience you all have with the Thinkvantage software and Lenovo's prepackaged security/productivity software. Anyways, thanks for listening and hope to hear from some of you T400s owners!

Matt

[FragrantHead]

A colleague had a 380 series way back. Keys on that one had a lot more travel than any Thinkpads now, though I find Thinkpad keyboards still the best. I'm using a 6-year old T30. Yeah, by comparison to a Panasonic CF-62 I used to own, it's indestructible I guess. The Panasonic had a rigid mag-alloy display lid, but everything else fell apart after 3 years; the keyboard, the power socket, the display frame and so on.

On my T30 the Thinkpad button merely brings up the Thinkpad online help. If you're computer literate, you'll never use it. That said, the Lenovo Enhanced Experience that comes with the (Windows 7) pre-install on a T400s might be worth having. Apparently Lenovo worked hard to identify drivers that were stalling Windows during boot and so on (search YouTube). They say you get the full benefit of their enhancements only from the pre-install. If I was getting a T400s, I'd image it before making a fresh Windows install, just in case you want to go back.

[fjs08]

Is the T400 a descendant of the T40p series? I still have that and love it. Looking to buy another ThinkPad... just because.

Looking at the x301... just noticed the T400's. I've been away from new ThinkPads for awhile, so all the new letters and numbers are strange to me.

Thanks.

Frank

[Wendy]

FWIW...I have a W500 and R500 (still vista)....the W500 is a clean install of Windows 7 64 Ultimate RTM. I recently installed the latest Thinkvantage Software, ver. 4, when it became available. All my drivers and software were appropriately updated to current. This is all you need to keep your machine up to date. The blue button on the R500 which I left factory spec...after removing some bloatware....brings up the recovery and restore...something I'll never use and sounds like you won't either. Hope this helps.

Another thing...I also installed Win7 32 on my R61i with a clean install. On both the W500 and R61i, the blue button isn't toally useless...it will bring up the boot menu for bios or boot device..but it does nothing from within windows.

[fuscob]

Is the T400 a descendant of the T40p series? I still have that and love it. Looking to buy another ThinkPad... just because.

Looking at the x301... just noticed the T400's. I've been away from new ThinkPads for awhile, so all the new letters and numbers are strange to me.

Yep, it sure is. After the T4x series, they went to T6x (there were T60s and T61s), then they switched to T400 (for 14" models) and T500 (for 15" models). They've also dropped the "p" suffix that used to denote the higher-end models.