Tech Solution Blog

The Lenovo ThinkPad T400 proved to be an exceptional 14″ business notebook, giving almost unheard-of battery performance under modest running conditions. Nearly 10 hours of runtime with the extended battery easily puts this notebook into the all-day computing category. System performance with the Intel T9400 processor and ATI 3470 graphics was great, handling everything we threw at it, even some video games. The T400 is not without its flaws though, having a decent amount of keyboard flex and a keyboard light that blinds you. Even with its flaws, with a starting price under $1,000 this notebook easily outperforms any other computer in its category.

• 10 hours of battery life with the 9-cell battery!
• Very bright LED backlit LCD
• Under normal conditions is very cool and quiet
• Hybrid graphics that let you switch between great 3D performance or great battery life
• Keyboard flex in a ThinkPad … the end of an era.
• Keyboard light that blinds you instead of just illuminating the keyboard

ThinkPad T400 specifications:

• Screen: 1440 x 900 WXGA+ LED Backlit (Matte finish)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 (2.83GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 6MB Cache)
• Memory: 2GB DDR3 RAM
• Storage: 160GB HDD (7200rpm)
• Optical Drive: DVD+/-RW
• Wireless: 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.0
• Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 w/ 256MB (hybrid switching)
• Built-in web camera
• Battery: 84Wh 9-cell and 56Wh 6-cell
• Dimensions: 13.2″ x 9.4″ x 1.47/1.12″
• Weight: 5.lbs 4.8oz with 6-cell, 5lbs 10.8oz with 9-cell

Performance

Lenovo ThinkPad T400 came with the Intel T9600 processor, clocking in at 2.8GHz, and jammed packed with 6MB of cache. For graphics, Lenovo included an ATI Radeon 3470 video card with 256MB of GDDR3 memory. A speedy 160 GB 7200 RPM hard drive was also included, which helped applications load without much lag. This notebook was outstanding for day to day use, and had enough power to handle most games around the office to kill some time. Half-Life 2 in native resolution (1440×900) kept above 30FPS even in heavy action scenes. Portal was another favorite that worked very well at native resolution, keeping framerates above 40FPS throughout most of the game.

For users who don’t wish to have as much 3D acceleration (or power consumption) during day to day work, you can switch between the Intel X4500 integrated graphics and ATI 3470 dedicated graphics. This switch can be made on-the-fly without a reboot. Not using the dedicated graphics resulted two hours of additional battery life.

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi.

Battery Life

To get 10 hours of battery life from a notebook this size, most people think you would need a huge battery attached to the bottom of the case, another battery taking the place of the optical drive, and a big battery sticking out the back. With the T400 you can reach 9 hours and 41 minutes with the wireless enabled, screen backlight at 60%, and the laptop in integrated graphics mode using only the 84Wh 9-cell battery. In this situation the notebook is only consuming roughly 8.5 watts of power. In dedicated graphics mode under the same settings battery life falls by exactly 2 hours down to 7 hours and 41 minutes, and power draw increases to 10.5 watts. The 6-cell battery managed 6 hours and 4 hours and 28 minutes respectively.

Ports and Features

Port selection rates average on the T400, with 3 USB ports and no digital video output. You do have VGA, but it is not the best option if you want to hook the notebook up to an HDTV. As mentioned about in the Build and Design section, the T400 with the SD-Card reader option nixes one the PC-Card slot. For those thinking about using legacy external cards, you may want to reconsider that option.

One feature that has been on ThinkPads almost forever is the ThinkLight, which is a small white LED located above the screen that illuminates the keyboard. On every other model we have reviewed that has this light, it works as intended and gives a little light on the keys. On the T400 the shroud in front of the LED isn’t big enough, and the end result is a light blinding you. Your night vision is taken away and in the end it is a useful feature turned worthless by lack of proper design. Not exactly sure how it made it past quality control, but unless you have the screen tilted forward to an extreme degree you end up as blind as a bat.

Heat and Noise

The cooling system seemed greatly improved over the prior generations, letting the notebook run whisper quiet and very cool to the touch under most circumstances. I say most, since gaming did seem to make it run on the high side. When not gaming, one thing really working towards the system temperatures advantage was the very lower power consumption. Consuming almost half the power of the previous generation really helped reduce overall temperatures.

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Interesting article written by Derek Schauland and has been published at Tech Public:

Now that the Release Candidate of Windows 7 is available, and we are quickly approaching the RTM dates for both Windows 7 (October 2009) and Windows Server 2008 R2, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at the features that promise some of the biggest changes coming to workstations.

While attending Tech Ed recently, I heard a lot of talk about a concept that seems too good to be true — the separation of the various components of the user experience, allowing for faster provisioning of hardware and user readiness.

For example, suppose one of my users spills a huge cup of coffee on the keyboard of her laptop. Usually a new laptop would need to be acquired, the OS and applications reloaded, common data restored, and finally sent to the user — a process that could take 2-3 weeks if the new hardware has to be ordered from the manufacturer. Now suppose that you could solve that problem, instead, in about the time it takes to eat your lunch and play a couple of games of Solitaire.

Windows 7 runs great on new hardware, but it also runs quite well on some older hardware, which may allow for better repurposing of equipment within your organization if you happen to have some extra laptops lying around for various uses.

Getting things rolling again on one of these older laptops should be a cinch if you use folder redirection to ensure that the user’s My Documents (now, their Documents Library) is stored on a server; this removes the worry about data being unavailable when the machine arrives. Keeping the desktop and other user-specific items in a roaming profile — though somewhat less efficient depending on bandwidth — also ensures that the user would be able to access their desktop by logging on to the network.

You can take advantage of these methods already on Windows XP or Vista, but features like Direct Access, which tunnels to corporate resources using only the Internet (no VPN required), and application virtualization (APP-V) in upcoming versions of Windows can take this to the next level. Using APP-V, the Office client would not need to be loaded on the replacement laptop before it got sent to the user; it could be streamed to them and work just as expected.

These features – some new, some not – can improve the end-user experience overall. Something tells me that the possible delay in the logon process might cause some frustration at first, but the potential for making a laptop or other PC deployable to the end user with little to no configuration sounds like quite a big leap forward in technology to me. The concept of making the laptop or PC hardware merely a vehicle to carry the user experience to the employees is one of the coolest concepts yet, and I hope to look at it more when I can acquire some more capable testing gear.

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