Hate my new Thinkpad T410

I bought this Lenovo Thinkpad T410 laptop 2 weeks ago and I am totally disappointed with this purchase. It is biggest piece of junk I ever spent my money on. I would never recommend Thinkpad for following reasons:

1. Processing speed sucks - I had an acer and a hp before. Both were less than $500 less, and had core 2 duo processors. HP IS atleast 1.5 times faster and acer was slightly faster than this Thinkpad with i5 560 M processor. What a shame.

2. Wireless is a digrace - I added Intel centrino 6200 instead of default thinkpad bgn, for better wireless coverage and faster speed when I am on my WLAN with 30Mbps plan and 2 users. I am so much disappointed by the performance. This laptop is atleast 2 times slower than the HP I mentioned before and even acer was faster than this. If I move my laptop even 6 inch, the signal drops for few seconds and then regain again. I am so surprised, how can this be called a Business Laptop.

3. Screen is difficult to clean. While client presentation, I touched the screen to show designs and my finger prints are still there, even after using cleansing lotions and dry cloth.

4. CD/DVD writer is awfully loud - It is embarrasing, when you write a CD/DVD in front of clients or peers. It is so loud, that it disturbs everybody in the nearby cubicles.

5. Speakers are useless - Unfortunately, I realized it the harder way. While another client presentation, I had to show them product's you tube campaign and the speakers were not good enough to be heard by clients sitting 15-25 feets away. The same video was far better on my friends Dell Inspiron laptop.

There are more small things which will vex you and bug you to your life. But for justice sake, here are some good features:

1. Fast boot time when woke up from sleep mode. Within few secs it come up and you can continue working.
2. Okayish battery performance - Upto the product line standard. Consumes very little energy in sleep mode and good power saver strategies.
3. Nice Keyboard Layout - Good to type but do not like Fn key in place of Cntrl key. That change is stupid and unnecessary.
4. Light in weight - I carry it a lot and its weight is of special importance to me and many other back packers or travellers.

All in all I would NEVER recommend it to Business People, Developers, Designers, students or ANY BODY for that matter. My HP sucked with the battery and system heat but was atleast a good performer and smooth machine if put on a dock, this computer is junk and of no use.

This is about T410, May be W series could be better.

 

2 questions.... What made you decide on choosing the T410 and did you do any research before getting it?

 

1) "Fast" is subjective to the user. Failing hardware could be the cause of a "slow" computer.

2) Maybe you had a bad wifi card or bad drivers.

3) I've never had issues cleaning the screen. Maybe you aren't doing it right.

4) Latest firmware on optical drive can make it less noisy. Mine isn't particularly noisy.

5) Dude it's a business notebook. If you want the dumb Beats Audio, go buy an HP.

 

I dont think it is fair to compare the speed, it all depends on specs, for example my x301 with SSD and a slow processor booted faster than my T410s with a i5 processor and a mechanical hard drive....

Also with the other concerns maybe this isnt your cup of tea.

The reason most people get the thinkpad is reliability and durability.

I had HP's before, and never again ... it just wasnt reliable at all, and my wife's Acer (which my x301 will replace) has been problems after problems, it has ruined 2 OEM batteries in a matter of months, and she is using it the way it should be used. So like everyone else says it is based on your opinions and your needs....

 

are you talking about processor performance, graphics, or something else? what cpu did you have in your 1.5X faster HP?

i rarely use wireless so i can't comment.

i don't know what's on your fingers/hands, but the thinkpads use industry standard screens. the matte finish might mean that they're a little harder to clean than the glossy screens, but the matte finish cuts down on glare and reflections. i've never had any problems cleaning my prints off any display, thinkpad or otherwise.

try to avoid touching the screen whenever possible or find a better cleaner.

that could be. it's been a while since i've used an internal cd/dvd drive.

largely it depends on where the speakers are located on the laptop and audibility can vary between models. Lenovo isn't the best or the worst in this dept and the reviews that i've seen about the 410 say that they're a little better than adequate. if you really need to have good quality for a presentation, i'd think about finding a set of small speakers.

the position of the Fn key hasn't changed in ages on the thinkpads. did you not look at the keyboard layout before you purchased it? if it really bothers you, you can swap the functionality of the Fn and Ctrl keys.

 

@pratz09 : what is your model number and the detail specification? Have you add another component to your system? Probably someone in this forum will help you if you provide more details about the system.

As a T410i user i never experience any of your claims. And as a previous Z61m and R400 user, i can tell you that there have a significant improvement on T410i over those system especially in area of (in focus of your complaint) : speakers and speed.

I never have any problem cleaning the screen. Maybe this is the first time you deal with a matte screen?

 

"1. Processing speed sucks - I had an acer and a hp before. Both were less than $500 less, and had core 2 duo processors. HP IS atleast 1.5 times faster and acer was slightly faster than this Thinkpad with i5 560 M processor. What a shame."

Wait a minute. You never mentioned a lot of things. Of course it's fair to compare speeds. That what it's all about.

To begin with, how much memory do you have and what is the processor?

Renee

 

I think you will be more happy with a consumer grade notebook it's a lot cheaper with equal performance if not better. The speakers and screen quality will definitely be better. You will however get a slightly more fragile machine, lower quality costumer service.

Darn it, I typed like three paragraphs and was only able to copy and past this before having to re-log in.

 

Without knowing what processors you're comparing, this statement is meaningless.

Apart from (apparently) frequent AP disassociations, I have no idea what you're complaining about. Seriously, the above was pretty difficult to parse. Do you mean the throughput is poor? If so, what speeds are you seeing? What type of network(s) are you connecting to? How many other concurrent users does the AP have (2, I presume)?

Solution: don't touch the screen. Kidding aside, I haven't experienced the same issue you have. Perhaps you have greasy fingers? (Seriously though, a clean, damp cloth works fine on my T410's screen.)

High speed CD burners are loud. I've never found this to be embarrassing, but I suppose if you find CD creation to be a particularly awkward activity you could set the drive to a slower speed...

No argument here. The T410 isn't a multimedia machine. Might a suggest a small pair of powered external speakers? Sure, they're one more thing to bring along, but if you regularly find yourself needing to present to people sitting 25 feet away they'll do a lot better than any internal laptop speakers.

It's quite useful when you're trying to flip on the ThinkLight in the dark: just put your fingers in opposite corners of the keyboard and you're set.

If this really bothers you, of course, you can just swap the keys via the BIOS... but you knew that already, having done a simple Google search prior to posting.

Unfortunately, most of Lenovo's customers are corporate or education, so their client base is made up primarily of business people, developers, designers, and students.

Fortunately, they tend to avoid using forum reviews as their primary source of information during the purchasing process.

 

Some may hate me for this, but the Fn key is in the right spot. Really helps when changing brightness and the light.

 

I dont agree with your first point where you're saying the computer is slow and it has i5 CPU. Well it's most likely other things that slow it down, such as tons of bloatware running in the background, combined with a not so fast HDD.

but I can see your other points to be valid somewhat. I can personally add that the T410 is kinda ugly ... LOL

so just smash it on the ground. Or wait, you could return it, and/or sell it.

 

Hmm. I'm very happy with my T410. Nice processing performance, no wifi issues. Fast boots, just responsive. Sorry OP, I just don't conform to your opinions about it. I'm sorry you've had such an unfavorable experience with it however.
Edit: Oh, and the speakers do suck. I removed the whole speaker assembly months ago.

 

For me, on my X61 Tablet the Ctrl key also seems to be in the right key when I have my fingers on the home row.

 

1) I bought my Thinkpad W500 laptop two years ago, and have never had a better purchase.

2) With sufficient ram, an SSD drive, un-needed software removed, and un-needed background processes disabled, it runs everything I throw at it almost instantaneously and silently (I don't like waiting and I don't like background sound).

3) The wireless has never been problem.

4) I never touch the screen with my fingers; but as dust does inevitable settle on it, I clean it carefully about once a week with a damp cotton cloth, and that keeps it looking like new.

5) It's strongest external feature is the wonderful keyboard.

6) I find it hard not to recommend Thinkpads to anyone who is willing to pay a little extra; and after years of Dells and Apples, I hope to replace this laptop sometime in the future with another Thinkpad.

 

Troll alert!

I mean - you can switch DVD drive loudness in power manager and BIOS as well.

Screen isnt difficult to clean, unless you touch them with greasy fingers and then try to wipe it off with toilet paper it might not work

 

DVD loudness buried in options-inside-tabs in a power manager - hardly intuitive - you have to admit.
The OP is a user not a geek - I can understand his frustration in this point.
I do not want to know how my car works either...

 

I will never buy another Dell or Apple, ever again. 2 laptops ago was MBP, last laptop was XPS, both has at least 3 service calls per computer.
The best form of tech support is the one you never have to call.

 

You mean you will never buy Dell consumer grade notebooks ever again.

 

Yeah, well, I can understand frustration if one been driving all his life car with automatic gearbox and all of a sudden buys one with manual gearbox and has no idea how to use it. If we talk about cars...

Not that crazy, but OP simply looks like someone who came here to diss his laptop, spill disgust and scream for attention and then disappear without coming back to this board and actually LOOK FOR HELP how to solve things.
Rather childish if you ask me.
Id be more angry regarding build quality issues and service attitude rather than some user-depending tweaks

 

Biggest disappointment ever - Lenovo Community :/

 

Yeah, and here's a quoted reply from that thread that equals my first thought when I saw the original post:

Our topic is from someone's first post. Which makes me think one of two things:

1- Poster is someone who I think (by reading that post) probably has no idea how to remove any ThinkVantage software (increasing performance), update wireless drivers, or test and optimize their system. Also the kind of person who gets let-down quickly with little troubleshooting to try and fix the problem, and blames the hardware prior to asking "Hey folks, is there a way I could fix this?"

2- Poster is trolling a forum or two of ThinkPad loyalists, throwing verbal spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.

Hopefully it's not #2. However, to the original poster of this thread, I say this --if you're not trolling, why not ask us for help so you can enjoy your T410, rather than immediately thinking it's an awful laptop and spreading how much you dislike it across multiple forums? This does more harm than good. There's a lot of people here that would help you, if only you're willing to ask.

 

I don't usually do this, but...

To the OP: aren't you a graduate student with a degree in CS? Aren't you working towards your masters in Information Systems? If so, don't you think that... you know... you should be able to solve most of the "problems" you complained about pretty easily?

 

I just noticed I didnt chime in on the wifi issue, I also have the same problem with the wifi, it doesnt always auto connect and it drops the signal too, but I think this could be a defective card.... I did notice other people mentioned it online too ...

But with that being said, it is a fairly simple card to replace and should be easy to have exchanged by lenovo if you want them to simple send you a new part.

 

OP hasn't come back to reply to the members... Wonder why ?

 

He's doing that at Biggest disappointment ever - Lenovo Community

 

Yeah, I kinda just let him know that his other thread had responses.

 

Interesting thing about the other thread he posted on, when advised to do a few things to possibly fix the issues he has, is that he replied by saying he would try them out, like defragging the hard drive, etc. The silly thing is, since he has had other notebook computers, that he would have known about those simple suggestions in the first place. Seems like computing 101. At least my take on it.

 

This is the part that confuses me the most. The type of stuff being complained about makes no sense from anyone in CS/IT, esp #1-4.

 

why do people come into the bee hive screaming I HATE HONEY!!!

The T410 is what it is, and lives up to expectations for 99% of informed buyers.

 

This thread can be safely ignored. It would be good if it were locked and moved.

 

NO!

"Screen is difficult to clean"

Give me a break. If this doesn't scream TROLL then I don't know what does.

 

My opinion he that he is either a Troll or paid by a competitor of Lenovo to seed forums with horror stories.
Each laptop brand has its good and bad points. However, I really struggle to believe that the Lenovo is outperformed by a last generation hp and acer.
If you came up with a credible comparison like a Vaio Z I would perhaps vaguely believe you.

 

LoL yall fell for the trap! First and only post is about thinkpad hate.

 

Yeah, but I'm pretty easy to troll. Have been ever since I first started using Usenet.

 

still no word from the thread starter eh ??

 

Yeah its pretty easy to troll NBR as there are alot of loyalists/fanboys and alot of people willing to defend some cause. I wrote a whole post that was 100% serious and then I thought a second opened a new tab and looked and saw a single post. I instantly stopped typing and wrote what I did.

 

Maybe the OP has just sold its T410 and bought a brand new Apple laptop?
New MacBook Pros freezing under heavy load? -- Engadget

 

MBP have a bad heat sink and vent design, so freezing is normal part of its operation, this is a recurring thing on MBP for a while now. My Core Duo and Core 2 Duo MBP use to always do this when you run anything CPU intensive on it. This is how Apple makes you get a new laptop after every model release. Form over Function.

 

Wait, seriously? They still didn't learn their lesson from 2006? Damn.

I had a first-gen MacBook and a second-generation MacBook Pro. Both of them regularly pushed the thermal limits of their CPUs, and I was indeed able to get them to go into thermal shutdown if I tried. I figured "eh, they're both new case designs and new CPUs... maybe they just didn't test them under prolonged full load... I'm sure they'll revise the design and fix that."

Guess not.

 

Hey guys: if you believe the OP is trolling, don't post, and the thread will get buried under new ones.

Otherwise, despite the relatively poor choice of a thread title and expressions used, the OP has some valid problems: take them at face value and help a fellow Thinkpad user get the most that he can out of his machine. Thank you to those of you who made efforts to provide solutions even without the assurance that the OP would take the time to consider them, you guys truly make the NBR community welcoming.

 

Just to add, OP is answering his posts on Lenovo Forums. I'm not sure why they felt the need to have the same post on two different forums.

 

Hi All,

Thanks for your replies. Sorry for replying so late. All mails went into my junk box, so I never got to see any notification from this site about any replies to this thread.

@People asking for my pervious laptops: Both were Core 2 duo with HP having 3Gigs and Acer having 2Gigs RAM.

@ People questioning my CS degree - The problems are / were there with the laptop, not with my skills or education. I am software Engg, not hardware specialist. I dont want to open a brand new laptop on my own and lose the warranty. I already solved the problems with the software of it.

On a side note, Never thought that people have so much time to squander and sneak peak into other people's details.

@ people telling me about my dumbness to not figure out defragg and stuff - Who would think of defragging a newly configured computer. The simple answer is "Windows 7 - Pro" takes 10 days to figure out usage patterns.

@ People Fn / Control Key - I mentioned the swap of cntrl and Fn with respect to OTHER LAPTOPS. O'course I know about the BIOS way to swap the keys.... I just mentioned it as an unnecessary change.

@ People talking about speakers and my stupidity to not research well - For your kind info, a BUSINESS LAPTOP is supposed to have quality voice level which could be heard in atleast a 15 by 15 feet room while giving persentation or showing product video. O'course I knew its not a entertainment PC.

@ Durability claims - I never complained about the durability or studiness of the PC. It is not something overly exceptional to worth mentioning. But yea, it is commendable enough.

@ About screen - Screen is good. I think screen ratio is perfect and there is no reflection and stuff, but I solved the problem of cleaning it by using cleaning brush and wipes.

Again, thanks for your replies. I would have appreciated people sensitivity and hospitality in this forum, but unfortunately some people were rude enough to write blatant comments about an objective opinion of a buyer.

 

1. there is no way a SB processor would get smoked by some core 2, there is just no way. Maybe you don't have enough RAM?
2. On the wireless card, yes, i've learned too that the more expensive cards make little to no difference. This Thinpad a/g/n card is just an atheros card, and works fine.

3. I always wipe my notebook screens with rubbing alcohol, and they always looked great.

4. Can't comment on this.

5. What do you expect from a 14" laptop? High end speakers are not likely the priority here. In my experience, external speakers are better with smaller laptops.

 

1. Well, it is what it is.. Some of the applications I find starting up slowler are : MS Office suite (esp Word 2010 and oneNote), Visual Studio 2010, and some other IDE's. I am esp. pissed because of slow debugging and compiling. If you buy i5 560M with 4GB RAM and running on Win7 Pro, why wouldn't you expect these processes to perform better.

2. Intel centrino 6200 has 2 antenna's. So I figured, since it has 2 antenna's its packet reception capacity must theoritically be twice. Apparently I am wrong. And yea, it depends on the network capacity too. But I tested the connection Max, and it is around 12Mbps for one user in shared environment.

3. Again, screen problem is solved. I shouldn't have expected it to be like glossy screens.

4. Again, quality voice in a small room is not expecting high-end performance. I am not expecting it to be like woofers, am I ?

 

Which HD do you have? Maybe if you upgrade to a 7200rpm HD you will be more happy with loading speeds?

 

Ok, in all fairness, I owe you an apology: I should have been less harsh. I get the sense you're probably not a native English speaker, which might explain the... er...abruptness of some of your wording. Fair enough.

On to the points:

I have a T410 with a 560M and 4GB of RAM. Apparently the only difference between our machines is the OS and an SSD. Now unless Windows 7 is a wildly inefficient OS (it's not) or VS's compiler is horrendously inefficient (it's not) I'd guess that the difference can be chalked up to an SSD and slightly different workloads. Are your project builds parallel or not? Is most of your dev. work I/O-bound or CPU-bound?

Indeed, you were wrong. There isn't a linear relationship between the number of antennas and peak throughput. Again, I have the same hardware, and since I get dramatically better performance, I'd guess that it's an issue on your end. Have you tested with different APs?

I was unaware this was an industry-wide standard. Sarcasm aside, there is a dramatic range in laptop speaker performance. Lots of business laptops have junk speakers, and lots have good speakers. It varies from line to line and model to model. Since there is no universal standard, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to expect a prospective buyer to read the reviews if speaker performance is important to him.

And finally (although off topic)

I put your username into a search engine and clicked the first result. Not too tricky.

 

My bad, I should have mentioned it before. I have 7200rpm HDD..

 

Thats Ok. Even I am sorry for using strong title like this. I am still a student and I spent a grand on this T410 to suppliment my education and part-time work. And I had high hopes and even hogher expectations, but certainly you cannot buy panacia for a grand. I just got carried away, I apologize to all for unnessarily using this strong title.

Again, I am comparing the performance of T410 with HP dv2000 (with 3Gig Ram / core2duo / 5400HDD / Win7 Pro / Old enough ). Debugging and compiling was faster on HP dv2000. Moreover start-up time for MS Office applications was faster. Sometimes I open Word to document things or to make notes. I use OneNote quite often and I felt OneNote start-up and switching from one notebook to another was again slower than HP.

My applications are actually fair mix of both I/O operations and computing operations with little more inclination towards computing operations like heavy looping and heavy user control loadings on to the page.

I use Comcast wireless 30Mbps plan and share it with one more person. I have university campus-wide Wi-fi and Company wide wi-fi at work. All three networks being same, when I use HP, I have faster browsing, faster file download and smoother connection if I move. While on the other hand, if I use T410, speed is significantly slower on all three networks and (as I mentioned) if I move it even a little bit, the connection drops for couple of seconds. Not a biggie, but unexpected. There is nothing wrong from my side or my with my networks. My friends and colleagues with Dells, HPs and Asus felt the same when we surfed together on my laptop.

Ahh, the audio thing again. I mean everybody, even Lenovo employees should accept that speaker sucks. On Lenovo forum itself, one wise guy told me that they are thinking of getting future TP series Dolby certified. So they know they need some credibility with speaker quality. Anyways, I am gonna buy a set of external speakers. Thanks for your suggestion.

Yea, even if you googled my username, there was no need to putting my education background in public in this thread. I would humbly suggest, please do not do this with any other user.

Thanks for your valuable inputs. On Lenovo forum, I got some really useful tips. And I think computing performance is getting better and I see turbo boost more active when needed.

 

If you bought it from Lenovo within the last 21 day, the easiest thing to do is to ask for an exchange. It seems to me that you got a rare dud with faulty parts. There are just too many anomalies. If the new computer still acts the same as before (very unlikely), then I suppose it's time to look elsewhere.

Sorry if I am repeating other's suggestions. I didn't go through the whole thread.