Interested in buying T400/T500. Got a few questions.

Hello,

I'm torn between T400 and the T500. T400 has excellent battery life but it has no HDMI. The T500 has HDMI but it's bigger and heavier and has shorter battery life.

Should I go with T500 for HDMI but shorter battery life or stick with T400?

Budget: $1200-1300

Will use the laptop for research (internet, office etc) and some light gaming.

Thanks in advance!!

 

hmm. big dilemma.
i would go with T500. If you opt for the 9-cell you can get up to 7hr of battery life (thanks to switchable graphics). The only downside is that the battery will protrude a bit at the rear. But I believe the T500 with the 9cell has more battery life with the regular 6cell of the T400.

The T500 has hdmi but you have to get a displayport-> hdmi adapter which is like 30$. The only reason I feel you should consider the T400 is because it offers LED LCD. Otherwise if you don't feel you need it or HAVE to have it, the T500 is clearly a bettery buy (especially when they are so closely priced).

 

i was at that dilemma as well a month and a half back when the T500 just came out.

the t400 has the option of an led which means a much brighter screen(however, people are getting bad led screens in some cases). the t400 is also a little smaller.

personally i decided to go with the t500 because of the displayport. the graphics are also better so thats a plus. i maxed everything out except for ram which was a mistake but im buying another 2gigs of ram soon..(make sure you buy the 4 gigs, especially with vista). even at 15.4inches it seems pretty light and isnt an issue to carry around. the 6-cell battery gives me like 4+ hours on intel graphics and 75%brightness.

they are essentially the same. its just preference and what options you need/want.

 

Thanks for your replies.

Do you guys think the T500 is too big and heavy? I ask this because I have to take the laptop to and from the office everyday. Also, what kind of battery life are you guys getting with the 9 cell battery in real world situations?

Thanks again!

 

To and from the office it will probably be okay (I assume you have a car). If you were carrying it around campus from class to class, I would say it is too heavy (anything more than about 4 pounds is too much for that). But if you only move it once or twice per day over a short distance, the 6 pounds should be easy to handle.

Both are good machines, the main tradeoff is graphics and weight. The T500 has a slightly better video card, DisplayPort on the computer, and an option for a WSXGA+ CCFL screen. The T400 is lighter/smaller but with the same keyboard, requires a dock for digital video out, and offers a WXGA+ LED screen (brighter/more power efficient).

 

I used to carry around my seven plus pound Compaq notebook. I never noticed how big it was until I got my T41, which was about five pounds. Size is really a personal preference. Might want to look at some notebooks, even if it's not the T400 or T500, just to get an idea of what you're comfortable with. Some people don't mind, others do. If you do go with the 14" there's always the dock, which gets you DVI. The LED screen is significantly brighter on the T400 if you like that sort of thing. Brightness does usually help with readability on higher resolution screens in my experience.

 

T500 has the WXGA LED option for 50 extra and as mentioned it doesn't have a HDMI port.

 

You're right on both counts. I've seen so many posts about how the T500 doesn't offer LED, but I've been to the website a million times trying out different configurations, and I can confirm that it does have the LED option. The T500 also does not have an HDMI port.

 

Both the T400 and T500 use DisplayPort.

 

The T400 doesn't come with the Displayport btw. Only the T500 comes with it. However, I think you can hook up the T400 to a docking station to get the Displayport option.

 

The LED option just became available recently, so a lot of people may not be aware of it yet. The key (for me) is that it is only WXGA (1280x720-ish). That is a very undesirable resolution for me on a 15.4" screen. It's usable on my 13" MacBook, but scale it up to 15.4" and it's like working on a Fisher Price My First Notebook.

I have been going back and forth on this as well. If the T500 had a higher res LED screen I'd probably choose that. But I think I'm going with the T400. It's a close call, though.

 

Sorry to interrupt with possibly a dumb question but what is a 'Displayport?' I think I read about this previously but can't recall.

What does it mean for compatibility? What if you want to use a LCD monitor with the Thinkpad T500? Do you lose something?

Also, does anyone know if the Displayport will cause issues if you use Linux? I'm looking for a notebook that would be compatible with Linux but I want fairly recent/modern specs including HDMI or DVI port. It the displayport is compatible with DVI hardware devices then it would be okay as long as there aren't drawbacks or issues.

I wouldn't use Vista much but I like to keep at least one Windows OS in a dual or multi-boot system.

The Thinkpad series looks good except I read on here you need Vista for the switchable graphics. Since the majority of Thinkpads which have the discrete graphics chips are ATI (open source in Linux but way too problematic so I'm avoiding ATI graphics chips in notebooks), I'd go with the Intel version of the Thinkpads.

I'm not planning on gaming with the notebook. It would be nice to have a decent graphics chip for graphics work but it's not essential.

I guess I'm interested in learning whether the Displayport can work in Linux without major difficulties.