Thinkpad T420 Owner's Thread

[Thors.Hammer]

Great! Thanks. Do you know if it is true that all the 500GB 7200RPM will come as 9.5mm only?

All? No.

Travelstar Z7K500 | Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

But nearly all of the notebook hard drives for sale are 9.5mm.

[pchome]

All? No.

Travelstar Z7K500 | Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

But nearly all of the notebook hard drives for sale are 9.5mm.

I was just hoping that the T420 comes with 9.5mm so the rubber bands and the metal enclosure fit my SSD as I am about to pull the trigger. I really wish I could wait for the Ivy Bridge as you mentioned but I have only one machine. More choices make one crazier and I am not sure by now if it is a wise decision to go from W520 to T420 for the my uses. Sorry for bothering you with this issue for quite a while but believe me I am myself in a big headache and frustration t settle on a machine and just start being productive instead of this hassle.

[Hearst]

Yeah, I only see the Wifi when I hit FN+F5. Bluetooth is completely missing.

Just to make sure is the Bluetooth feature enabled in the I/O Port Access section of the BIOS? When I disabled the Bluetooth there's no such option with the FN+F5 menu, but it comes back on when the feature is re-enabled again.

Anyone with using the Dolby Audio get random runtime error popups? Nothing seems to break, but annoying nontheless.

My Dolby Home Theatre runs flawlessly with no errors, did you uninstall the old Conexant drivers first before installing the Dolby drivers?

[EZjijy]

Just to make sure is the Bluetooth feature enabled in the I/O Port Access section of the BIOS? When I disabled the Bluetooth there's no such option with the FN+F5 menu, but it comes back on when the feature is re-enabled again.



My Dolby Home Theatre runs flawlessly with no errors, did you uninstall the old Conexant drivers first before installing the Dolby drivers?

I guess I did disable the bluetooth in my BIOS. I don't ever recall doing so....

I did uninstall the old Conexant drivers before installing dolby. Is it supposed to get re installed automatically with Dolby?

[Hearst]

I did uninstall the old Conexant drivers before installing dolby. Is it supposed to get re installed automatically with Dolby?

It shouldn't do, the Dolby Conexant drivers are separate from the SmartAudio drivers so having both of them on can lead to conflicts. Uninstall the SmartAudio application and double check the Sound properties to make sure it reads as "Dolby Home Theatre v4 - Conexant HD Audio".

[jwkeiser]

So my t420 arrived on 4/19 (which isn't bad considering i ordered it on the 11th). and my initial impressions are very positive, especially after doing a clean install onto my crucial m4. boot times are great (hovering around 20seconds), and i can't believe how fast visual studio boots up on this compared to both my quad core work machine and my 8-core mac pro that i use for .net development and 3d modeling in osx. You read about how hard drives are always the bottleneck, but you can't really comprehend the difference until you experience it firsthand.

I do have a couple complaints though.
The default color profile was dreadful, the screen is capable of good color, this icc profile-much better
The 9 cell battery is a little loose. Not a big deal, but i'm sure it won't wear well, i'll probably add some padding to it to keep it from moving around too much.
the left trackpoint button is a tiny bit loose as well, you can only hear it when you press on a certain part of it.

Other than that i can't complain. The keyboard is as-advertised, great feedback and very quick, and it's overall very solid feeling, almost no flex on the keyboard.

Wanted to say thanks to hearst, your clean install guide allowed me to accomplish the whole thing in only a couple hours (and most of that was just making the backup discs)

- Joe

[EZjijy]

It shouldn't do, the Dolby Conexant drivers are separate from the SmartAudio drivers so having both of them on can lead to conflicts. Uninstall the SmartAudio application and double check the Sound properties to make sure it reads as "Dolby Home Theatre v4 - Conexant HD Audio".

Reinstalled it and I see the proper driver. I'm not sure what happened last time. Thanks for all the help.

[pchome]

The T420 works well in that docking station.

And FYI, the symptom you described sounds just like many of the complaints in the throttle threads at forums.lenovo.com. In essence the CPU would lock at 800MHz when you move from AC to battery while still powered up. I also think the Intel code also has the GPU go into what I call "molasses mode" because everything seems like slow motion.

Supposedly that was fixed but I never really saw the issue because I always shutdown when I move a machine.

I suspect in your case with the W520, you still have a perfect storm of issues. The SSD, the drivers installed, the drivers not yet installed, the BIOS config, and the Power Management config could all be colluding with the throttling bug.

If you had kept the HDD, you could pull the SSD and image the HDD with the factory disk set. This would give you the ability to sandbox some of the environment and determine how much the SSD is a player.

If it were me, I would buy a low cost new 7200 rpm HDD and run some tests.

Thors.Hammer: I just wanted to let you know that I have replaced my current Crucial M4 SSD with a brand new one. I cloned it from the original one and updated the firmware. I also made sure that all the power options in BIOS and power manager are set to maximum performance but still the symptoms I explained earlier exactly happen.

Since you mentioned that throttling happens with any brand, I tried my friend's machine (HP DV6T with i7 Quad 2.2 and 2GB dGPU) and I never experienced any of the symptoms I have on battery and do not know how this should be explained.

Finally, I am thinking of ordering T520 (though more expensive for less specs!) with core i7 dual core 2.8 and only built-in Intel Graphics 3000. Do you think that this combination should not show the symptoms I have on the W520 being much less power consuming? I just interpreted this from the 65W adapter they can work on VS the 170W required for the W520? Do you have any clue?

Thanks!

Edit: Today I got a 500GB 7200 Lenovo HDD and I am gonna try if it causes the same issue as just a final step of diagnostics because I got tired of trying to settle on a machine within my busy life and I just need to let it go and try to live with any machine.

[Shamoke]

Is there a way to dim the thinklight? I don't need it so bright to "balance" the lighting between the screen and keyboard.

[Thors.Hammer]

Edit: Today I got a 500GB 7200 Lenovo HDD and I am gonna try if it causes the same issue as just a final step of diagnostics because I got tired of trying to settle on a machine within my busy life and I just need to let it go and try to live with any machine.

1. Reset the BIOS to default settings with F9. Verify CPU power management on battery and AC is set to automatic.
2. Download all of the latest driver packages from support.lenovo.com
3. Download the latest BIOS .ISO and burn to CD
4. Update BIOS via CD
5. Install Windows 7 x64
6. Install Intel chipset driver
7. Install Lenovo power management driver
8. Install Lenovo Power manager
9. Install Lenovo Optimus video driver package
10. Install ethernet driver only
11. Install wifi driver only. None of the other Intel software that comes with it.
12. Install USB 3.0 driver
13. Install Hotkey driver
14. Install audio driver
15. Install Ultranav driver
16. Install Ultranav utility
17. Install Ricoh multicard reader driver
18. Install webcam driver
19. Install HWiNFO64
20. Launch Power Manager
21. Put Power Manager in Advanced Mode
22. Click Power Source Optimized for the profile to use, then click OK. This should have the System settings set to something like Lowest, Enabled for deeper CPU sleep, and Balanced for fan.
23. Test on battery and see if it performs well of slowly.
24. Verify CPU clock settings during testing with HWiNFO64
25. Change the settings to Adaptive, Disabled for CPU deeper sleep and Balanced for fan.
26. Test again
27. Verify CPU clock settings during testing with HWiNFO64. You should see the clock turbo up and down. You should see relatively decent performance.