Thinkpad T420 Owner's Thread

[John Ratsey]

The advertised battery life on the t420 is around 9 hrs (with the intel integrated HD graphics).

I want to get an NVIDIA 4200M graphics card instead of the intel integrated. What effect on the battery life will the NVIDIA card have? (It includes the optimus setting)

If you are not doing anything which needs the Nvidia GPU then the computer should switch to the Intel GPU and give the advertised run time (but note that this also depends on usage and screen brightness).

If you try running anything graphically intensive when on battery then the battery run time will plummet (as it will for anything that is CPU intensive).

John

[Hearst]

Thanks Hearst. I wanted to buy a backup AC adapter since I will be out of the country. The 65w and the 90W are the same price. So if it was you, which one would you buy. thanks again

If they're the same price then personally I go for the 90w. It is slightly bigger than the 65w brick but if you're spending most of yout time on the desk then it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

[chaud]

Another annoying thing is the lack of Chiral scrolling. Again my Ideapad had it and it was really the best way to scroll, yet the thinkpad drivers lack it. Two finger scrolling doesn't work very well either.

One problem solved. The default Synaptics drivers are older, but they have ChiralMotion by default.

[koreo]

Very similar to mine:

Ordered: July 14
Estimated ship date: August 11
Actual ship date: July 24
Estimated delivery July 29

Probably part of the same general shipment.

Just wondering, but do you happen to live on the west coast too?

[XX55XX]

Just wondering, but do you happen to live on the west coast too?

No, East Coast here. My estimate was probably longer because I ordered a PC DOS version with the Quadro NVS 4200M soldered onto the motherboard.

I just got a base model T420i and changed three components:

1. Display: 1600x900 resolution screen
2. Graphics: Quadro NVS 4200M
3. Wireless: Centrino Wireless-N 1000

Came to $748 with the Mastercard promotion.

[LoneWolf15]

Yeah, but it's out of stock everywhere. The 80GB version, I mean.

You could look at MyDigitalSSD's 128GB drive, or Renice's 120GB model. Both are larger than the Intel 40GB, and should be faster as well.

[Shamoke]

Any reason why I can't change brightness of the screen after waking up from sleep? I can't change it via fn keys or power plans. Installed latest drivers and updates via update manager and it still happens.

I have to restart the computer for it to work again.

[koreo]

T420

Ordered: July 13
Estimated ship date: August 5
Actual ship date: July 24
Estimated delivery: July 29

Good thing I didn't spend money on expedited shipping.

Update

- Left Hong Kong 7/28, 4:30 local time (currently past 1:00am in Hong Kong, so it's been in transit for about 9 hours)

I will be very happy if it actually shows up tomorrow! Either way, I'm a patient person lol.

[blinder]

Standard fitment for ThinkPad T420's are normally 9.5mm drives but lately Lenovo have been shipping out 7mm variants along with matching rubber rails which doesn't help should the user want to upgrade to a bigger/faster 9.5mm notebook drive. I would wait and see what Lenovo may have provided you, I was lucky that Lenovo shipped mine with standard 9.5mm rubber rails on my T420.

As for the Ultrabay usually eBay is the place to get third party adapters, I have one from Digizon which works fine on my T420.

Cheers for that Hearst, I've ordered the drive bay, and i'll wait on the rails, or I might just grab some in case - I want to be able to swap the drive out as soon as the machine arrives really, I could always pass them onto someone else I spose if I dont need them.

[Brittonal]

What does everyone use for there power settings? On AC and battery settings as well?