Thinkpad T420s Owners' Thread

[blindzior]

@Display: Yeah, I was comparing everything while jumping from t410s to this one and forgot that physical size of the display will be different. Gotta hate that black empty space under bottom edge of display.
@GPU: Seems it's not possible to downclock.
@CPU whining: It was horrible in t410s, it's lower with default T420s and its completely gone with CPU Power Management turned OFF in BIOS. (Which probably kills the battery faster)
@CPU temp: It's around 50 IDLE for me, with TPFC so we are in same shoes here.

-- Attached the display shot. You can see that 'pixels matrix' which is not present in t410s. Thats the first thing I noticed after launching t420s.

[John Ratsey]

@CPU whining: It was horrible in t410s, it's lower with default T420s and its completely gone with CPU Power Management turned OFF in BIOS. (Which probably kills the battery faster)

Look under System Settings in the Advanced options for your power profile and see the effect of enabling / disabling the CPU deeper sleep.

-- Attached the display shot. You can see that 'pixels matrix' which is not present in t410s. Thats the first thing I noticed after launching t420s.

That's the infamous griddiness. See here for some suggested remedial action.

John

[blindzior]

Thanks. I thought I could run away from any issues with T420s. Damn you Lenovo. :-)

@Whine: Deeper Sleep DISABLED helped a little I guess but need to work with it for a couple of hours to give a fair opinion.

Thanks for help.

[X2222]

Does anyone know how easy it is to transfer windows from a standard HD to the micro 80gb SSD that I would install on my T420s? I'm not too adept at this. Is there an imaging program that could do the transfer automatically for me? Thanks.

Also, would I be able to install lenovo rapid boot to support this config? Let me know if you think this is the best way to go, or else I would get the Intel 160gb SSD as the standard drive through lenovo.

[John Ratsey]

Does anyone know how easy it is to transfer windows from a standard HD to the micro 80gb SSD that I would install on my T420s? I'm not too adept at this. Is there an imaging program that could do the transfer automatically for me? Thanks.

I think you'll find the answers in this thread.

John

[X2222]

Thanks. I think it's still too complicated for me to transfer windows to the mSSD. I'm going to get the Intel 160gb x-25m SSD as the standard hd and maybe install a micro ssd later if i need more storage.

[X2222]

Does anyone think that the Intel X-25m 160gb SSD is worth the upgrade from the 320gb HD? Would the performance be that much better? The SSD costs $360 more than the HD on lenovo's site.

[Zuwxiv]

Does anyone think that the Intel X-25m 160gb SSD is worth the upgrade from the 320gb HD? Would the performance be that much better? The SSD costs $360 more than the HD on lenovo's site.

It's much faster, but it's hard to justify when the newer 160GB 320 series SSD is available on Newegg for even less. (and then throw in 20 bucks for a 2.5" hard drive enclosure, and you get a free portable hard drive.) Of course, you have to do the work yourself to configure everything...

I'm waiting for the RapidDrive Extreme models are available to see if that's something that can be manually configured. If so, I'll just buy the stuff myself and replace it.

[John Ratsey]

SSDs provide a very noticeable boost to overall performance through the near-instant disk access and faster data transfer.

I prefer the route of buying a separate SSD. You know what you are getting and still have the original HDD as backup. See this thread about suitable SSDs (both the X220 and the T420s use 7mm thick drives). If you get the Intel 320 then you will need to remove the spacer and refix the cover using 4 No M2 x 3 screws.

If you buy the Intel SSD separately then you can download a copy of Acronis True Image from the Intel webside to clone your existing HDD onto the SSD. Alternatively, once you have made your set of recovery discs you can use those to install Windows onto the SSD.

John

[X2222]

Thanks, very helpful. So does installing the Intel 320 myself have any effect on the warranty? Also, are there any issues with fragmentation when using Arconis to transfer an image of windows from the HD to the SSD?