T430s owners'/would-be owners' thread.

[oseldusan]

oh humanity. the horror. :|
the thing is that it's worthless to want a thunderbolt HDD enclosure because there's no way any current HDD will bottleneck with an usb3.0 interface. not even any SSD will be enough to do that.

Really ?
Wikipedia: The "SuperSpeed" ( USB3 ) bus provides a transfer mode at 5.0 Gbit/s additionally to the three existing transfer modes. The raw throughput is 4 Gbit/s, and the specification considers it reasonable to achieve 3.2 Gbit/s (0.4 GB/s or 400 MB/s) or more

So theoretical maximum is 625MB/s. Even now it is not enough for some SSD disks.

I have one year old Corsair Force 3, it can read data 550MB/s, so I am sure , that USB3 is not able to support it.

[XX55XX]

Some comments on the screen:

Whites are great, but blacks are terrible. I keep playing with the Intel driver settings, but blacks just remain awful. Chalk it up to bad contrast... I don't care about viewing angles, but if they can up the contrast eventually, I'll be happier.

[species5618w]

My screen (AOU) clearly has the screen door effect. Although I don't think it's pixelation since it's not a unified grid, more like smudges on the screen caused by the anti-glare coating. I noticed the same thing on my T61p (1920x1200) if I really look, but it's somewhat less noticeable. It's far brighter than the T61p though. I have mine set at 8. Comparing to a Macbook Air (both set at medium brightness), the photo appears washed out. The image also has a blue tint whereas the Macbook is more yellowish. The T61p is far more yellow. The viewing angle is poor, but I can make out the Apple accessories ok, not as good as Macbook Air, but not as bad as the previous photo. The screen also doesn't feel bigger than the 16x10 Macbook Air 13. Macbook Air's screen does pick up a lot of glare though whereas the T430s is perfectly usable with my back to the window. I wouldn't say the screen is unusable, but it's not good and somewhat annoying. Then again, I was perfectly happy with my T61p screen, I'd say this is somewhat an improvement overall.

The new keyboard is definitely worse than before and I don't think it's less noisy. It's also not dust proof. The Thinklight is good though and I don't think back light is worth the $40. The trackpoint buttons is softer and has less travel, which is annoying. The touchpad is definitely an improvement over the T61p, but not really reliable in terms of multi-touch gestures. The fan is noisy at night and is almost constantly at 3000 level with CPU temperature at 41 to 43.

Windows 7 is speedy, sleep/wakeup is close to instant. Sunspider shows 209.7ms, which is very good (Macbook air got 246.7ms). However, CPU temperature goes above 50 quickly with the fan cracking up as well. WEI scores are consistent with everybody else's (5.0 for Graphics).

After playing about 20 minutes of Trine, the CPU temperature raised to 79 (or 82 depending on which sensor you believe). That disappointing, but still better than the Macbook Air which quickly reaches 90 degrees and the machine becomes too hot to touch whereas the T430s remains very cool.

The sound is surprisingly bad despite the two massive speaker on either side of the keyboard. And this is from somebody who rarely listen to musics.

Overall, my opinion hasn't changed much. It's a light weight mid-range laptop. At sub $700, I'd say it's an ok deal, but I probably won't pay more for it. It's a little sad since I happily paid more for my 240x. Competitions simply caught up and Lenovo hasn't maintained IBM quality.

[sagirodin]

Hello everyone,

Was wondering if T430s with HD4000 graphics (no optimus) would be able to run two external full hd monitors (with or without the internal display)?

Thanks

this is the exact configuration
• Intel Core i7-3520M Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)
• 14.0" HD+ (1600 x 900) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
• Intel HD Graphics 4000 with Intel Core i7-3520M Processor

[wditters]

Hello everyone,

Was wondering if T430s with HD4000 graphics (no optimus) would be able to run two external full hd monitors (with or without the internal display)?

Thanks

this is the exact configuration
• Intel Core i7-3520M Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)
• 14.0" HD+ (1600 x 900) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
• Intel HD Graphics 4000 with Intel Core i7-3520M Processor

Even greater resolutions than that :-) See my earlier post in this thread T430s owners'/would-be owners' thread.

[computerwiz908]

Returned mine. Although I liked the build quality in general, the screen and battery life were both horrible; I was able to avoid the restocking fee by complaining about the display to tech support.

I think I might splurge for the MacBook Air - I need a laptop for college that is portable, has good battery life, and has a nice screen, and the T430s barely satisfies that first criterion while failing the others, unfortunately.

[wditters]

I am keeping mine .. It runs my 2 virtual machines with 2 fingers up its nose while my Macbook Air runs out of breath simply by running only 1 virtual machine .... T430s and Macbook Air are two different machines with different targeted use ... As much as I love my MBA, my previous T420s and my current T430s get the job done for me .... :-)

[species5618w]

Returned mine. Although I liked the build quality in general, the screen and battery life were both horrible; I was able to avoid the restocking fee by complaining about the display to tech support.

I think I might splurge for the MacBook Air - I need a laptop for college that is portable, has good battery life, and has a nice screen, and the T430s barely satisfies that first criterion while failing the others, unfortunately.

If you are going to run Windows, I highly doubt MBA will give you significantly better battery life.

[wditters]

If you are going to run Windows, I highly doubt MBA will give you significantly better battery life.

True, my MBA rus 2h shorter under Bootcamp + W7 then with OSX

[species5618w]

Just ran Medieval Total Wars II (I have the Intel HD 4000). Everything high, huge units, two full stacks fighting each other. There are occasional hiccups, but overall it's very playable. Laptop is warm and vent is somewhat hot, but not untouchable. CPU temperature at 62 degree.