T430s owners'/would-be owners' thread.

[Ole man]

Hi all

I'm new to this forum, but have readed alot past mounth here since i'm strongly thinking of getting the T430s.

Going to use it for school(mec engineering) in couple of mounths, yust woundering if anyone here use this for school or are going/plan to use it for study? Planning on getting the i5 verson since i think that will be enough for me.

Another small consern i've readed here is the battery life, some say 2 hours some say 4-5 hours and so on. If it holds atleast 4 hours it should be okei, and might aswell buy the extra 3cell sec batt later on.

Anyway i think this will be a good buy for the school, any opinions would be nice. Cheers

I'm in the same boat, went for it. I haven't really run the battery trhough its courses, but I got down to 47% battery after watching a movie on full brightness for 2 hours 15 min.

This is WITH the bay battery, so make sure to get that. It's pretty much hotswappable with the DVD drive, so don't worry about that 1 time a year you need a CD drive, you just switch them out in 10 seconds. Screen will be fine for any modeling you need to do. It's not beautiful, but spend an hour calibrating the colors and you'll be fine.

I don't know what the final popular opinion is on the dGPU, but I bought it in lieu of the i7. Maybe I wasted money and battery life, maybe not. Let us know what you pick, I'm pretty interested.

[Thors.Hammer]

Howdy everyone.

I've recently had my T400 stolen so have been looking for a replacement (thinkpad is the ONLY option as far as I'm concerned). I require durability, reliability, and data security. I really liked my T400. It had a 9-cell battery (84.24whr) and would get 10+ hours of battery life, with an average of 6-7 with internet surfing. Even after 3 years of solid use the battery still had about 87% charge capacity and had no problem delivering 6 hours of battery life. Really a superb machine! The only complaint I had was its weight.

I strongly considered the X230, T430, T430s, X1 Carbon, etc. and eventually landed on the T430s for it's weight and slimness and screen size/resolution.

I ordered a T430s fully loaded (got a big insurance discount, etc.) with an i7, ultrabay battery, Ultimate lan, fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, HD+ screen, and I'm upgrading it to 12GB RAM and an Intel 520 series SSD.

My hope is that it still gets me 6+ hours battery life with basic use, and that the screen is at least of the quality of my 1440x780 T400 screen. That wasn't the best screen obviously, but I was ok with it. If it's at least that good I'll be satisfied.

Here's my order date info:

Ordered 6/17 with estimated ship date of 6/24
On 6/25 the ship date changed to 6/28
On 6/29 the ship date changed to 7/4
Still hasn't shipped...

Hopefully it gets here soon and that all works out well!

Stolen? That sucks. I'd like to beat the crap out of a thief. Oh well, maybe they needed to feed their family. You never know right now.

Regarding the battery life and screen, you should be good for 6 hours. The screen on the T400 is probably slightly better but considering you used it probably for three years, it had probably had degraded some. Might be a wash.

My wife use a T400 with the butt ugly battery but you are right, it lasts forever.

[spargo]

Stolen? That sucks. I'd like to beat the crap out of a thief. Oh well, maybe they needed to feed their family. You never know right now.

Regarding the battery life and screen, you should be good for 6 hours. The screen on the T400 is probably slightly better but considering you used it probably for three years, it had probably had degraded some. Might be a wash.

My wife use a T400 with the butt ugly battery but you are right, it lasts forever.

Yeah, the funny thing is that it was BIOS boot protected with the fingerprint reader. A total brick, even if they put a new hard drive in it... Thinkpads FTW.

And undave, I'm in the US.

[Jann83]

I think it's a very good laptop for school and the stock battery should be enough for 4 hours of light surfing. However, that's only assuming that you can't afford an Ultrabook or a MBA, or you would like to put some load on it that requires the extra heat management. Be warned, you will be disappointed by the display at first, although I don't think it will be that big a deal for most users.

If you need to do some note taking (like drawing a diagram or something), then consider getting a Windows 8 tablet in a few month. The EP121 was a great machine except for battery life and weak graphics (pre sandy bridge).

Thanks for feedback, will do som reply when decide in couple of days. Btw the price on the it with i5, is it that much cheaper then here? Price for the i5 verson here is about 1976,78 USD.

[XX55XX]

Out of curiosity, whats the big draw with Ubuntu? Why Ubuntu over Redhat or one of the other major distros?

It's easy to use and you don't have to compile from source, unlike some other distributions, like Slackware, etc. Plus, it's the same old Linux at its heart - despite the Unity GUI.

I've considered Fedora, but you need to install a lot of proprietary software manually via the command line, and I hear Gnome 3 isn't that great.

Mint is another distribution like Ubuntu (it's built from Debian), but it lacks a little bit of the polish that Ubuntu has.

Yeah... there are many choices, but it all boils down to ease of use and support. Mind you, I do know how to use the command line, but if a distribution can make my life easier, I'll use it.

It appears that Ivy Bridge has trouble handling the old kernel, so for anyone installing Linux, here's a guide on how to upgrade to the newer kernel (3.4.x) to avoid system hangs:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...7&postcount=16

[xiljin]

Interesting. This is the parts that we have in common:

• i7 CPU
• HD+ display
• Integrated graphics
• Backlit keyboard
• Camera
• DVD
• 6-cell
• Bluetooth 4.0

spargo, are you also in Australia?

You can add me to the list of folks who haven't received their T430s, however I'm in the US. Ordered mine on 2012/06/11 and the Estimated Ship date is currently 2012/07/01.

here are the parts we have in common -

• i7 CPU
• HD+ display
• Integrated graphics
• Backlit keyboard
• Camera
• DVD
• 6-cell

[SubtleEntropy]

Ordered mine on June 14 - Ship date has moved 3 times as well - Right now it says it should ship today - but after seeing what you all are saying.. I am expecting it to get pushed again.

here are the parts we have in common -
i7 CPU
HD+ display
Integrated graphics
DVD
6-cell

[Thors.Hammer]

It's easy to use and you don't have to compile from source, unlike some other distributions, like Slackware, etc. Plus, it's the same old Linux at its heart - despite the Unity GUI.

I've considered Fedora, but you need to install a lot of proprietary software manually via the command line, and I hear Gnome 3 isn't that great.

Mint is another distribution like Ubuntu (it's built from Debian), but it lacks a little bit of the polish that Ubuntu has.

Yeah... there are many choices, but it all boils down to ease of use and support. Mind you, I do know how to use the command line, but if a distribution can make my life easier, I'll use it.

It appears that Ivy Bridge has trouble handling the old kernel, so for anyone installing Linux, here's a guide on how to upgrade to the newer kernel (3.4.x) to avoid system hangs:

Ubuntu Forums - View Single Post - [SOLVED] Ubuntu 12.04 (64-bit) Completely Locks Up on Dell Vostro 470

I used to use SUSE until Novell screwed it up. It looks like SLED might finally get an update in September when they have their conference. They'd better announce an update.

Gnome, ugh. Long live KDE.

[species5618w]

Ordered mine on June 14 - Ship date has moved 3 times as well - Right now it says it should ship today - but after seeing what you all are saying.. I am expecting it to get pushed again.

here are the parts we have in common -
i7 CPU
HD+ display
Integrated graphics
DVD
6-cell

Maybe is the i7? Both of my i5s were shipped within a week.

[Jann83]

I think it's a very good laptop for school and the stock battery should be enough for 4 hours of light surfing. However, that's only assuming that you can't afford an Ultrabook or a MBA

So you're saying a ultrabook would benefit more than getting the T430s?

I have looket at some ultrabooks have afford for them aswell but they seems not to bad many of them, xps 13, asus prime zen etc, but i have to admit personaly i think it's overated the "must get ultra thin laptop" thing many people are on to. But then again it's about personal preferences as everything else.

I like the the look of thinkpads, they are good built, realibility and no bling bling hehe.