So my present laptop is on its last legs, always brought cheaper home laptops but they seem to give up far too quickly so I am now thinking
x business Thinkpad T400 series.
So which one is the one to go for T420 430 440 are they all equal ?
also which version of core I5 ??
ram size needed
I would also like a large hard drive will it be easy to swap to a larger one ?
Thanks for reading comets please
Cheers Blast

440>430>420. SSD makes quite a difference, the stock disk are slow (at least the ones we spec’ed ’em with). I’m currently using an X220 (basically the same as a 420, but smaller) and I wouldn’t want to use it as a main device.

So should I go 440 and put the hard size I want into it ? or go 420-430 with drive already in
Any thoughts on what gen i5 i should go for ?

They’re essentially successive revisions of the same thing. Note that there are different models within each T4x0, they’re not all the same.

I wouldn’t go older than a T420 (which is what I have for work). From the T430 onwards (I think) they moved to a chicklet-style keyboard which folk seem to love or hate. If you really want a T410 I could probably send you one.

We’ve got some L-series in the fleet too now. I don’t know if the same is true of the recent T-series models, but the L450s are hateful things, awful to work on and difficult to upgrade (what would be a 30 second job on a T420 is almost a full teardown on an L450 and they take funny low-power RAM for added giggles).

m currently using an X220 (basically the same as a 420, but smaller) and I wouldn’t want to use it as a main device.

Depends on spec. My T420 still annihilates most of the base spec newer ones performance-wise.

Can’t comment on the others but we use T440’s and they seem pretty decent. Mine has an i7, an SSD and 16GB of RAM and is quick – even runs a lot of games fairly well despite dedicated graphics.

So 420 onwards are good but not beyond 440 (price might be an issue there)
Good to hear people still using 420’s for work .
I won’t be pushing it to the limits, just want it to work.
The samsung I have now is getting very iffy .

Cheers

T440 and 450 look nice but have weird internal batteries that can need pulling out to reset the damn thing if they won’t start up. That means dismantling the case. Yes there’s a paperclip reset hole, it doesn’t always work. The trackpad on the 440 feels a bit naff.

420 and 430 are a bit heavy and clunky but probably (possibly, maybe?) more reliable.

Reliability wise they’ve been pretty good. Aside from user error breakages (closing the lid with something on the keyboard and cracking the screen, throwing it across the carpark, tipping Prosecco water all over it, typing with hammers etc) we’ve not seen many failures beyond the typical mechanical HDD mortality. I’ve done a couple of fan replacements, but that’s not a big job to replace.

The Lenovo build quality is hard to beat, the T-series certainly. I’m less sure about the Ls but we’ve not had them out long enough for me to see any trends yet (and I don’t work in internal IT directly these days so am not as exposed to them, I was just standing in for about a year when IT were short-handed).

As an aside what does anyone know of the x250 i5 as I know of one going for half price with majority of warranty remaining. Pm in profile if you’d like details, the seller isn’t known to me but has loads of positive feedback on the forum concerned.