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The Lenovo ThinkPad T400 proved to be an exceptional 14″ business notebook, giving almost unheard-of battery performance under modest running conditions. Nearly 10 hours of runtime with the extended battery easily puts this notebook into the all-day computing category. System performance with the Intel T9400 processor and ATI 3470 graphics was great, handling everything we threw at it, even some video games. The T400 is not without its flaws though, having a decent amount of keyboard flex and a keyboard light that blinds you. Even with its flaws, with a starting price under $1,000 this notebook easily outperforms any other computer in its category.

• 10 hours of battery life with the 9-cell battery!
• Very bright LED backlit LCD
• Under normal conditions is very cool and quiet
• Hybrid graphics that let you switch between great 3D performance or great battery life
• Keyboard flex in a ThinkPad … the end of an era.
• Keyboard light that blinds you instead of just illuminating the keyboard

ThinkPad T400 specifications:

• Screen: 1440 x 900 WXGA+ LED Backlit (Matte finish)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 (2.83GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 6MB Cache)
• Memory: 2GB DD̷ RAM
• Storage: 160GB HDD (7200rpm)
• Optical Drive: DVD+/-RW
• Wireless: 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.0
• Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 w/ 256MB (hybrid switching)
• Built-in web camera
• Battery: 84Wh 9-cell and 56Wh 6-cell
• Dimensions: 13.2″ x 9.4″ x 1.47/1.12″
• Weight: 5.lbs 4.8oz with 6-cell, 5lbs 10.8oz with 9-cell

Performance

Lenovo ThinkPad T400 came with the Intel T9600 processor, clocking in at 2.8GHz, and jammed packed with 6MB of cache. For graphics, Lenovo included an ATI Radeon 3470 video card with 256MB of GDDR3 memory. A speedy 160 GB 7200 RPM hard drive was also included, which helped applications load without much lag. This notebook was outstanding for day to day use, and had enough power to handle most games around the office to kill some time. Half-Life 2 in native resolution (1440×900) kept above 30FPS even in heavy action scenes. Portal was another favorite that worked very well at native resolution, keeping framerates above 40FPS throughout most of the game.

For users who don’t wish to have as much 3D acceleration (or power consumption) during day to day work, you can switch between the Intel X4500 integrated graphics and ATI 3470 dedicated graphics. This switch can be made on-the-fly without a reboot. Not using the dedicated graphics resulted two hours of additional battery life.

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi.

Battery Life

To get 10 hours of battery life from a notebook this size, most people think you would need a huge battery attached to the bottom of the case, another battery taking the place of the optical drive, and a big battery sticking out the back. With the T400 you can reach 9 hours and 41 minutes with the wireless enabled, screen backlight at 60%, and the laptop in integrated graphics mode using only the 84Wh 9-cell battery. In this situation the notebook is only consuming roughly 8.5 watts of power. In dedicated graphics mode under the same settings battery life falls by exactly 2 hours down to 7 hours and 41 minutes, and power draw increases to 10.5 watts. The 6-cell battery managed 6 hours and 4 hours and 28 minutes respectively.

Ports and Features

Port selection rates average on the T400, with 3 USB ports and no digital video output. You do have VGA, but it is not the best option if you want to hook the notebook up to an HDTV. As mentioned about in the Build and Design section, the T400 with the SD-Card reader option nixes one the PC-Card slot. For those thinking about using legacy external cards, you may want to reconsider that option.

One feature that has been on ThinkPads almost forever is the ThinkLight, which is a small white LED located above the screen that illuminates the keyboard. On every other model we have reviewed that has this light, it works as intended and gives a little light on the keys. On the T400 the shroud in front of the LED isn’t big enough, and the end result is a light blinding you. Your night vision is taken away and in the end it is a useful feature turned worthless by lack of proper design. Not exactly sure how it made it past quality control, but unless you have the screen tilted forward to an extreme degree you end up as blind as a bat.

Heat and Noise

The cooling system seemed greatly improved over the prior generations, letting the notebook run whisper quiet and very cool to the touch under most circumstances. I say most, since gaming did seem to make it run on the high side. When not gaming, one thing really working towards the system temperatures advantage was the very lower power consumption. Consuming almost half the power of the previous generation really helped reduce overall temperatures.

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Popularity: 32% [?]

Hibernation on Windows:
When Windows entrees in hibernation mode, it saves all its memory content in a file on the hard drive (hiberfil.sys) then powers the entire system off. Yes, it really does that, it is not a stand-by mode of some sort, it is fully powered off (however, modern computers still keep a small amount of power going on even in off mode, but that is by design). In this state you can unplug the computer from the main power supply and, if it is a laptop, you can also remove the battery with no danger in losing the data. There is no danger in losing any data since the memory is safely saved on the hard drive. However if something fails with the “wake up″ from hibernation, Windows may delete the hibernation file and start all over.
Powering up
When the computer is powered on again, Windows reads the memory content back from the hard drive and resumes from the point it was before hibernation. This means that all open programs are still open, open documents are still open, network connections are resumed and so on.

What to do before hibernating your computer
First of all save all your open documents. It is not necessary to close them, but saving them ensures that if there is a problem with waking up from hibernation the documents are intact. However if you keep them unsaved, when you resume you can still save them safely in most of the cases. Second, ensure that you don’t have downloads or file transfers in progress because all network connections are reset before hibernation and all transfers will fail on wake up.
Enabling hibernation
To enable or disable hibernation open Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel) then go to Power Options. There open the “Hibernation” tab. If this tab is not visible then your computer does not support hibernation. In that tab make sure that the checkbox is checked to enable the hibernation or unchecked to disable it.
Hibernating the computer
Use the normal Start > Shut down… procedure and choose Hibernate from the list. If you are under XP and you have a shut down box with three buttons on it (Stand by, Turn off and Restart) press the Shift key and the Stand by button transforms into Hibernate and you can click it. You can also use the Power Options applet from Control Panel where in the Advanced tab you can choose what the computer should do when you press certain buttons or switches like “Power″, “Sleep” or when you close the LID on your laptop.
Advantages
The main advantage is that all your programs and documents stay open so you can continue your work later. Another advantage is that usually it takes less to wake up from hibernation than powering up from zero, especially if the computer is slow or you have many programs in the start up list.
Disadvantages
1. The RAM is not getting refreshed in the case of Hibernation. This may lead to the memory leakage.
In the normal shutdown- Boot up process the RAM will get refreshed every time the system boots

2) Biggest disadvantage is that this way you don’t shut down the computer for days, weeks or even months, so sometimes the system gets chocked and chocked and goes slower with no apparent reason. Some reboots now and then or normal shut downs are recommended. Also, a big file (hiberfil.sys) will be created on hard drive with the size equal to the ammount of memory you have (1 GB memory >> 1 GB file size).

Popularity: 22% [?]