Lenovo ThinkPad T450s Broadwell Preview

[makitso]

I received my T450S a few days ago, it is replacing my trusty T60 15.4? Thinkpad. Some initial observations:

• After some fiddling, got it dual booted with Win8 and Ubuntu Gnome (UG) 14.04. The Point Track buttons did not work under UG but fixed this with a simple mod.
• For me, the keyboard is OK but not quite as good as the T60. I still find myself hitting wrong keys :-)
• The PointTrack red button is very stiff and sits very low as compared to the T60. As a result, it is easy to press a wrong key while using it. At first, I replaced it with the old pointer from the T60, which sits higher. However, Lenovo warned that it would hit the screen so I went back to the stock pointer.
• My unit has the 1920x1080 display. However, items on the screen are too small so I dropped it back to lower DPI setting, unless I am using my external monitor.

[chrisb]

Brings back memories to my beloved T60, i never been so pleased with an laptop as i was with that one, i had the one with the AMD GPU.
Maybe i should check out the new thinkpads next time i get myself a new laptop.

Yeah agree, and disagree with the article when it said:

The T61's of yesterday always felt too blocky and hard to really be comfortable. They were durable as can-be, aside from Toughbooks and similar, but I never got the impression that they were -enjoyable- to use.

imho there are still areas where the older T4x T6x Thinkpad design wins vs modern Macbook-type laptops (I do own both):

• Matte display (retina-type screen looks really nice, but reflections)
• More vertical space (4:3 ratio, better for coding and web)
• The trackpoint (touchpad is nice, but a trackpoint means you don't have to move fingers from keys, and makes it almost effortless to move right across the screen instead of swipe swipe swipe; the trackpoint is analog so you still have high precision for low-distance movements)
• The keyboard (good layout and deeper travel keys feel slightly better, but it's not a huge difference vs a good chiclet)

If they made a modern version of the old Thinkpad, with exactly the same outer casing but upgraded with a modern IPS screen, ports and internals, quad core CPU etc, I'd buy it. Thinkpads used to the top choice for developers, but they just lost that brand recognition at some point..

[Sonadow]

I agree, the decline in build quality between my T61 and X230 is noticeable, but IMO the same can be said with most laptop brands. The biggest issue I have with Lenovo is the whole Superfish affair. While the Thinkpad line seems to have been spared this, it does make wonder what other skeletons they have in their closet. I was going to wait for the T450p, given the revelations, and the desire for a new 14" FHD laptop, but I've decided to go for a HP Elitebook 840 G2.

If you are here as a Linux user, Superfish doesn't affect you
.
If you are here as a Windows user who makes it a point to never use the preloaded copy of Windows in any notebook, Superfish doesn't affect you/

[DeepDayze]

Yeah agree, and disagree with the article when it said:



imho there are still areas where the older T4x T6x Thinkpad design wins vs modern Macbook-type laptops (I do own both):

• Matte display (retina-type screen looks really nice, but reflections)
• More vertical space (4:3 ratio, better for coding and web)
• The trackpoint (touchpad is nice, but a trackpoint means you don't have to move fingers from keys, and makes it almost effortless to move right across the screen instead of swipe swipe swipe; the trackpoint is analog so you still have high precision for low-distance movements)
• The keyboard (good layout and deeper travel keys feel slightly better, but it's not a huge difference vs a good chiclet)

If they made a modern version of the old Thinkpad, with exactly the same outer casing but upgraded with a modern IPS screen, ports and internals, quad core CPU etc, I'd buy it. Thinkpads used to the top choice for developers, but they just lost that brand recognition at some point..

Yep, I just love my old T42 with its matte 1024x768 LCD and wish Lenovo took the design of the old T-series and maybe updated it with say a matte-finish 15.6" short wide screen, better cpu and kept the old-style trackpoint and keyboard then it be a winner. IBM's old Thinkpad line was well-designed and I'd wish Lenovo kept the build quality as consistent.

[Ericg]

Hey Eric,

When you do run Linux on it, you'll want to use the latest 4.0rc kernel. Otherwise, the trackpoint's physical buttons likely won't work right. (On my X250, they performed Left Click, Nothing, Middle Click.) Ah, the joys of new hardware

Hey Kayden

Yeah I saw the libinput blog post about that. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do that since I run Fedora 21 (tried F22 Alpha... its alpha quality). I suppose I could just pull the Linux 4.0rcX kernel from rawhide but I hesitate to do that out of fear of ABI-break related problems.


Also, the performance review will have to wait until this coming week. SSD was supposed be delivered yesterday (saturday), but due to a mix up with FedEx it wasn't. Should be delivered tomorrow (monday) and ill install Fedora monday night / tuesdaynight.

[Ericg]

If you are here as a Linux user, Superfish doesn't affect you
.
If you are here as a Windows user who makes it a point to never use the preloaded copy of Windows in any notebook, Superfish doesn't affect you/

And if youre a Lenovo Thinkpad T-series (maybe all thinkpads?) Superfish doesn't affect you. They weren't stupid enough to put it on their business-class machines.

[chimpy]

Nice introduction article to the T450s. One request though: if you still have windows installed it would be great to see some battery test between windows and linux (and maybe also a before and after power saving optimizations), and of of course keep us posted if you hit any linux specific snags (newer hardware usually do). And Michael I would'nt mind seeing more articles from forum members, specifically gaming peripherals e.g. driving wheels and third party pc and console gamepads on linux. Who knows with a little extra help writing articles Michael, maybe you could cut your work week from 80 hours a week to 79.

[danielnez1]

If you are here as a Linux user, Superfish doesn't affect you
.
If you are here as a Windows user who makes it a point to never use the preloaded copy of Windows in any notebook, Superfish doesn't affect you/

And if youre a Lenovo Thinkpad T-series (maybe all thinkpads?) Superfish doesn't affect you. They weren't stupid enough to put it on their business-class machines.

True, however it does make me wonder what else they could be doing. I'm sure the whole thing has undermined the confidence of others in Lenovo, regardless if it is their ThinkPad or consumer lines.

[Ericg]

Nice introduction article to the T450s. One request though: if you still have windows installed it would be great to see some battery test between windows and linux (and maybe also a before and after power saving optimizations), and of of course keep us posted if you hit any linux specific snags (newer hardware usually do). And Michael I would'nt mind seeing more articles from forum members, specifically gaming peripherals e.g. driving wheels and third party pc and console gamepads on linux. Who knows with a little extra help writing articles Michael, maybe you could cut your work week from 80 hours a week to 79.

I do still have Windows installed. The plan is to keep windows 8.1 on the 7200rpm drive, then when the SSD gets here I'll install Fedora on that. Whether or not Fedora STAYS on the SSD will depend on how good my battery life is with tlp + thermald + zram (working on getting the latter two packaged by fedora, ideally installed by default). If the battery life is good enough then I'll keep it installed, if it tanks more than is acceptable ( "Can it get me through my Wednesdays?" --> Alarm goes off at 9am, I dont get home from classes until 9pm) then I'll clone the HDD onto the SSD and stay running Windows on my laptop.

You mention battery tests but is there any easy way I could run those? Michael said PTS doesn't run all that well under Windows and I don't have a watt meter laying around unfortunately. I suppose I could disable screensaver and loop a movie under windows until the battery's dead but thats not really 'official'

[Ericg]

True, however it does make me wonder what else they could be doing. I'm sure the whole thing has undermined the confidence of others in Lenovo, regardless if it is their ThinkPad or consumer lines.

Oh of course. I am suspicious as well. Unfortunately that didn't change the fact that this laptop hit every button I wanted except for HD6000/6100