I have T540p with 3k display untill monday

[UtwigMU]

I have Thinkpad T540p with 3k display untill monday. The new display is IPS and great, though there is some bleeding of light from the bottom. The new single trackpad button for everything is so-so. Lack of middleclick is a serious deficit.

If you have any questions ask.

[dZeus]

I have Thinkpad T540p with 3k display untill monday. The new display is IPS and great, though there is some bleeding of light from the bottom. The new single trackpad button for everything is so-so. Lack of middleclick is a serious deficit.

If you have any questions ask.

Use the computer as much as possible and tell me how you like it.

Can you hear the cooling fan?

[dZeus]

I have Thinkpad T540p with 3k display untill monday. The new display is IPS and great, though there is some bleeding of light from the bottom. The new single trackpad button for everything is so-so. Lack of middleclick is a serious deficit.

If you have any questions ask.

Do you have an update on your evaluation of this machine? I'm very curious...

[UtwigMU]

Do you have an update on your evaluation of this machine? I'm very curious...

I still have it.

The Fan is not loud, sounds like 1-2 steps from max on my T60p when running Prime95 on battery. T60p is not loud but it's running hot. It comes with nV + Intel graphics. The power connector is new flat, so you can't reuse your old ones.

The base is very rigid. More than T60p, the monitor is not - monitor case looks like HP 8530 or 8730, monitor roll cage is gone and there are also no latches. The hinges are black - IBM A21p also had black hinges. It's light (as in not heavy), comes with protruding battery. The colour is gray - sort of like HP Gray - like dark laserjet 1018, not black. If T60p is 90% black, this is 70% black. The top plane of keys stands about 1mm above 14" T60p side by side. With screen open it's about as tall as 14" T60p. The edge facing you is 7 shaped and no longer > shaped like T40 and T60 series. The edge is not sharp so it does not cut writsts like HP.

With Windows 8.1 and new laptop there are few issues. Fingerprint software is not working in Win 8.1 and system does not resume from standby. This might be because I applied 8.1 and windows + lenovo updates, need to find which one is killing it. The display is beautiful, it's matte, view angles are great. It's supposed to be as bright as iMac 27" (same nits) but it's slightly less brighter. There is some backlight bleeding from bottom (you can see where leds are) on black screen but there was some bleeing on T42p and X61 tablet wasn't uniform either. Windows 8.1 does nice job of scaling old apps though I haven't tried it on native resolution. For me 144dpi X61T was great in native. I wear contacts/glasses but my sight hasn't changed in almost a decade.

The new keyboard is silly. There are all sort of useless keys above numpad (calculator, web and shit - at least Dell put play/pause/forward/rewind there) and usual Fn combos are gone. Also no more volume buttons or play buttons. I use this all the time to advance playlist in Foobar. Also if I dehibernate laptop at customers and some music my customers don't want to hear starts blasting from the time I was getting ready to go, I can mute it using button before I get past Windows logon. You can have it set to boot with function keys on (default is function keys off). It has a whole numpad. The chiclet keyboard is good. I know someone who has Thinkpad Edge 14" and there I had no complaints on chiclet. I haven't gotten the keyboard lighting that is supposed to replace thinklight to work.

There is no more power manager and access connections (at least by default), haven't looked at them yet.

The lack of middle click is a serious bother. I posted on lenovo forums and they said it's gone. Dell Precision and HP Zbook still have middle button.

I'm huge on Thinkpads: Went from A21p > T42p > X61T > 14" T60P. I also have R61 with broken screen which I plan to fix (sunk too much). The reason for aged T60 and X61 is that I'd have to carry huge 15" lapzilla to get 1000+ vertical pixesls. And this doesn't feel completely Thinkpad like to me.

Though if I were buying a notebook right now, I'd consider getting it, since 3k display with 500GB SSD costs 1600 EUR with VAT here. The company which resells Dell here and their support suck majorly. And with HP you need to splurge for top line Zbook to get IPS and 3 buttons.

I'd probably get the T440p with FHD as 15" is too big. It has freakin numeric pad, this was once a feature of 17" notebooks and I don't feel like carrying a lapzilla around on a daily basis. I carry T60p, battery does 5h, so I can survive a day at clients if I forget my chargers and standby while not using it. I have dock + charger at my office and charger at home. If I'd have to do Photoshop and AutoCAD and the like on the fly, I'd consider The T550p as it's IMO best there is right now, though it doesn't turn me on as T42p did - I paid 1250 EUR for it used!

We should do Thinkpad Singer like Porsche Singer. Take the perfect T60p shape, update with moddern CPU and leave it.

[dZeus]

yeah, the classic Thinkpad shape (with clamshell lid and latch) is the best. Personally I think the T4x has a better shape, it's slightly thinner than the T60, and looks less bulky too.

So I gather that the chiclet keyboard is the same on all new thinkpads? My gf has an edge 530 (15"), which has the chiclet + keypad, and the new touchpad (but with the classic three buttons that were removed from later thinkpads). My thought on this are as follows:
- the chiclet keyboard is fine (good key travel, nice to type on)
- the F9-F12 function keys are retarded, as you rightly point out. I'd much rather have the media keys (stop, play, next, previous). However, the mute microphone key is nice!
- some keys are missing on the keyboard: pause/break, scroll lock, right-click context menu key. On the 14" model even more so, as there's no visual indication on how to emulate the numpad (as I can on my T43).
- I absolutely hate the new touchpad. Maybe the default settings are bad, but I just cannot work with it. It keeps jumping the cursor around the screen to places where I don't want it to go. Never had that issue on my T43 touchpad. Disabling click-on-touch and click-on-press would likely alleviate it, but on newer thinkpads there are no more buttons! (i.e. no alternative to this horrible click-on-touch or click-on-press of the touchpad).
- Where's the thinklight? The backlit keyboard is an inferior implementation of the same functionality...

btw, there is a mute sound key too.. are you saying this no longer works before Windows logon?

For an upgrade for my T43 I'll wait till there are more IPS options available... right now If I'd had to chose it would be between the T440p and the Apple Macbook Pro Retina 13". The latter however has no user-replaceable parts, a glossy screen, no TPM and no smartcard/NFC reader. But it's a bit cheaper than the T440p from what I've seen.

You are right about the 'Thinkpad Singer'. I'd love to buy a modern laptop with 4:3 high res IPS screen, clamshell, proper keyboard, three mouse buttons, thinklight, and a sleek design such as the old T-series. If comments on other forums are to go by, many people think alike...

[UtwigMU]

The whole trackpad is a clickable button with areas on top right and bottom right which act as right click. Whie you generally click with thumbs the filled area where lowered trackpad sits on older thinkpads is full, so clicking feels different. The new trackpad to me doesn't feel as quality click. You can move it by 0.5 mm left and right and you can click it so it depresses only on a corner.

the middle top area acts as scroll. So if you disable tap to click it works fine. I just disable trackpad and fn-f8 enable it when some noob needs to use my laptop. My X61s and A21p had no trackpad. I also have Thinkpad USB keyboard with trackpoint and I can be productive without a mouse for a whole day. I connect mouse for gaming and graphic apps. And I do even simple photoshop stuff like retouch a few pixels, select, crop, curves, save as with trackpoint.

I'd loose chess on T42p with enabled trackpad as I'd move cursor accidentally with wrist and then misplaced a piece.

[UtwigMU]

I took some pics. I'll do a write up latter. The SSD is wrapped in tin-foil or paper, like in Toshibas and HPs. eww