The good: Excellent quality and construction; thoughtful keyboard layout; inventive touchscreen features.

The bad: Expensive; touchscreen features have limited real-world usefulness for most.

The bottom line: This revamped version of Lenovo's slim ThinkPad T400s adds an innovative touchscreen package to the first Windows 7 laptop we reviewed earlier.

Read full review of the ThinkPad T400s (touchscreen) »

By Dan Ackerman, CNET.com
Sep 17, 2009

Lenovo's ThinkPad brand is virtually synonymous with business laptops, and the company (like IBM before it) has spent years perfecting the nondescript black-box system with its iconic TrackPoint and double set of mouse buttons.

We liked the 14-inch T400s ("s" for "slim") when we first saw it earlier this year (see that review), as it shaved some thickness and weight off the older T400 model. Now, Lenovo is offering an enhanced version of the T400s, adding a multitouch touchscreen and some custom touchscreen software.

The touchscreen and accompanying SimpleTap software add a new wrinkle--one that has its appeal--but without a tablet-style swiveling display. We can see the real-world usefulness of adding touch to a standard laptop being somewhat limited.

It can be argued that Lenovo's build quality and attention to detail are second to none, and the T400s feels like a solid, heavy-duty machine that will stand up to a lot of action. ThinkPad buyers (either small business individuals or corporate IT departments) know what they're looking for and don't mind paying premium for it. The touchscreen T400s starts at US$1,999 and includes Lenovo's ThinkVantage suite of business and security-minded software and hardware.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Do check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

The basic design will be familiar to anyone who has used a ThinkPad in the last few years, with a black, buttoned-down look and the ever-present TrackPoint. Despite being fairly thin and lightweight, the T400s feels solid and sturdy, thanks to its carbon-fiber "roll cage" skeleton. Unlike most other laptops, the lid folds back a full 180 degrees, allowing the system to lie completely flat.



Lenovo spends a lot of effort constantly testing and refining its keyboards. For example, based on detailed analysis of user feedback, the Esc and Delete keys are much larger than normal. This is a traditional tapered key design instead of the wide, flat-topped keys nearly all consumer laptops use. And while it may not look as slick, the end result is indeed very comfortable and easy to use. Physical buttons for volume control, speaker mute and mic mute are also useful.

The large touchpad is hard to see against the matte-black wrist rest, but it has a subtle texture that helps your fingers know where they are going. Nestled in the middle of the keyboard is a TrackPoint pointing stick--if you're a fan (or you grew up with one as your main laptop input method), it's indispensable. But the need for a second set of mouse buttons, above the touchpad, eats up some keyboard tray real estate.

Features

The biggest addition to this new version of the T400s is a multitouch display. Windows 7 is a very touch-friendly OS, making it easier for PC makers to add touch functionality. In this case, you can tap and drag Win 7 menus, folders and files with your finger, as one would on a tablet PC--or there's a custom touch interface provided by Lenovo called SimpleTap.



The SimpleTap interface lives as a small red button anchored to the side of the display. Tapping it opens the touch interface which overlays your desktop and provides a series of large button-like icons. As configured, it provides access to basic system functions such as speaker volume and screen brightness. You can also turn on the small light above the display, switch the Webcam on and off, or even put the system to sleep.

By navigating to the exe file of any program, you can add a SimpleTap button for it to your collection, choosing its icon, background color, and location on the screen. Each of the small, square icons can also be dragged around to any location on the display, or automatically regrouped in the center with the tap of a finger. The red button for launching SimpleTap can also be moved to any point along the outer edge of the screen by dragging it.

In practice, the SimpleTap software worked fairly well, although it wasn't as quick and responsive as the touch experience on an iPhone or iPod touch (we have yet to find a tablet or touchscreen PC that comes close). However, when trying to use SimpleTap from any angle other than right in front of the screen (as one might when showing off a presentation to a group), the control was much less precise, and we often accidentally closed the entire app or sent the icons flying around the display. Lenovo says the software is currently in beta, and will continue to improve.

A bigger issue, perhaps, is why you'd want a touchscreen on a standard non-tablet laptop. The practical applications seem limited, although we could see specific users finding tasks (media playback, photo manipulation, etc.) that could take advantage of it. As a US$400 addon to the T400s, it's certainly not an impulse upgrade.

The 14.1-inch widescreen LED display offers a 1,440 x 900 native resolution, which is standard for a high-end panel this size (many less expensive 14- and 15-inch laptops have 1,280 x 800 displays). The matte finish is a welcome relief from all the overly glossy screens we're exposed to on a weekly basis, and there's an anti-fingerprint coating that helps keep the panel looking good, even when using the touch functions.

ThinkPads are among the only laptops we've seen in a long time to still have ports and connections on the rear edge of the system. There you'll find both DisplayPort and VGA-outs, plus two of the system's three USB connections (one is a combo eSATA port, the other is helpfully labeled as a powered USB port).

One odd configuration to note: You're forced to choose between an SD card reader and an ExpressCard/34 slot; you can't have both (we got the SD card reader). Our review configuration also included a 128GB SSD, which is US$200 more than a standard 200GB 5,400rpm HDD.

Windows 7 Professional will seem very familiar to Vista users and somewhat less so to those still using Windows XP. You can read our full coverage of Windows 7 for a detailed analysis, but there are a handful of tweaks and features that seem of particular importance to laptop users.

The most jarring change for many will be the displaced Show Desktop button. Instead of living on the left side of the taskbar, it's now in the system tray on the far right, and without its familiar icon--it's just a tiny, glowing rectangle. Hovering over it with your mouse turns every open window transparent, except for a thin ghostly outline. Clicking the button, as before, minimizes every active window.

The revamped taskbar can also display thumbnails of all the windows you have open in a particular application (for example, Firefox browser windows) by hovering the pointer over the appropriate taskbar icon. Click on any of these tiny thumbnails to bring that window to the forefront.

Performance And Battery Life

Intel's high-end 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo SP9600 offers a good balance between energy efficiency and computing power. Compared with other systems with high-end Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, the T400s performed admirably and often slightly faster than laptops only a few months old. We'll have to wait until we have more Windows 7 systems tested to determine if there is indeed a performance dividend in real-world testing. In hands-on use, the T400s felt quick and responsive, much as we'd expect from a US$2,000 business laptop.







The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s ran for 3 hours 33 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included six-cell battery. That's decent for a mainstream laptop, but not near the all-day computing holy grail for business systems. Our battery drain test is especially grueling, so you can expect longer life from casual Web surfing and office use.





Lenovo ThinkPad T400s (Windows 7 Professional)
Windows 7 Professional, Intel Core 2 Duo SP9600, 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,066Mhz, 64MB Intel GMA 4500M, 128GB Toshiba SSD

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P9600; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD; 128GB Toshiba Solid State Drive

Dell Studio XPS 16
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600; 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,066MHz; 512MB ATI Radeon HD3670; 320GB Seagate 7,200rpm

Lenovo Ideapad Y650
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600; 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,066MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce G 105M; 320GB Western Digital 5,400rpm

Sony Vaio VGN-AW17GU/Q
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9400; 4,096MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT; 320GB Hitachi 7,200rpm

Service And Support

Lenovo includes an industry standard three-year parts-and-labor warranty with the system. Support is accessible on the phone and online, and Lenovo's built-in ThinkVantage also does a good job helping to target and troubleshoot problems right from the laptop.

Tags: Sony Vaio, SimpleTap, Intel Core 2 Duo, Microsoft Windows 7, Laptop Computer

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