"What the <---->...? Are you serious? Again?!"
Those were (more or less) the words that filled my office a few days ago. I had just taken delivery of a new dev. machine, a ThinkPad T410, and I was trying out the "improved" keyboard.
I was not impressed.
Back when the T400 and T500 were released, Lenovo took a lot of flack for tampering with the "legendary" ThinkPad keyboard, and rightly so. The weight-saving measures that they took severely reduced the rigidity of the keyboard's backplate, and the typing experience suffered for it. After a fairly sizable backlash on their forums/blogs/etc., Lenovo responded with two fixes. First, it started shipping T6x series keyboards (which featured the traditional, more-or-less solid backplates) to customers who complained. Second, it revised the chassis design of the T400/T500 to include an additional support under the left-hand side of the keyboard. While the T6x keyboard fixed the problem (as its design was fine to begin with), the additional support only made the problem less severe. Many users still complained about flex, albeit to a lesser degree, even when using the improved chassis design.
As an owner of a T500 with the "improved" design, I too felt that Lenovo's response was rather poor. Even worse, Lenovo had already stated that they considered the added supports to be a complete fix (despite reports to the contrary) and had already stopped offering replacement T6x-style keyboards by the time I received my T500. Fortunately, I was able to find an excellent source for T6x keyboards, and promptly ordered myself a replacement that restored the solid feel that I've come to expect.
It was therefore with great interest that I read the reviews of the T410 and T510. According to Lenovo, the redesigned keyboards were designed to be resistant to the flexing that plagued their predecessors, and the chassis supports had been placed so as to ensure a solid typing feel.
Sadly, the new keyboards do not live up to claims of "flex-free typing". My T410 exhibits a rather noticeable amount of flex in the area above the Ultrabay, as well as a slightly-less-noticeable amount in the region of the 'W', 'A', 'S', and 'D' keys. In addition to tangibly flexing under normal typing, firm keystrokes produce a hollow "clack", caused by the flexible backplate bowing down until it hits the chassis supports.
I'd read a few user reports of this being a problem, and almost all of them were answered by someone saying "well all you have to do is tighten the screws and make sure they're torqued down", etc. As far as I can tell, this is not the cause of the problem. I have indeed removed and re-seated my keyboard, but with no luck. This is a design flaw, not an assembly one.
Now it would be pretty easy for Lenovo to solve this. They could keep the perforated backplate and use an adequate number of screws going through the chassis into mounting posts on the keyboard itself (like many previous keyboard designs, including the hallowed 600-series keyboard). They could use a solid backplate, ensuring that the keyboard is resistant to flex even in areas where it's not braced by the chassis (like the T6x series). They could add additional bracing or introduce the lip/flange design to the area near the UltraBay, so as to ensure that the (fairly thin) metal of the rollcage is not the only thing holding up the keyboard.
But they didn't do any of that. Instead, they rely on the placement of a few scant supports, small lips around the top and bottom edges of the keyboard, and two screws to keep the assembly in place. Now this *might* be an OK solution if QA was sufficient to allow for such slim tolerances -- but we all know how much that's changed in the last 6 years.
I have a hard time believing that this problem is due to cost savings. I'm sure that the decline of ThinkPad QA has been due to cost pressures, but that shouldn't stop them from working around that. Heck, a simple solution would be to add small foam/felt pads in specific locations -- that would not only help shore up the backplate, but would also (due to the compressible nature of the material) allow for slightly greater deviance in the assembly process.
I don't think it's due to cost. Instead, sad as this is to say, I think it's because they simply don't care. And why would they? Lenovo's been reporting record profits recently, and if sales of the ThinkPad line are any indicator, most of their customers either don't notice or don't care about these regressions. Their attitude towards those that do complain can best be described as dismissive, with one employee even going so far as to publish a rather inflammatory post in which he states in no uncertain terms: "the T500 exceeded previous levels of performance. Myth busted." (In a somewhat comical turn of events, this was done right before the semi-public acknowledgement of the problem on Lenovo's forums.) Between this and the screen quality, it's clear that Lenovo is quite content to ignore the users who do complain and dance around providing real answers (ex: constantly responding with "But IPS is no more!" when asked about why Lenovo only uses low-end TN panels), etc.
When discussing the T400/T500 keyboard issues, one blog comment summed it up best:
This article / post is in such bad taste. It's like going to a restaurant, complaining that the food is cold, only for the waiter to produce a thermometer, stick it in the dish, and exclaim, 'look, its 43 degrees C, you don't know what you are talking about.'
Ok, so all that aside, what are my thoughts on the machine?
Most of the "hard" aspects (performance, weight, etc.) have already been reviewed to death by others, so I'll skip them. Instead, here are a random collection of observations on some of the more subjective aspects of the machine:
Well the display is every bit as bad as expected. It's plenty bright, and it looks great if you look at it from just the right angle, but I can't get through more than an hour of work without having to spend a few minutes fidgeting and adjusting the screen so as to make it tolerable. It's clear that Lenovo is simply going for the cheapest possible screens with the requisite specs. I can easily source better panels than the one shipped on this system -- there are a number of common TN panels that can outperform the rather crummy ones used on the T410, and given their presence in systems by other manufacturers, I can only assume that price is the limiting factor.
That said, the display doesn't bother me nearly as much as it has some folks. Software engineering doesn't exactly demand stellar viewing angles and perfect color accuracy; provided that the display isn't so bad as to make me change the colors that my IDE uses for syntax highlighting, I can cope just fine.
Lenovo got a lot of flack for removing the rollcage in the T410. I'm not sure it was entirely deserved. Yes, the lid on the T410 is more flexible than the lid of its predecessor. And yes, you can easily torque it. Yes, you can press on it and get ripples if you press *really* hard in a few key spots. But despite all that I'm not really sure how much of a risk it actually is. When I got my X200s I was initially aghast to see how flimsy the display seemed. After carrying it around for a while and subjecting it to the trials of daily use, however, I was pleased to see that the CFRP lid actually seemed comparable (if not slightly superior) to my X61s lid when closed. The "rollcage-less" design doesn't work quite as well with the T410 -- due, I suspect, to the larger surface area -- but at the same time I'm not concerned about its ability to handle even fairly rough usage when closed. (Open is another story -- I'm positive that durability has decreased in that regard.) It's also worth noting that the X200s uses CFRP for the lid, whereas the T410 uses normal plastic ("high-elasticity polycarbonate", IIRC). I suppose that might have something to do with the lid strength as well.
Symmetrical. Finally. Not sure if they're any stronger/weaker or if the internal design has changed, but they certainly look a lot "cleaner".
Ah, yes. This one's a bit of a pain. So as to better accommodate the larger escape key, the function keys have been shifted over by one place. This is rather annoying if you regularly switch between the Tx10 layout and the previous generations.
What can I say? I'm impressed. With the exception of the trackpad buttons (which look and feel rather cheap), the design changes are good ones. The textured surface is a wonderful idea, and is actually quite useful in practice. The return of the colored trim to the TrackPoint buttons is a welcome improvement, as is the increase in size.
The palmrest is vastly better than that of the T400/T500. Whereas the latter flexed and creaked noticeably, the T410 palmrest feels more like that of the T4x and earlier series; it barely flexes under strong pressure, and pressing on the corners of notebook yields no creaking sound. This goes a long way towards making the chassis feel like a solid, single piece.
Quality and volume-wise, they're about what you'd expect from notebook speakers. In terms of appearance, however, I think that their move to alongside the keyboard is a positive change; the design looks a lot cleaner and more "integrated". The change to a larger-gauge, (cloth?) grill is also a welcome one, and I think goes a long ways towards making the body of the notebook look like a single, seamless structure rather than a collection of plastic pieces.
Absolutely a positive change. The new key design looks more luxurious (thanks to the outlines), more integrated (as the buttons are now flush), and more sturdy (the action has been improved slightly, and presses are more consistent).
Thankfully, the somewhat gaudy, shiny black "lenovo" logo on the lid is a thing of the past. I'm a fan of the 2008-era ThinkPad logo, and I'm pleased to see that it's the only splash of color on an otherwise matte-black lid. I don't mind the single, tasteful "lenovo" on bottom left of the screen bezel, and I think that the current mix of branding/logos is just right.
There's no doubt about it -- the lines of the T410 are much cleaner than that of its predecessors. On one hand, it's nice, as the new design is free of distracting elements. On the other, I can't help but think that some aspects of the design look a little "flat". The screen bezel in particular sticks out as being a little *too* plain, now that the clamshell bevels are gone. Perhaps it's just me, but I don't like my hardware to look *entirely* seamless. Still, this is a fairly minor complaint, and I think that the cleaner appearance is an overall improvement.
Thermally, the performance seems about the same as my T500 (Core 2 Duo - P8600), which is to say quite good. The laptop doesn't heat up too much during heavy use, and it's far better than a lot of systems in its class.
Acoustically, I'd have to say that the T410 is a slight improvement on previous designs. Despite the high power consumption of the Core i5 that my unit was equipped with, the system was entirely inaudible most of the time. Even when the fan did ramp up to top speed (such as during a long parallel build), the noise was never loud enough to be distracting.
I've been running RHEL 6 (beta 2) for most of the system's useful life, and I'm pleased to report that all the hardware is supported perfectly under Linux. The sole exception to this may be the fingerprint reader, which I have not tried (and which I have no intention to ever use.) That said, I've read reports that it is supported just fine by recent versions of fprint, so I imagine that it would work fine were I to enable it.
Update (March 2011): I've been running Debian 6 on the machine for a long time now (starting shortly after I wrote this review) with no issues whatsoever. From what I've seen, the T410's compatibility with modern distros is pretty much flawless.
As seems to be the case with the last couple of ThinkPad generations, the T410 can best be summed up as "two steps forward, one step back." The T6x brought us roll-cages, vastly improved hardware, and a less restrictive BIOS, at the expense of appearance, and (later) 4:3 screens. The Tx00 brought us an improved roll-cage design, switchable graphics, and SATA UltraBays at the expense of magnesium lids and stiff keyboards. Now we see the T410 bring us better appearance, a better chassis design, sturdier palmrests, and better connectivitiy at the expense of screen rigidity, keyboard stiffness (again) and screen quality.
Sigh. All of this is understandable, given Lenovo's obsession with cutting costs and "modernizing" the brand, but this somewhat schizophrenic approach to engineering is somewhat puzzling to say the least.
Overall, I'd say that the T410 is an incremental improvement on the previous generation that (were it not for the abysmal display, flexible lid, and inferior keyboard) could almost be considered a "second coming" of the brand.
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