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T420 here for the nostalgia. Apart from the ssd and ram upgrades, the FHD IPS upgrade made it an excellent cheaper alternative to the thinkpad 25th anniversary

by htk 8y ago

T420 here for the nostalgia. Apart from the ssd and ram upgrades, the FHD IPS upgrade made it an excellent cheaper alternative to the thinkpad 25th anniversary edition. My only problem with it is the battery, I bought a new one but it only lasts for about 2-3 hours. If anyone here is planning to do the FHD upgrade, be very careful with power, you need to remove the battery/power cable and press the power button a couple of times to discharge all capacitors etc, otherwise you will blow a microscopic fuse (I did!) and it's near impossible to replace it. I just soldered a bridge between the contacts! I just can't do anything wrong again or I'll fry something.

platz 8y ago
T420 daily here too. I love it's keyboard. Not sure what I'm going to do in the future when I'm forced to upgrade. I hear you can install a classic keyboard on newer gen Lenovo laptops, but I'd really prefer a solution that didn't require mods.
coverband 8y ago
T500 owner here with (what at the time was quite expensive) on-board plus discrete graphic cards and 1600x1050 screen. After replacing the drive with SSD and upgrading to 6GB, it's working as good as when I bought it in 2009, even with Win10Pro on it. I wish the multiple replacement batteries I got for it over the years were as performant ;o)
jplayer01 8y ago
Huh, odd. Even my old, quite run-down battery (9-cell) gets me 5-6 hours. Back when it was brand new, it got me anywhere between 7-10 hours. This is on Linux. Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel.
- 5166cc9c39fa61 8y ago
  > Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel. It is most likely due to poor quality batteries. The "cells" in a 9-cell battery are 18650 batteries, which vary in capacity from 3400mAh at the high end, to counterfeit ones that are labelled to have 1200mAh capacity, but in reality have only a fraction of that. Lithium-ion batteries also have a limited shelf life, so even good quality aftermarket batteries will have a fraction of the rated capacity if they have been sitting in a warehouse for years.
watersb 8y ago
I managed to do this on a 2016 HP laptop, replacing the screen assembly. The laptop base worked great, plugged into a TV via HDMI, but a few days later, after the replacement top half had arrived, plugging it in and there was a pop sound... and a dead laptop. Battery had been disconnected, also the CMOS battery. I usually remember to hold down the power button for a few seconds. Dang. Didn't chase this further, as I am clumsy with board-level repairs, and my friend didn't want to throw more money at the project.
- throwmeback 8y ago
  Bridging the solder points of the blown micro fuse is a very easy job even if you're clumsy with such jobs (trust me, I'm pretty much a klutz). It'll be a shame if you just leave the otherwise working laptop dead.
martinve 8y ago
Same here. I use T480 and T420 in parallel and in comparison to the newer model the T420 feels virtually bombproof.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
I replaced the terrible 1366x768 panel in my ThinkPad E530 with a FHD panel from a W530. Easy swap and it all "just worked". So even in the Lenovo era they're very easy machines to work on. Edit to add: Obviously this is an i5 laptop from 2012, much newer than some of the other machines in this thread. Although it's not my daily driver anymore I do still use it for music production.

by htk 8y ago

platz 8y ago

T420 daily here too. I love it's keyboard. Not sure what I'm going to do in the future when I'm forced to upgrade. I hear you can install a classic keyboard on newer gen Lenovo laptops, but I'd really prefer a solution that didn't require mods.

coverband 8y ago

T500 owner here with (what at the time was quite expensive) on-board plus discrete graphic cards and 1600x1050 screen. After replacing the drive with SSD and upgrading to 6GB, it's working as good as when I bought it in 2009, even with Win10Pro on it. I wish the multiple replacement batteries I got for it over the years were as performant ;o)

jplayer01 8y ago

Huh, odd. Even my old, quite run-down battery (9-cell) gets me 5-6 hours. Back when it was brand new, it got me anywhere between 7-10 hours. This is on Linux. Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel.

5166cc9c39fa61 8y ago
> Maybe it's the display, since I still only have the old 1600x panel. It is most likely due to poor quality batteries. The "cells" in a 9-cell battery are 18650 batteries, which vary in capacity from 3400mAh at the high end, to counterfeit ones that are labelled to have 1200mAh capacity, but in reality have only a fraction of that. Lithium-ion batteries also have a limited shelf life, so even good quality aftermarket batteries will have a fraction of the rated capacity if they have been sitting in a warehouse for years.

watersb 8y ago

I managed to do this on a 2016 HP laptop, replacing the screen assembly. The laptop base worked great, plugged into a TV via HDMI, but a few days later, after the replacement top half had arrived, plugging it in and there was a pop sound... and a dead laptop. Battery had been disconnected, also the CMOS battery. I usually remember to hold down the power button for a few seconds. Dang. Didn't chase this further, as I am clumsy with board-level repairs, and my friend didn't want to throw more money at the project.

throwmeback 8y ago
Bridging the solder points of the blown micro fuse is a very easy job even if you're clumsy with such jobs (trust me, I'm pretty much a klutz). It'll be a shame if you just leave the otherwise working laptop dead.

martinve 8y ago

Same here. I use T480 and T420 in parallel and in comparison to the newer model the T420 feels virtually bombproof.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

I replaced the terrible 1366x768 panel in my ThinkPad E530 with a FHD panel from a W530. Easy swap and it all "just worked". So even in the Lenovo era they're very easy machines to work on. Edit to add: Obviously this is an i5 laptop from 2012, much newer than some of the other machines in this thread. Although it's not my daily driver anymore I do still use it for music production.