[NikolaNovak]

If you like t420 try the t420s. Same laptop but slimmer and makes it much more transportable. Still has ultra bay, great keyboard, and easy access to everything. I have 3 around the house for various family members and it works great :)

[zwog]

I t420s fell out of my opened backpack a couple of days ago. Not the first time it fell, once I even stepped on it - but after the last drop the display has some problems and i have to push on a certain point to get it working, which made me put it to it's well deserved retirement.[*]

In need of an quick alternative I bought a Dell XPS 13 9343. I like this a lot - it has a way nicer display, the form factor is just great for my needs, build quality is good and even the keyboard feels right (missing a trackpoint tho). Unfortunately it supports Microsoft's "Modern Standy", which is a fancy name for s2idle - which just doesn't work using Linux, at least I couldn't get it to work . When in s2idle it looses power and does not reliably wake up, in s3 it goes to sleep but needs a hard reset to wake up.

Waiting for my t470s now, as far as I know the latest Thinkpad generation stat supports classic s3 sleep.

*: Actually it lives on as a small NAS/Homeserver. It even packs three disks (M2 SSD, HDD in the HDD slot and an Ultrabay-HDD adpter).

[paulmd]

haha, a number of years ago I stepped on my W510. It fell out of bed and under the covers without me noticing, it fell screen down and I stepped right on the display flat against the floor. I didn't put my full weight on it before I realized it was there, but I figured it was toast anyway, surprisingly it was fine!

I really miss the Ultrabay as well. I did the same thing, used to use it for a second HDD for extra storage.

Really though I miss the old old days when you could get an ultrabay battery. What do I need in a laptop more than storage? Battery life. I had a Fujitsu Lifebook which had an "ultrabay" (their version of it, at least) and that was the feature I used most for it.

It seemed to disappear all at once, I wonder if it was FAA regulations around flying with batteries that killed it or what.

[brewdad]

I cracked the screen on my T430 a few years ago. Stepped on it, much like you. I am far from the handiest guy when it comes to hardware but I was able to pick up a replacement panel online and the replacement was quite straightforward. I ended up handing that laptop down to my son and he got another 3 years of daily use out of it. He'd still be using it now in college but the performance was finally starting to drag too much for some of his software needs.

[zwog]

> Really though I miss the old old days when you could get an ultrabay battery. What do I need in a laptop more than storage? Battery life. I had a Fujitsu Lifebook which had an "ultrabay" (their version of it, at least) and that was the feature I used most for it.

Well, nowadays you can get a power bank with Power Delivery and charge your laptop via USB-C port

[paulmd]

It’s a nice idea on paper, but I don’t think there are many power banks that support 100W+ discharge.

Moreover, that’s a relatively recent technology and there was a good decade (or more) between the point when bay batteries disappeared and usb-c charging became any sort of commonplace occurrence outside Apple products.

[petschge]

I have a X1 Carbon that is a few years old now.A couple of years ago I dropped it (lid closed) from about 2 feet up (70cm). And it hit the tiled floor, pointy corner first. I thought "welp here go $2000". But no! A 2x3 mm part of the black surface finish chipped of and I see the bare silvery metal now. Oh and the tile cracked.

[MawKKe]

Have you checked the display cable connections? I have a x240 and the connection to the panel has come loose twice due to bumping/dropping the machine. And I do mean the connection on the panel, not on the motherboard.

[zwog]

I haven't checked yet, but I'll do.

But I'm kind of glad, that it finally had an error. I wanted to buy a newer one for a long time, but I didn't want to toss out a perfectly functioning notebook and it was too beat-up to sell or even donate it.

[boneitis]

I had to upgrade my i7 T420s with maxed out memory and solid state, because work video calls brought it to its knees, and it couldn't push 60 frame videos in the browser. I had to use streamlink for practically all live video consumption. (Linux Mint)

Don't get me wrong; I'm proud of how far I stretched it (and it remains a respectable machine for what it is), but I just want to put this out there if anyone's thinking of trying to dump heavy modern web processing on the T420/T420s dinosaurs.