LABS GALLERY: Lenovo T400s Thin and Light Notebook Gains Touch-Screen Hardware

The Lenovo T400s touch-screen shipped on Sept. 15 and weighs 3.91 pounds with the optical drive and is 13.3 by 9.5 by 0.89 inches when used with the six-cell, 5.5-hour battery. The T400s has a 14-inch display and uses either an Intel Core 2 Duo SP9400 (2.4GHz) or SP9600 (2.53GHz) processor.

Here you see me tapping the screen to see if fingerprints and smudges will mar the display.

The screen remained surprisingly and pleasantly clean, even after tapping and swiping the touch-screen through a busy workday. Neither greasy snacks nor lunch seemed to affect the smear-resistant screen.

The new SimpleTap application that Lenovo supplies with the T400s touch-screen enables control of various hardware features on the notebook.

Lenovo enlarged the touchpad on this model of the ThinkPad T400s and gave it a slightly textured surface to distinguish it from the flush-mounted bezel.

From left to right are the USB 2.0 port, mic/headset combo jack, and optional 34mm Express Card or five-in-one media reader.

From left to right are the VGA, R-J45, powered USB 2.0, USB/eSATA combo and DisplayPort ports.

My test T400s was equipped with a DVD/CD-RW combo drive. Blu-ray DVD is an option.

ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery is just one of many laptop maintenance and service tools that are included with the T400s and accessed via the tried-and-true “blue button.”