ThinkPad T410 has its innards exposed for the sake of a component upgrade guide

What's better than a ThinkPad? Why, a torn down ThinkPad, of course. Some enterprising souls over at ThinkPads.com have put together a memory and hard drive upgrade guide, which includes a number of illustrative shots displaying the exposed hardware. It turns out that the T410 is the first (outside of the T400s and older T4x models) T-series laptop to offer easy access to memory upgrades via the back of the machine. We're told that since the T60 came out, all RAM replacements have had to be performed by removing the keyboard to access the slots. That's still the case for one of the sticks, but at least the other one is accessible via the back, and there's also great praise heaped on Lenovo for their "perfect" slide-out hard drive tray, which apparently makes upgrading a cinch. Hit the source for more, including the SIM card and WWAN module locations.

[Thanks, TS]

[AltairDusk Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:17AM]

"It turns out that the T410 is the first (outside of the T400s) T-series laptop to offer easy access to memory upgrades via the back of the machine."

Guys you may want to double check that. My old T42p had an access door underneath for easy memory upgrades. They also had the slide out HD tray at the time.

[machoo02 Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:24AM]

@AltairDusk

Same with my R52...

[Vlad Savov Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:33AM]

@AltairDusk Updated accordingly. It was poor phrasing on my part. It's the first since the T60.

[AltairDusk Posted Mar 8th 2010 10:01AM]

@Vlad Savov

Ah I didn't quite put two and two together with the line about the t60

[JoeJoeJoeJoeJoe Posted Mar 8th 2010 12:11PM]

Ditto on my T43p and x30 ThinkPad laptops - both of which came before the T60. There are plenty of laptops before the T60 that have this easy access feature. You might as well forget that "... since the T60 came out..." sentence altogether. Lol.

[nickaselord Posted Mar 8th 2010 1:19PM]

@AltairDusk The Lenovo ThinkPad T410, as well as the 15.6-inch T510, features the dual-core Intel Core i5-520M 2.4GHz, i5-540M 2,53GHz, or the i7-620M 2.66GHz processor, depending on a customer’s choice. Updates: http://bit.ly/lenovo-thinkpad-t410-updated

[etwashoo Posted Mar 8th 2010 4:28PM]

@Vlad Savov

You still got it wrong. On the T60 you had to remove the wrist rest, not the keyboard. Was like 6(don't quote me on the quantity) screws - not that hard, really.

[dougdeep Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:27AM]

That's not quite right. The memory is under the palm rest on T6x, not the keyboard. If you took off the keyboard, you did more than you had to.

The T4x had one accessible from a bottom door, and one under the keyboard. You usually didn't change the keyboard one because it was already at max.

[Jeremiah Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:29AM]

I've never had a problem upgrading any thinkpad. They are just flat-out easier to work on.

[JXCGunrunna Posted Mar 8th 2010 10:02AM]

@Jeremiah

Thinkpads are the absolute best laptops to work on. The T41 was the best laptop I ever had. I would love to get my hands on this one.

[stridermt2k Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:33AM]

RAM and HD are the most likely upgrades in pieces like these.

Making it easy is just good engineering.

[Nitesh Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:41AM]

I've gotta say, no one makes laptop internals as pretty as Apple (did I just call circuit boards pretty? You bet!). Not that it matters much, just sayin.

[pauldovi Posted Mar 8th 2010 10:41AM]

@Nitesh

There is a sort of beauty in engineering that doesn't translate to the type of beauty you are talking about. In other words, if you design something with pure practicality in mind it ends up very beautiful. That is what this is!

[Nitesh Posted Mar 8th 2010 12:49PM]

@pauldovi In other words, it looks like a mess :-P

[etwashoo Posted Mar 8th 2010 4:36PM]

@Nitesh

and thinkpads, for the most part have always run cool and quiet which is a lot more prettier than I can say for some, ahem, others

[ToniCipriani Posted Mar 8th 2010 9:49AM]

Actually all these steps and such can be found via the Hardware Maintenance Manuals posted by Lenovo.

On a side note, the X100e HMM reveals that a Athlon/Turion Neo X2 as well as Intel Pine View versions are coming in addition to the current Athlon Neo... check the parts list.

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/63y0640_01.pdf

[outZider Posted Mar 8th 2010 3:18PM]

@ToniCipriani Sweet! I've been looking at that X100e constantly. Never really looked at the netbook form factor before, but trackpoint definitely changes things. Throw another core in there and I'll buy one.

[Xenoterranos Posted Mar 8th 2010 10:43AM]

Sweet! This answered about 6 question had about my laptop, ut was too afraid to find out! (Especially the ultrabay sata caddy compatibility and the mini pci slot location)

[TonyC223 Posted Mar 8th 2010 11:46AM]

My old r51 (circa 2004) has two ram slots. One underneith the keyboard and the other easily accessed via the bottom of the computer.
Maybe they have IBM (or lenovo depending on how new your computer is) confused is apple. I've never seen a thinkpad without a switchable harddrive. As for if RAM slots being exclusivly under the keyboard, well we'd have to check every thinkpad but I'll venture to say that's nothing new either. I had a thinkpad for 1999ish and even that had a readily upgradable hard drive.

It sounds like their trying to sell their upgrade kit to people by making it seem that you can't just run down to Microcenter.

[tealfixie Posted Mar 8th 2010 12:10PM]

those are some ugly innards

[Jesper Posted Mar 8th 2010 12:28PM]

"we see some familiar sights. Heatsink, WiFi card….where’s the other DIMM? Peek-a-boo, there it is! It was hiding under a nifty dust shield."

Thats SO ThinkPad-nerd-talky. Nice :)

[dtakias Posted Mar 8th 2010 1:52PM]

My first Thinkpad was a T43. I had the the RAM,HD,WIFI updated also bluetooth and 9cell battery added. Amazing laptop with an amazing docking station.
Then went through a T60 with amazing flexview IPS high res panel (last laptop with flexview screen), tried the T61(didn't kept it long) and use X301 which I guess it's not too bad.

[Naris Posted Mar 8th 2010 2:52PM]

Thinkpad: The beauty is all on the inside.

[memten Posted Mar 9th 2010 2:11AM]

i have seen memory at http://www.memoryx.net/poweredget410.html