Libreboot T400s Review

This is just to share my experience. (I am in no way affiliated with Technoethical.)

I am very pleased with the excellent customer care and the Technoethical T400s itself.

When the ThinkPad T400s was first released in 2009 is was reviewed as an excellent, well built but rather expensive system for about 2000 Euros. The weakest point was considered the mediocre screen. The Technoethical team put in a brand new screen which has perfectly neutral colours, very good contrast and good viewing angles also. I've got 8 GB RAM (the maximum possible), an 128 GB SSD (instead of 64 GB) and the stronger dualcore SP9600 with 2.53 GHz (instead of the SP9400 with 2.40 GHz) CPU. In addition I've received a caddy adapter for replacing the CD/DVD drive with an other hard disk. And all this for less than 900 Euros.

This is the most recent laptop of the very few devices world wide that come with Libreboot and the FSF RYF label out of the box. The wireless does flawlessly work right away with totally free software. This system fulfils everything I need from a PC as a graphic designer. Image editing, desktop publishing, multimedia and even light 3D gaming. Needless to say that common office tasks as emailing and web browsing do of course work flawlessly. To get everything done properly only few people do actually need more performant working machines.

The only downside for power users on the go might be the limited battery life of about two hours with wireless enabled. It is possible to get a new battery which could extend the life to about 3 hours but because the battery is positioned on the bottom front you can't use a bigger one. I would prefer to remove it entirely since I mostly use the laptop as a desktop replacement but the battery block includes one of the needed legs for sitting properly on any desk.

Over all this is a great device that just works with entirely free software. I thank the Technoethical team for offering this fantastic service. I can only recommend buying one of those T400s laptops from Technoethical.