T440s - The good and the bad.

This is my honest opinion that I'm posting here so that I may assist in anyone looking to purchase a T440s.  I ended up sending mine back and obtained a MacBook Pro 15 Retina, which now runs Windows 7 flawlessly.  I'm not here to discuss my Mac (and I still hate Apple as a company, lol), but I want to share the good and the bad things about my T440s experience:
The good:
- Oh so stylish... I love the minimalist business-like look.
- Very light.
- Very good screen (in my opinion... I got the HD version).
- Fairly capable performance-wise.  It calculated a Fibonacci(1 through 50) in C# in 20 minutes and some change, which was not as good as the other-mentioned laptop, but it was still pretty decent.  It also did amazingly with VS 2013 and Blend open at the same time.  No hang-ups, nothing.  And that was only with 4GB RAM, since I didn't install the 8GB stick (had no time, because of the repairs... more on that later).
- Battery life is superb.  Under full-on stress, which most people would never unleash on this machine, I was able to get 1 hour and 42 minutes out of it.  This was done using Battery Eater.  Therefore, one can easily expect 4+ hours under normal development.
- Good build, except the touchpad (more on that later).
- Amazing keyboard.  I'm speechless.  That thing was a dream to type on.  I would compare it closely to my mechanical keyboard.  Obviously, it's not as good, but I've never felt a better keyboard on a laptop.
- The fact that it has an internal and an external battery.  Hot swaps with spare packs... how awesome.
- Very slim, in my opinion.
The bad:
- The touchpad is horrible.  It feels like a two-cent piece of junk on a $1,500 laptop.  As soon as I got it I couldn't believe it.  My wife was in shock too.  It was very loud, even with light clicking and the rattling sound after the click was horribly annoying.  I sent it in for repair, and instead of fixing the touchpad (regardless of whether a new one was put in), they ended up misaligning the keyboard bezel, so the right side is popping up slightly as if it was forced onto the body.
Mind you, it's not like I was overly picky or anything.  This is a known problem, but I didn't do my homework prior to the purchase.  Also, the original gentleman on the phone (who was pretty awesome comparing to others) said himself that it was strangely loud.  I clicked it very softly and he was able to hear it on his side without my phone being on speaker or anything.  He tested a model next to him and I couldn't hear it.  He said his touchpad was very quiet.
- The drivers for the touchpad are pretty atrocious.   I was able to get it to 80% efficiency, but the cursor still jumped around when clicking once in a while.  This created a lot of frustration, as things were closed or opened accidentally.
- This is not particular to the laptop, but to the company... the customer support was horrible.  Most of them were polite, except the person that closed the chat session on me when I decided to question why the keyboard bezel was being replaced...  and him closing the chat session was not a technical issue (I asked the next rep to explain).  However, nothing got fixed and the laptop came back in worse condition than I sent it in.  I mean... it's a 2-hour old laptop and it already has misalignments and a scratch.  Yes, I forgot to mention that.  On the right side, it appeared as if they were trying to pry it open and put a slight scratch there... not ridiculously important, because it does not alter the performance and it was not very noticeable, but when coupled with the rest of the things... yeah, no go.
Would I recommend this laptop?  If you don't expect a good touchpad and never care to get it fixed, sure.  I would love to own if it had a different touchpad... but I'll just revisit this idea in five years or so.  You might also get lucky and get one that doesn't have the touchpad problem, but this might be a rarity from what I see on the forums.

@bkboggy: the only solution is that you should tap gentle and softly that you won't produce a click
Maybe You should go for an on-site guarantee, that might help not sending back Yours t440s
Regards,

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    from Robert Modero.
    "Multiplexing Error. Problem during initialization of tracks"
    Simply remember to add subtitles to your Quicktime files and menu buttons.
    Once I did that, I was back in business.
    from Boise Jim
    Do a safe reboot (by holding down the shift key until you see the spinning gear on gray background, then release, then restart when your start-up screen appears).
    I always makes a DiskImage first and test this so that it runs OK
    I use only - Verbatim DVDs
    I use only - DVD-R
    I burn at an as slow speed possibly e.g. x1
    This gives good DVDs
    PART Three.
    Multiplex Error
    Chuck, Chicago 2/7/2009.
    Back again. Here is what I have found to work. I also have and use a LaCie DVD-R/RW DL external drive and a LaCie external hard drive as well. Since yesterday I have tried a few ways to burn a themed iDVD project having four 56 minute movies on it, amounting to 226 minutes onto a DVD DL disc, capacity 240 minutes. Apple tech support really didn't know what to do but gave me a very good tip. I had two options left. Apple tech support's tip was to try disc image. One of the replies on a thread with this subject said not to, but my experience today is good. Put your project onto "Burn to disc image," under "iDVD, file." Yesterday encoding took me 23 1/2 hours. Overnight for iDVD disc image, encoding took 21 1/2 hours (again) while I slept. This morning I tried to copy/burn disc image to a DVD with Roxio Toast 7, and it stopped near the end of the burn with some kind of "error" message. So then I tried Utilities> Disc Utility> Burn icon, and followed it through. Be sure to click the DVD DL drive in the window "Burn disc in.". I had one other problem though. At the end of a 46 minute copy, it started to verify, and at the end of verify it rejected the burn. So I tried again, and when "verify" appeared, I clicked on "Skip." The disc finished burning and is doing fine and well. A long and tortuous process, but at last something works. I made several additional copies using Disc Utility. Best wishes. Chuck, Chicago.
    2. Disconnect any other external devices not absolutely needed.
    e.g. external USB/USB2 hard disks, other FW hard disks etc.
    3 Chapter marks in transitions - minimum 2 sec from
    FROM Bev.
    (Not a 'guy' but I will answer!)
    First, I do not think that mixing wide-screen and standard makes a difference in iDVD.
    Second, you should use a better brand of DVD disk. Also, many of us have experienced fewer problems on playback with DVD-R disks. Recommended brands here are Verbatim, Maxell and Taiyo Yuden. Memorex and TDK are not consistent and may not give you a correct burn. They apparently have fewer layers in the composition of the disk. I have always used Verbatim DVD-R disks and have not had any burn problems.
    Also, choose a slower burn speed, 4x or less.
    Third, to determine if the iDVD project will burn properly, create a disk image file (from within iDVD, go File->Save as Disk Image) and test it. Mount the disk image and then open DVD Player (in Applications) and view your project. If it plays correctly, you can then burn the actual DVD disk from the disk image file using Disk Utility.
    From. Boise, Idaho
    I did everything I've seen suggested, but a friend (who used to be an Apple Genius) suggested that I do a safe reboot (by holding down the shift key until you see the spinning gear on gray background, then release, then restart when your start-up screen appears).
    It worked, and I got a clean burn from iDVD.
    Hopefully this can help other people.
    by dheb0422
    Well, I finally got it, and it was odd enough to post here incase anyone looks this topic up again. Many things were tried, including burning the unedited film, the edited film without titles and chapter markers, abbreviating the chapter markers in case length was the issue (remember the old iMovie used to truncate them when moving to iDVD?). In the process, I noticed that one, and only one, chapter marker was on the same line as the title marker. All the others were on the line above. The only way I seemed able to change that was to clip a few seconds of film. After that last clip, the offending marker took a place on the line above, as were all the others. That run published, compiled completely and burned. That's one for the books.
    One user more writes
    To add my experience with Multiplex Errors using iDVD (7.0.4), I recently created two iDVD projects
    Video from both passed from FCE 4.01 with chapters
    One project worked fine in creating disk image file
    The other gave Multiplex Errors
    I tried suggestions to remove special characters and no chapter marks at beginning, but nothing worked
    Note that I've used iDVD for dozens of projects and this is first time I've run into Multiplex Errors
    Anyway, for problem project, I tried an experiment where I removed all chapters in FCE and passed to new iDVD project
    This time multiplex errors gone
    So had something to do with chapters
    So now I tried numerous experiments to remove individual chapters and try again creating disk image with new iDVD project
    After numerous tries, I was able to narrow problem down to 1 "Bad" chapter mark
    That is, when I left the "bad" chapter in my FCE project and passed to iDVD, iDVD gave multiplex error
    When I removed "bad" chapter mark (and others in), no multiplex error
    As a final experiment, I moved "bad" chapter mark about 5-10 sec's beyond original point and passed to iDVD, the multiplex errors now magically went away and I was able to finally create my disk image.
    I have no idea why this worked, but thought I'd mention here in case someone else runs into similar problem.
    Rich839
    In addition to Bengt's fine advice, burning errors can occur if you have located any of your menu buttons wholly or partly outside of the safe TV viewing area. Go to your main project menu, then click on View/Show TV Safe Area, to check. Drag into the safe viewing area any buttons that are outside the safe viewing area.
    Russ One - suggest this
    Multiplex Error-There was an error during muxing preparation
    One thing that worked for me was to export the video w/o chapter markers as a self contained movie (thereby not loosing the edits & etc). Then make a new FCE project and import that movie into a new sequence and add the chapter markers. I've used "-", "&" and "," with no problem in the chapter names. Removing the markers or exporting without them did solve the problem but renaming them with just numbers 1,2,3....5, did not solve the problem and since this problem seems to happen with with iMovie as well, it would suggest the problem is in the video or audio and in combination with the chapter markers iDVD just can't handle it. The only other possibility is that both iMovie and FCE share the same or similar chapter marker code that some how is corrupting the markers.
    Summary - What to try
    1. Chapters
    • Only A to Z and 0 to 9 in chapter title
    • No Chapter mark at very beginning of movie
    • No Chapter mark in or within 2 seconds from any transition in movie
    2. TV-safe area for buttons (no one outside this)
    3. Safe re-boot
    4. No other external devices connected - that are not needed
    SDMacuser adds to this
    • On #4 ... No ext. devices. Some think this applies mainly to ext. FW. Not the case. Also applies to ext. USB2 as well (not to mention flash drives too).
    Do not leave 3rd party devices / camera / camcorder plugged in unless it is being used with iDvd's One Step process. Certain web cams can trigger this also (especially ones with added features like LED light/s that draw additional power from the FW or USB bus).
    5. Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-up hard disk
    6. Make a DiskImage first - reduces where problem originates
    7. Trash iDVD pref. file
    8. Make a new iDVD project
    9. Movies in project with same aspect ratio e.g. 4x3 or 16x9
    10. No other programs/applications running during iDVD process. e.g. Internet, screen & energy savers
    Yours Bengt W

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