Ín 2015 my mother was searching for a laptop in order to start using the Internet. As a die hard ThinkPad fan I searched for her and found her a good and cheap T500. She used it for two years and now decided that for her needs a tablet is better suited. So I took the T500 back to me and am searching for a good and cheap tablet for her.

It is a ThinkPad T500 2089-AZ9 with the following specs:

a Intel Core2 Duo CPU running with 2,53 GHz (P9500)

an Intel 4500MHD GPU

4096 MB of RAM

a gorgeous 15,4″ TFT WSXGA+ with a 1680×1050 resolution

Because my mother rarely used it and handled it well it is still in nearly mint condition. The keyboard rocks and the trackpoint works very well.

I think the T500 will replace my T60p as my tinker around machine because it is much better supported under Windows 10. In comparison to my 14,1″ T60p you can see that the switch from 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:10 makes a big loss in vertical screen estate. The 14,1″ T60p is on the left and the 15,4″ T500 is on the right:

Even worse is the switch that Lenovo made to 16:9 since it started with the T410, T510 and X201 lines. Here is a comparison of the 14,1″ T60p in 4:3, the 15,4″ T500 in 16:10 and the 15,6″ P50 in 16:9. The displays in the last years lost lots of vertical resolution because of the switch to 16:9. I personally think that 16:10 is the sweet spot. Nowadays I think only Apple is still using 16:10 which is sad.

In terms of build quality I think that the T500 is a step back from its predecessors (T60 and T61) which were built more solid. The plastic palmrest feels very cheap and is not as sturdy as the predecessors. The keyboard also shows some light flex. The whole build quality is still good but not on par with elder models!

My P50 in comparison which is my main machine is very well built. The island shaped keys that Lenovo introduced in the x30 series works very well and the machine has one of the best touchpads that I ever used on a ThinkPad. In comparison to the P50 the touchpads on the T60p and the T500 suck. But I mainly use the trackpoint so that is not an issue for me.

The T500 is perfectly supported by Windows 10 because it uses the Intel GMA 4500 integrated graphics. I am running Windows 10 Professional and Windows installed all drivers automatically with the exception of two drivers:

Intel AMT 4.2 Management Engine Interface and Ricoh Multi Card Reader Driver and everything was set to go.

The machine is very quiet, I added a very cheap 60GB KingDian s200 SSD, The T500 supports S-ATA II and the SSD makes working with the machine a pleasure. With 4 GB of memory and the SSD I can do some development using Visual Studio or Eclipse, edit some photos with GIMP, use Office 2016 and browse the web, no problems. The machine can handle YouTube videos in 1920×1080 and 60 fps fine with only about 10-20% CPU usage. I watch YouTube videos in Edge, it is a really power efficient browser. When you choose Chrome, you should install the h264ify extension. Because Chrome by default streams videos in VP9 format the T500 is too weak to decode VP9 videos with 60 fps. The h264ify extension forces YouTube to stream its content in h.264 format which can be easily decoded by the T500 without stressing the CPU. Only when you open multiple web pages at a time you will notice the the Core 2 Duo with 2,53 GHz begins to struggle but that is acceptable to me.

Amazon Instant Video and Netflix also work fine on the machine. I also did some light gaming, I ran Half Life 2 in 1920×1080 resolution and it performs fine. The Intel GMA 9500 should handle elder games like the Half Life 2 series or something like Gothic and Gothic 2 fine!

If any of my readers is interested, I can upload some 3D gaming performance videos to my YouTube channel!