Buying a new thinkpad

[arnabux]

Hello all. I'm new to this forum. I'm planning to buy a new thinkpad for programming and virtualization and a little bit of video editing. My current system is thinkpad e440(i5 4210m, 4GB ddr3l, 500GB). I have gone through some e series and t series model but unable to decide which will be best for me. Both of them has almost same specifications i7 6500u 4GB 1TB. Only the T series has extra is 128GB ssd(not that important for me). Can anyone recommend me which to buy? Thanks in advance

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[kfzhu1229]

E series are usually cheaper and more of home computers than business class computers
T series are more premium and usually lasts longer than E series ThinkPads (T series is one of the series that IBM handed to Lenovo a decade ago while E series is made by Lenovo).
I had this problem before and I went with T series. You should know how much you want to spend and then it helps you decide a bit better

[arnabux]

E series are usually cheaper and more of home computers than business class computers
T series are more premium and usually lasts longer than E series ThinkPads (T series is one of the series that IBM handed to Lenovo a decade ago while E series is made by Lenovo).
I had this problem before and I went with T series. You should know how much you want to spend and then it helps you decide a bit better

My budget is around $1000

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[Puppy]

It depends on whether you need trackpoint or not. Overall quality of ThinkPads is worse than used to be. For those who don't need trackpoint I would recommend to look elsewhere, Acer V15 Nitro seems to be a good option. You get better non-flickering display and less issues in general. There are people who has moved from older T series ThinkPads to the Acer V15 (the article can be automatically translated to English) and have suprisingly good experience with Acer. Build quality is also very good.

[mj0]

If your budget is $1,000 you may want to consider the L-series as well. In terms of build and overall quality they're right in between the E- and T-series. In other news, I would not get a laptop with only 4GB of RAM anymore. Especially considering you don't seem to be interested in the tremendous performance improvement an SSD offers of a harddrive.

Generally speaking: if you're happy with your E440 I see no reason why an E470 wouldn't make you happy as well.

[arnabux]

If your budget is $1,000 you may want to consider the L-series as well. In terms of build and overall quality they're right in between the E- and T-series. In other news, I would not get a laptop with only 4GB of RAM anymore. Especially considering you don't seem to be interested in the tremendous performance improvement an SSD offers of a harddrive.

Generally speaking: if you're happy with your E440 I see no reason why an E470 wouldn't make you happy as well.

Actually my E440 is almost 2 years old now. Though it performs well in day-to-day but when I used to run Virtualbox or GIMP image editor or more than 5/6 tabs on FireFox it shows a little bit of laggyness. So I'm willing to upgrade to a i7 system but I'm not sure about those i7 ULV cpus. Many of my friends have suggested me to go with a i7 hq/mq cpu but it's completely out of my budget( almost $2000 what lenovo is charging for in India ). Do you have any idea about i7 6500U/7500U performance? And again I've upgraded my current system's ram to 8GB

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[arnabux]

It depends on whether you need trackpoint or not. Overall quality of ThinkPads is worse than used to be. For those who don't need trackpoint I would recommend to look elsewhere, Acer V15 Nitro seems to be a good option. You get better non-flickering display and less issues in general. There are people who has moved from older T series ThinkPads to the Acer V15 (the article can be automatically translated to English) and have suprisingly good experience with Acer. Build quality is also very good.

Do you have any choice rather than Acer? Actually acer service is not that great in my area. Here only HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Apple and msi is the dominator.

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[RealBlackStuff]

If you are otherwise happy with your E440 and you have 64-bit OS, why not expand it to 8 (or 16) GB RAM, get a decent 256GB or larger SSD and an ultrabay adapter to put your old 500GB HD in?
Then take a holiday with whatever money is left!

[arnabux]

If you are otherwise happy with your E440 and you have 64-bit OS, why not expand it to 8 (or 16) GB RAM, get a decent 256GB or larger SSD and an ultrabay adapter to put your old 500GB HD in?
Then take a holiday with whatever money is left!

Thanks for your suggestion. But my system supports max of 8GB ddr3l and I've expended it to that and it doesn't support ssd. It supports hdd upto 1TB. I bought this item from a local Lenovo dealer who said me that E series will be best for my college purpose. My choice was a x series.

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[Puppy]

Thanks for your suggestion. But my system supports max of 8GB ddr3l and I've expended it to that and it doesn't support ssd. It supports hdd upto 1TB.

Read the specs http://www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/withdra ... d_E440.pdf page 2

Memory:
16GB max / PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3L, non-parity, dual-channel capable, two 204-pin SO-DIMM sockets

SATA disk:
Some: Solid State Drive (SSD) / SATA 6.0Gb/s, 2.5" wide, 7mm high
Some: Hard Disk Drive / SATA 3.0Gb/s, 2.5" wide, 9.5mm high, removable, upgradable, Active Protection System™

M.2 SSD:
Some: M.2 Solid State Drive (SSD), via M.2 Card slot

You can always upgrade to SATA SSD or M.2 one.

[mj0]

Of course it supports an SSD. Every system with a 2.5" harddrive will support a 2.5" SATA SSD. Period.

I second the notion to upgrade your existing system instead of buying a new one. From what you're describing it seems that the CPU isn't the limit you're running into, it's the RAM. 8GB should be fine for a few Firefox tabs, GIMP, or VMs, but it might be the slow harddrive that's killing you here. That is as long as you keep the sum of all VM RAM required at any given time at no more than 4GB. RealBlackStuff is right - invest your money in 16GB of RAM and a 512GB or even 1TB SSD for your E440 and you should be set many more years to come. Those two upgrades will make your E440 noticeably faster than a brand-new E470 with i7-7500, 8GB of RAM and a slow 1TB harddrive.

Generally speaking the i7-7500U will perform better than your current i5. However you shouldn't expect any performance miracles - it will be around 13% faster in single threaded and 26% faster in multi threaded scenarios than your current i5-4210M. The threshold for noticing a performance improvement is around 30%, which means you will barely be able to notice any improvements whatsoever.

[Puppy]

RealBlackStuff is right - invest your money in 16GB of RAM and a 512GB or even 1TB SSD for your E440 and you should be set many more years to come. Those two upgrades will make your E440 noticeably faster than a brand-new E470 with i7-7500, 8GB of RAM and a slow 1TB harddrive.

Yes, the SSD is mandatory upgrade.

[arnabux]

Thank you all for these suggestions. I'll try to upgrade my hdd to a ssd and ram to 16gb. And will wait for 1/2 years to new improved system to come.

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[Puppy]

You can use M.2 slot for the SSD and keep your HDD as second drive.

[arnabux]

I've mailed to Lenovo previously. It was as follows

((((Hello lenovo customer care service I had bought a thinkpad E440 20C5A0KS00 from a local lenovo dealer. Now I am looking to upgrade its RAM from 4GB to 8GB or more. Now my question is what kind of RAM is supported by the device? Is it a ddr3 RAM or a ddr3l RAM? And also what is the maximum RAM supporting capacity of the device? If I use to upgrade the RAM by myself would it void the device warranty?
Regards
Arnab Bhowmick ))))

And they replied me
((((Response By E-mail (Saroj Kumar Mohanty) (28/05/2016 04.31 PM)

Dear Mr.Bhowmick,

Thank you for contacting Lenovo Technical Support.

As per your system serial number, this system can support up to 8GB RAM. We can not suggested you to open the laptop,because any damage happaen while fixing the RAM,it can not covered under warranty.

 

Please find the below link where you can find more detail on RAM up gradation.

 

https://support.lenovo.com/in/en/produc ... s/PD014502

 

The reference number for this interaction is 221934302

 

We appreciate your co-operation and patience.

Thank you
Regards,
Saroj Kumar Mohanty
Lenovo India Technical Support

If you require a call back on your preferred date & time:https://support.lenovo.com/in/hi/contactus/callback
Email: Commercialts@lenovo.com| Chat:https://support.lenovo.com/in/hi/livechatpc | Support website: https://support.lenovo.com/in/en/contactus
Status Check Website: https://support.lenovo.com/in/en/repairstatus
How am I doing? Please Email my Manager Praveenpchandannava@lenovo.com
Customer By Service Email (Arnab Bhowmick) (28/05/2016 12.15
Question Reference # 160528-000724
Date Created: 28/05/2016 12.15 PMDate Last Updated: 28/05/2016 04.31 PMStatus: Solved(Auto)



So I thought that only 8GB is the max that my system can support

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[Puppy]

I've mailed to Lenovo previously. It was as follows

Because these are upgrade options supported (and overpriced) by Lenovo. You can upgrade to your own components, especially since the warranty has expired anyway.

[kfzhu1229]

The 30 series are much easier to open than 40 series but you can still open a 40 series. Be gentle and don't freak out, the RAM slots should be revealed as soon as the shell is removed. Same thing for hard drive