W520 or W530?

[iamchum]

Hey everyone!

New to this forum, but a long time thinkpad user /wave

Just wanted to pose a question because it's a headscratcher for me. I need to upgrade my X230T, which is my current workhorse but the casing on the left side of the laptop has become loose and it's started zapping me when I put it on my lap (I'm guessing it's no longer shielded?).

Normally, I would just go to the shop and just get another one, but I've gone through like 6 laptops in the last 2 years. They've all be unreliable. I keep just coming back to my X230T, to the point where I've basically given up on trying to find anything else that works as well. I'm only doing more research now because I recently bought a Yoga 3 Pro (I guess one of Lenovo's "new" lines) and it was horrible (my wife now uses it, she loves the "sveltness" but she mostly does emailing, so it's not too much of a problem I guess). Now I'm scared of new Lenovos, plus I almost exclusively use a trackpoint (trackpads feel wierd to me).

I just wanted to ask what the difference in performance and battery life between the W520 and W530 was specifically with the dedicated Quadro card. To give you guys an idea, I would say I'm a road warrior that along with lots of writing and emailing, does a lot of graphical and publishing work, and spends most of the day on the road don't really do any 3D work. I know they don't have all day battery life, but I might carry around spare batts.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give! Thinkpad experts over to you!

PS Woops I think I put this in the wrong forum, could a mod move this to general Thinkpad questions? Sorry!

[hhhd1]

the **30 laptops are much more efficient than the **20 laptops at medium loads, and the integrated gpu is about 50% more powerful.

Both the W520 and the W530 when running on battery, will throttle to the slowest CPU speed , in case the quadro is enabled.
the W520 slowest speed is 0.8ghz, the w530 is 1.2ghz. (for a quad core cpu, that might not be so bad)
And also, they require a minimum power supply of 135w to work.

If you do not need the 32gb ram option, and the quardo, consider the T520/T530 with quadcore and nvidia, which AFAIK doesn't have similar throttling option, and can usually be used with 90w power supply, which means also that you should be able to get a car charger for it.


for moving allot, why not consider the t430, it is similar to the t530, except it is lighter and smaller.
and it can be upgraded to a quadcore cpu.

[brchan]

Go for the W530. Good performance boost over the W520 and runs cooler and longer. If you want a classic keyboard, you can even swap in a classic keyboard and do a bios update.

[iamchum]

@hhhd1

Thanks for the info, it's been a while since I've been really involved in PC tech so getting up to speed again. I think the 32GB Ram option and Quadro comes in handy for handling really large RAW images, InDesign Files and Illustrator files. I've been doing most of that work on this laptop I'm on, and it can get a bit sluggish (the office computer can't hack it), so I think I can benefit and it'll pay for itself. I never considered a Quadro capable laptop before because they were so pricey, but now looking at non-bleeding edge it's reasonably affordable (so why not shoot for the stars). But I should probably look at the T520/30, thanks for the tip! Car charger might be handy

And not a moment too soon! The trackpoint and trackpad on this X230T did something wierd just now and crapped out, lol. Literally the first time something has gone wrong in like 4 years (it has never suffered a BSOD, kid you not).

[iamchum]

Go for the W530. Good performance boost over the W520 and runs cooler and longer. If you want a classic keyboard, you can even swap in a classic keyboard and do a bios update.

@brchan

Yes, I have been thinking that, particularly the cooler and longer part (I prefer stability and reliability, speed has burnt me too many times). I saw some W530s on here that had a classic keyboard mod! Apart from basic upgrades I've never tried to mod a laptop! Kind of scared because I really can't afford reliability issues, and also I'd probably screw it up with my ham-hands. That being said, is it easy enough to get one pre-modded? I remember having the classic keyboard on my X220 and it was basically typing heaven. I only stopped using it because it couldn't handle some of the graphical work I had from college. I still have it somewhere at home and I'd only let it go over my grave

[bit_twiddler]

Does anybody here know if the issue with the W530/T530/T430/T430s not charging
third-party batteries was ever addressed in a BIOS mod? That's what is keeping
me from upgrading to one of these machines.

[RealBlackStuff]

Yes, read this (long story): http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=120776