About to leave the reservation of Thinkpad (I think)

[stuartf]

I have been hanging back, waiting to order a T520, FHD, and now the price is right, especially through the EPP, which I am eligible for.

In doing a last review, I was struck by the comments about the poor service from Lenovo, something that I have experienced in China, but never here (well, hardly ever.) On the contrary, both my wife and good friend bought Dell Latitudes the past 18 months, have been satisfied with the machines and had good response on service requests (very minor items.) So I moseyed over the Dell Outlet and found I could outfit myself with a Del E6520 with the i5 processor, FHD screen, 4 gb of RAM, 512 discrete Nvidia graphics, and a 256 GB SSD (this last was the clincher.) The Dell also has al the extras, camera, BT, and backlight keyboard.

With the three year on site warranty it came to $1026, about what the T520 would cost with similar components (except it has Optimus 1 gb GPU) but with a 320 gb, 7200 RPM hard drive.

It will arrive this week, I have 21 days to return it, please, tell me I am crazy for going this way. The worst part will be absenting myself from this intelligent and to the point forum, nothing like it with any other brand.

[wolfman]

Sounds like a good machine for a very good price. I can't blame you for taking advantage of that deal. Point to point comparison on commodity specs is what drives the vendors to produce machines that are more and more alike. That also drives out margin. So it will be curious to watch to see if the Thinkpad line becomes more and more hollowed out over time. It would seem that Apple has a wide moat around their premium pricing / equipment - and the Thinkpad's moat is getting narrower.

[Q-Ball]

the EPP, which I am eligible for.

Careful; you can't mention that here.

Anyways. Yeah, you'll be fine, unless you don't like the keyboard (though to be fair, the new ThinkPads don't have that going for them anymore either; though they are likely to be the best of the worst keyboards anyways, they were the best of a better design before).

[wolfman]

Love your sig Q-Ball.

[CanadianDude]

I strongly dislike the current Latitude lineup. Spec wise they are just like Lenovo and any other brand. But design wise I hate them. Terrible looking things. I used to buy Dell but bought my last one in August of 2002, which was a desktop which failed on me just 18 months later.

[stuartf]

I strongly dislike the current Latitude lineup. Spec wise they are just like Lenovo and any other brand. But design wise I hate them. Terrible looking things. I used to buy Dell but bought my last one in August of 2002, which was a desktop which failed on me just 18 months later.

Haven't received it yet, due tomorrow, but already hit the first glitch in communication. When I ordered it, the specs called for Win Professional 7 64 bit, yet the shipping order stated it had the 32 bit version! I wrote them right off, they responded a day or two later stating that they would send along the 64 bt disks. Not a catastrophe but eats into my 21 day looksee before I need to decide to keep it or not, no sense loading it up only to turn around three days later and re-install everything.

As to looks, yea I still favor the no nonsense look of the ThinkPad line and the multi-colored boxes of the Latitude may be a complete no go, we shall see.

[sysiphus]

Good luck with the Dell...I'm pondering grabbing one myself. A FHD/dual-core i7/Quadro 1000-equipped Precision M4600 with three-year onsite warranty can be had from their outlet (refurbished) for about the same cost as an i5/4200M/Optimus/base 1-year-depot warranty-equipped T520 right now. I love ThinkPads, but it's hard to ignore the value proposition there. (The M4600 is really the W520 competitor, but the dual-core M4600s have 4 RAM slots unlike the dual-core W520, in case you ever upgrade the processor...)

(On reflection, it looks like the M4600 in question comes out ~$150 cheaper than your E6520, albeit without webcam/SSD)

Please do keep us posted on how you like your Dell!

[AIX]

[..] I love ThinkPads, but it's hard to ignore the value proposition there.[..]

You know, love is love. I think you're trying to say - I like ThinkPads, but ..

[sysiphus]

You know, love is love. I think you're trying to say - I like ThinkPads, but ..

Haha, I was temped but didn't bite.

[stuartf]

Here is the update on the Dell E6520:

It arrived on time and I proceeded to load the 64 bit version of Win 7. Unfortunately, Dell did not send along any drivers, only the OS. I loaded it up, all went well, but there were lots of missing drivers, including both wireless and ethernet. I went online with the T43, found a driver at Intel and got wireless working. Still missing loads, including video drivers and called Dell. Over the next three hours lots of unsuccessful efforts, finally abandoned the effort with a promise from the tech for email follow-up. Three days later I received an email asking me what version of the bios I had, I replied and then two days later got another email asking me if I had updated the bios, without ever telling me to update it.

In the meantime I solved the video problem but other problems emerged; after some other failed efforts I decided to bail on it and sent it back to Dell yesterday.

The machine itself wasn't too bad, aesthetics aside, but the experience with tech support pushed me back into the thinkpad camp. Now to decide whether to dive into the new generation or stik with the old.

[wolfman]

Wow. Sorry to hear that, sounds like a pretty sad support experience. There have been some real nice deals on the Lenovo outlet the last couple days as well on current (T520) generation machines. There are some FHD units out there now for around $800.

[sysiphus]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience; I came so close to getting an outlet M6600 instead of the T520 I have en route...based on your experience, it sounds like I made the right choice!