new T510 purchase - advices please (Pic Warning)

[kazaaerato]

Hi,

Lenovo is offering 15% right now. Is it a right time to buy or should we wait couple of more months for back-to-school sales?

Any comments on the following config?

ThinkPad T510

- Intel Core i7-620M Processor (2.66GHz, 4MB L3, 1066MHz FSB)
- Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
- 15.6" HD+ Anti-Glare Display with LED Backlight and WWAN Antenna
- NVIDIA NVS 3100m Graphics with 512MB DDR3 Memory
- 4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)8
- 320 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
- Multi Recorder Optical Drive (12.7mm)
- 6 cell 2.6Ah Li-Ion Battery - Dual Mode
- Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (2x2 AGN)
- Integrated Mobile Broadband - Upgradable
- 4313 : 1 Year Depot Warranty - TopSeller
- 3Yr Basic Warranty Extension
- 3Yr Battery Warranty
- ThinkPad TrackPoint Cap Collection

Sales Price: $1,701.99
15% Discount -$218.10
Total Price: $1,483.89

The last thing I want is that after I purchase it, they put out a big discount 22 days later...

Many thanks for opinions...

[poloman]

15% is a pretty good amount - and it includes the HD+ screen, which seem to be in short supply. Go for it, I say!

[ZaZ]

Pricing is a guessing game. About the only thing you know for sure is at some point it'll sell for less. It's only a question of when. About the best you can do is watch for a while so you'll know when it's relatively low. I'd say if you're happy with the price, go for it. I'd also point out unless you've got a specific need to run high CPU utilization applications, the better i7 CPU won't make much of a difference. Typical notebook usage isn't very hard on the CPU. Good luck.

[kazaaerato]

Many thanks for your tips. I'm a student, mainly use the laptop for viewing PDF document and Word/Excel 2007 type of things. May occasionally play video games...

[pianowizard]

Order through Bing (http://www.bing.com/shopping/pages/stores.aspx) to get 10% cash back. Though I don't know if that's stackable with your 15% coupon.

Many thanks for your tips. I'm a student, mainly use the laptop for viewing PDF document and Word/Excel 2007 type of things. May occasionally play video games...

A $150, 7-year-old Pentium M or Pentium 4 laptop would be good enough for viewing PDF docs and Office 2007.

[Harryc]

Agree with PW...getting a T510 for those tasks is like fishing for minnows with a harpoon gun. .

[kazaaerato]

I check with the Lenovo people. They say FHD won't be available until June 1. Real tough decision!!! Any opinions, guys?

[kazaaerato]

Well said, Harry! LMAO. But the T510 will stick with me for at least three more years, so i guess it is wise think a little bit ahead of time. I purchased a $ 1,600 T60 in 2006 and it is kind of slow right now, cannot run vista, etc...

Agree with PW...getting a T510 for those tasks is like fishing for minnows with a harpoon gun. .

[kazaaerato]

I heard good thing about HD+, but it seems that FHD is even better?

Should I wait until early June for the FHD? Thanks.

15% is a pretty good amount - and it includes the HD+ screen, which seem to be in short supply. Go for it, I say!

[Mutnat]

Honestly I don't think you should wait for the FHD. The HD+ is really quite good so far as I can tell (and I'm relatively picky). The FHD is also a 95% colour gamut screen, which is really only beneficial to those doing professional photo/video editing and production. The increased resolution might be nice at times if you work on a lot of large (wide/tall) Excel spreadsheets, perhaps. Still, I don't think it's worth the wait and extra cost.

Depending what games you're wanting to play, you would likely be fine saving a few bucks by stepping down to a Core i5-540M, and possibly to the integrated graphics. The intergrated graphics are great for your word/excel/pdf, and can handle HD video playback etc. But they won't handle the heavy-duty 3D games. Apparently you can play older 3D games like WoW on them fine (never tested--I'm not a gamer), and 2D games, online Flash games, etc. The nvidia may be required if you like the newer 3D games. Though, it may not be powerful enough for many modern games, as it's not a 3D power house by any stretch.

[kazaaerato]

Hey, Mutnat:

Thanks for your insightful suggestions. I'll step down to integrated and i5 b/c, as you mentioned, thinkpad is not a gaming machine. And i won't have much time to play video games anyway.

By the way the 8 GB RAM you have seems to be quite expensive right now, any reason for having 8 GB RAM. I plan to have 4 GB RAM and then upgrade to 8 or 12 GB RAM in one or two years once the RAM price is down. What is your thinking on this?

Is the 15% discount good enough? I'm a student, so every penny counts.

Thanks.

Honestly I don't think you should wait for the FHD. The HD+ is really quite good so far as I can tell (
and I'm relatively picky). The FHD is also a 95% colour gamut screen, which is really only beneficial to those doing professional photo/video editing and production. The increased resolution might be nice at times if you work on a lot of large (wide/tall) Excel spreadsheets, perhaps. Still, I don't think it's worth the wait and extra cost.

Depending what games you're wanting to play, you would likely be fine saving a few bucks by stepping down to a Core i5-540M, and possibly to the integrated graphics. The intergrated graphics are great for your word/excel/pdf, and can handle HD video playback etc. But they won't handle the heavy-duty 3D games. Apparently you can play older 3D games like WoW on them fine (never tested--I'm not a gamer), and 2D games, online Flash games, etc. The nvidia may be required if you like the newer 3D games. Though, it may not be powerful enough for many modern games, as it's not a 3D power house by any stretch.

[kazaaerato]

Oh, I also forgot to update some of the conversation I had with Lenovo yesterday. A lady over there told me that she checked with the production department about the FHD availability issue. And even that department has no idea when the FHD will become available...

[Mutnat]

By the way the 8 GB RAM you have seems to be quite expensive right now, any reason for having 8 GB RAM. I plan to have 4 GB RAM and then upgrade to 8 or 12 GB RAM in one or two years once the RAM price is down. What is your thinking on this?

To be honest, I likely don't need 8GB of RAM at the moment. However, I may do some development work on the side using this machine a bit down the road, most likely within one or more virtual machines, and once you start doing that, the more RAM the better. There was some nice promotions on at the time I ordered, and configured with the 8GB, my system was still within my budget, so I decided to go for it. If I hadn't, I would have gone with the single-DIMM 4GB option, keeping the 2nd slot free for a future upgrade, but then it wasn't that much more $ to upgrade from that to the 8GB from the factory, so I decided to do it. But if you're on a budget and just doing the stuff you mentioned, 4GB is plenty, and you'd be fine with the two dimm option to save a few more $'s.

[marlinspike]

Well said, Harry! LMAO. But the T510 will stick with me for at least three more years, so i guess it is wise think a little bit ahead of time. I purchased a $ 1,600 T60 in 2006 and it is kind of slow right now, cannot run vista, etc...

Depending on the spec, it probably can't run Vista just because it wasn't set up for Vista, and Vista is terrible. I bet it runs just fine on XP and probably even 7. My T60 would score a 5 on the Vista performance thing, yet it didn't run well with Vista. Runs fine with XP.

[pianowizard]

I'm a student, so every penny counts.

And that's one more reason to keep using your T60 for a while. Downgrade from Vista back to XP, optimize XP, remove any bloatware, and your T60 will feel much snappier.

But if you insist on upgrading to the T510, I strongly urge you to wait for the FHD panel to become available. 1080p is much better than 900p for Office and PDF. And don't waste your money on getting too much RAM -- 4GB is already overkill.

[GrandMasterKhan]

Braddah, you can rejuvenate your T60 easily and forgoe the T510:
1) SSD
2) More RAM
3) W7

[Navck]

And because these two items are easily replaced by a 200 dollar device that only lasts three years in the hands of power users ("SSD")
1. Clean your system or reinstall the OS
2. Defragment your harddrive (Most people would however, rather tell me to go walk into a mass grave and self immolate, then buy a 200 dollar device.)
3. 2-4GB of RAM is more than enough for most users. I can argue why it is too
4. Set your pagefile to a fixed size.