Thinkpads Forum

I have been using a garbage Gateway MX6454 for the last 5 and a half years to get me through part of highschool and all of undergrad, with its 1 hour battery life on power saver, 4200 rpm HDD, 2 gb ram, 1280x800 resolution, AMD 64x2 TL-50 processor, and flex-crazy keyboard (ewww...), telling myself that I would upgrade for gradschool. Now the time has come (I am going to medschool next year), and I decided I wanted to get myself a nice, durable thinkpad, and the t510 seemed perfect.

I went with these specs:
Core i5-520M processor
HD+ display
Intel HD integrated graphics
4gb DDR3 ram (2 DIMM)
320 GB HDD 7200 rpm
9 cell battery

I went with this setup namely because it falls perfectly into my budget (seriously, the camera and/or the 540M processor puts me over the top for the price limit which I was willing to go to, and I really need the 9 cell battery), I multitask like crazy, and the fact that I don't game on my PC whatsoever (except for Tetris ).

I wanted to thank everyone on this forum, because I pretty much scoured it in and out before making my decision. My t510 is estimated to arrive on 06/28/10. I will update with impressions when it gets here. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks again!

Congratulations and welcome to the forums! I hope you enjoy your T510 when you get it. I can't wait to find out about your impressions on it.

Congratulations , I got mine on June 14. I like it but yesterday I found that there is a creak in the right hand palmrest so I think they don't bother checking each machine and inspecting it.

Just got my t510 from the UPS guy early this morning. Thanks for the congratulations guys.

I have to say, this thing is an absolute BEAST. It completely outclasses my old laptop in every way. It is extremely zippy in every scenario I have thrown at it, including running MATLAB, Itunes, multiple firefox windows, trillian, and file transferring on the HDD at the same time (I know most of this stuff is not very processor intensive, but some of the MATLAB stuff I ran was fairly complex, and this requires power). During these processes, the machine got a tiny bit warm, but not even very noticeably so.

The 1600x900 screen resolution is totally worth it, and I am loving the matte screen finish. I am also really glad that I went with the t510 instead of the t410, as i think the extra screen real estate is worth it. Typing is of course a joy on the keyboard, and I have experienced no keyboard flex issues. The battery life I get with the 9 cell is pretty great. With power saver mode I can get about 8 hours with the wireless on and some minimal web browsing and MS word open. If I put on battery stretch, I get about 20-30 minutes extra. The computer still seems very zippy even in power saver mode.

One negative I will mention is that i probably would have slightly preferred a 16x10 screen size instead of 16x9, but its not really a big complaint, and pretty much every manufacturer is using 16x9 anyways. Also, having a dedicated mic in port would have been nicer than just having the 1 port for headphones and a mic.

Of course, I might be biased because my old laptop was an absolute piece of garbage. Either way, all in all, I am tremendously happy with my purchase.