anyone ordered W500 or going to order one yet?

[Bashar]

Hey all,
just wondering if anyone ordered W500 or going to order one soon ?

can you post your reasons ?

Thanks

[Oaklodge]

Waiting for more memory ...

[jmshep]

Ordered one, the specs of which you can see in the shipping thread.
Original estimated ship date was 8-28, now revised is 9-9. I'm not fond of the extended wait, but who is?
Edit: Shipped on 9/1/08, UPS indicates delivery on 9/9.

I was planning on eventually replacing my current TP with a T61p.
So naturally, my T40 died of the "BGA fracture/Black Screen of Death disease" the week that Lenovo released the new line...
but only after the T61p fire-sale was done.

On the other hand, a demonstration of the BSOD convinced She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed that a new laptop was necessary.
I sling enterprise level code for a living, so a workstation isn't overkill. I went with a W500 over a W700 for the following reasons:

• Afordability
  Portability
  Battery life
  W700 wasn't available when I ordered

I'd love to have a W700, since one of my hobbies is photography... but I'd be better served by spending what it costs to buy a W700 on some quality lenses.

Too bad that it couldn't have arrived before the Labor Day weekend. The extra 2GB DDR3 stick I ordered from Newegg arrived well over a week ago and is moldering in a desk drawer... sometimes I think I can hear it sobbing from disuse...

The T40 will eventually be sent off for a reball resurrection.

[awolfe63]

Got mine last week. I've been installing apps in my spare time. It takes me 20+ hours to do a full migration to a new machine - so it may take a while - but so far, I'm pretty happy with it.

It can suck power - but I primarily use it docked.

[tzcomwiz]

Andrew, how's the battery life with the 6-cell?

[awolfe63]

With battery stretch pretty much fully enabled - I'm pulling about 15-16W. That should just reach 3.5Hrs. (Battery is 56WH)

That's with:
XP
2.8GHz CPU (running at 800MHz)
ATI graphics turned on.
No wireless
Optical drive off
Reading a Word doc.
4 bars of brightness.

(I can't read the display in my office at 1 bar.)

The display seems to be the power hog. With the display off it is under 10W.

With integrated graphics it is closer to 11-12W dropping to 8 with the display off.

[tzcomwiz]

Thanks for the info. I hate how they advertise something way over the actual usable battery life. Very misleading.

Edit: so if you were to run the CPU at 2.8ghz (35W?) and turn the wireless on, you'd only get about 1.5 hr of battery life?

[Bashar]

how do you control the speed of the processor ?

[awolfe63]

how do you control the speed of the processor ?

Power management settings.

A few more bits of info:

I have both the Intel and ATI graphics drivers installed. The machine seems happy (in XP) to check the BIOS settings and run the right one.

Max performance setting:

Full brightness
Wi-fi on
2.8GHz - full speed.
Streaming and playing music

28-30W (about 2 hours)


Playing a game in 3D - same settings.

~45W ( just over 1 hour) (and I have graphics power management on and set for best power savings)

[Bashar]

ah, i dont have those under linux unfortunately...

any replacement for those tools under linux ? ubuntu specifically

[awolfe63]

I have not tried Ubuntu on the W500 - but it should work the same as in the T42. Just set the BIOS properly.

Under config, choose power.

Then Enable Speedstep, set the mode the way you want, and set CPU power management to Automatic.

Then after you boot, there is a little widget in Ubuntu you can install into the top menu bar that shows the clock speed.