Thinkpads Forum

Here's the configuration I plan:
W700 QX9300 4GB RAM Vista Ultimate 64 WUXGA Nvidea 1GB RAID 1 w 320GB hard drives camera Blu-Ray WACOM option 2GB Turbo Memory Express Card+Compact Flash Office Small Business w One Note 4yr Depot w Thinkpad Protection extra 170W AC adapter Case for 17" laptop eSATA bay adapter.

Price through Lenovo on line = $5,912.15 + 6% sales tax.
Price through Visa/Lenovo on line = $5,596.01 + 6% tax + shipping

Can I save more with eCoupons? I've never done that. Any other ideas?

The Lenovo offer is $1046.80 below list. The Visa offer is $1362.94 below list.

I'm hoping to get delivery before 12/31/08.


mod edit: moved from vista forum to to W-series forum

Get a friend who can connect you through EPP or look on other forums for a CPP code. That should save you some money.

I know you didn't ask for it but I'd drop the 2GB Turbo Memory and RAID 1. I don't think they'll add anything for performance or stability for the machine you configured.

I've configured the RAID 1 to have continuous backup on line. I'll still back up externally occasionally in case my system is stolen or dropped in a lake, but I like the idea of RAID 1 giving me redundancy and getting me by if one drive fails.

Why do you not recommend this.

Thanks for the heads up. CPP saves me a few more dollars.

Barry

what do you plan to do with this that you feel you need an extreme quad-core and FX 3700M?   you'd save an absolute ton by going with a T9600 and FX 2700M.   those two options alone add close to $1300 after tax.

you'd save another $120 by buying the 320GB HDDs on your own.   not only that but you'd be able to get 7200RPM drives instead of 5400RPM, adding better performance for less money.   setting up RAID 1 in the BIOS is easy.

you could also save another $50~75 by sourcing 4GB on your own.

all of the above would save you nearly $1500.

barrywohl wrote:I've configured the RAID 1 to have continuous backup on line. I'll still back up externally occasionally in case my system is stolen or dropped in a lake, but I like the idea of RAID 1 giving me redundancy and getting me by if one drive fails.

Why do you not recommend this.

Thanks for the heads up. CPP saves me a few more dollars.

Barry

Sorry, my bad. I mixed up RAID 0 and RAID 1. RAID 0 is the rather useless kind.

erik wrote:you'd save an absolute ton by going with a T9600 and FX 2700M.

But then the W700 would lose plenty of its charm What is more, this would make the purchase of a 17'' ThinkPad nearly pointless considering the existence of W500 and T500

Just my two cents

Marin

Marin85 wrote:

erik wrote:you'd save an absolute ton by going with a T9600 and FX 2700M.

But then the W700 would lose plenty of its charm What is more, this would make the purchase of a 17'' ThinkPad nearly pointless considering the existence of W500 and T500

true, but the W700 would still have a 17" 400 nit LED display, quadro FX 2700M, tablet, colorimeter, hardware RAID capability, and full keyboard with number pad -- none of which the T500/W500 offer.

barry asked me about the W700 a few days ago and specifically said "Attractions of the W700: RAID 1, Blu-Ray, better screen."   he made no mention of processor or GPU performance as these probably don't matter much to a pediatrician.   so, my statement above isn't without foundation.

I didn't know I could set up RAID on my own through the BIOS. I would rather order two 320 GB 7200 rpm drives aftermarket drives and build up my own configuration. If I can do a RAID 1 in BIOS and fairly easily find the second hard drive bay, that is GREAT.

RAM upgrade on my own is fine. It looked like the savings there was marginal compared to the $800 I saved 15 months ago buying a 1GB stick with my T61p and upgrading to two 2GB sticks aftermarket.

Help me out with the plusses and minuses of the processors:
T9600 vs X9100 vs QX9300. I chose the most expensive in the configuration thinking more is always better. Same for the extra RAM and processing power for the NVidia FX 3700M.

Wouldn't the $1000 more expensive processor help with file opening and closing, application opening, boot up and shut down? My dollars there were purely the "A woman can never be too thin or too rich." philosophy, a philosophy often full of fallacy.

I do not do complicated CAD or video processing or mathematical modeling. I do standard Office and internet use. I plan to do photographic work with Nikon RAW files. If I do any games, it would be Microsoft Flight Simulator (since I already have 26 years of MS Flight Simulator experience) and I would do Blu-Ray movie viewing.

Prolonged battery life is not a problem for me.

I'm about to make the jump since 2008 is a better time for my business to buy the laptop than 2009. I don't "need" to waste one or two thousand dollars buying features I will not notice.

I tend to keep machines for five to ten years. I'm hoping the W700 will be come my daily personal machine and go back and forth to work with me daily, but that is just carrying it from my home office to my business office 2 miles of auto travel each day.

Erik is correct that a brighter, bigger screen plus blu-ray plus RAID 1 are the key features making me consider replacing/upgrading my T61p. The WACOM pad might be wonderful for my electronic health records, but my office runs Remote Desktop Connection rather than Citrix so I might not get that to really work for business.

Thanks to everyone for the help.

If I order, I plan to order today or tomorrow.

barrywohl wrote:Help me out with the plusses and minuses of the processors:
T9600 vs X9100 vs QX9300. I chose the most expensive in the configuration thinking more is always better. Same for the extra RAM and processing power for the NVidia FX 3700M.

Wouldn't the $1000 more expensive processor help with file opening and closing, application opening, boot up and shut down? My dollars there were purely the "A woman can never be too thin or too rich." philosophy, a philosophy often full of fallacy.

i have dual 3.0GHz quad-core xeon processors in my thinkstation and it's the exact same speed with one or two physical processors installed in terms of boot/shutdown, app loading, file handling, etc.   where processor power matters most is in complex tasks like rendering, computation, etc.   office apps and movies won't see any benefit from a faster processor.   photoshop might run tiny a bit faster but won't run $900 faster.   in fact, in my tests it ran exactly the same with only one processor installed.

photoshop would benefit more from a better GPU, but the 512MB FX 2700M is more than enough for anything you'd do in photoshop.   the 2700M and 3700M have the exact same bandwidth (51.2 GB/sec) and only differ in memory (512MB vs. 1GB) and in CUDA parallel processing cores (48 vs. 128).   memory bandwidth is the main key for photoshop, especially since CS4 will be GPU-accelerated.   i don't think CS4 will support CUDA anyway.   unless you plan to do 3D work with large files, i would give heavy consideration to the 2700M if you want to save a bit.

marin makes a good point above about how getting a "slow" W700 may not be as ideal.   you'll just have to weigh out what's more important: saving about $1500 or getting a machine that is fast on paper but might not be faster for your specific use.

but, don't let me talk you out of it.   i'm just giving suggestion where you could save some cash since that's part of the theme of your original post.

@OP:

In my opinion the real question you should be asking is, "What's the best deal I can get on a W700 by 10/13/08, or within 21 days of the actual ship date, whichever is lower?"

Because if within 21 days of the ship date the price falls on your exact same configured system, whether through new sale discounts or coupons, you may call Lenovo and invoke the price protection plan. You'd get a refund of the difference.

Details here.

Good luck!

(As an aside, can one of the mods post the details & mechanics of the price protection plan as a more easily identifiable thread? It seems to come up a lot but always gets lost, and I feel it would help out quite a few folks...)

I bought mine through the visa deals...don't know if it helps

http://www.lenovo.com/shop/deals/visa

I definitely save a few bucks. Don't know if this is a US only deal though.

I placed my order last night and got a few surprises. I purchased this laptop hoping it would be a four or five year favorite. I bought four years of warranty with ThinkPad Protection, a must for me.

I bypassed a few dollars of savings in RAM and hard drive that Erik recommended in order to have the four years of warranty apply to the hard drives and ram and to keep it simple. I know how to install ram and how to configure a boot drive from scratch, but I think I'll be happy using this out of the box with Vista Ultimate 64 preinstalled.

When I chose RAID 1 in the configuration, Intel Turbo RAM disappeared as a choice. I wonder if there is some mother board conflict between the Turbo Ram and the RAID 1. Perhaps there is a RAID controller that goes on a mini-PCI slot. After placing the order, I called back to Lenovo to confirm a few configuration items and confirmed you could not configure Turbo Memory and RAID 1.

Thanks for the advice here that I don't really need Turbo Memory.

I wanted a minidock or port replicator. None is listed on the configuration site, but I was able to order one as part of this order by calling Lenovo. I got the W700 Minidock shown on the dock and port accessories page.

I opted out of Erik's sensible savings on processor and video processor and got the higher cost options, thinking that this will hlep me stick with this laptop longer.

As of today, there's a "New Elite" W700 available, but the only difference that I can see is that the "New Elite" model deletes the possibility of ordering the T9400 processor and starts with the T9600.

barrywohl wrote:...
When I chose RAID 1 in the configuration, Intel Turbo RAM disappeared as a choice. I wonder if there is some mother board conflict between the Turbo Ram and the RAID 1. Perhaps there is a RAID controller that goes on a mini-PCI slot. After placing the order, I called back to Lenovo to confirm a few configuration items and confirmed you could not configure Turbo Memory and RAID 1.
...

Hello again Barry. Thinking you may have spotted the info on RAID versus Turbo memory buried in this thread here, but just in case you hadn't (or for the benefit of others):
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=68840
Here's the relevant excerpt:
Then stumbled upon this URL, in the readme for the Intel Matrix driver for the integrated ICH9M (which I shouldn't need since boot drive is not RAIDed):
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... ir03ww.txt
note the sentence in the readme:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES

If your ThinkPad W700 is set to AHCI by default, when migrating to RAID,
please detach the Intel(R) Turbo Memory Controller device in your
machine or you will experience bluescreen.

Very helpful again. Thanks. I loved your pictures of the opened W700 and the hardware maintenance manual.

If your ThinkPad W700 is set to AHCI by default, when migrating to RAID,
please detach the Intel(R) Turbo Memory Controller device in your
machine or you will experience bluescreen.


Does this mean after migrating you can use 2GB Turbo memory? I hate incomplete answers. The person who wrote that for Lenovo may know what he was trying to say.

I plan to have 8GB RAM and wonder if 2GB Turbo will do anything

I am going to use two 200GB 7200 Hitachi drives in RAID 0, would rather use SSD but need the storage.


Thanks
MTWIZARD

MTWIZARD wrote:Does this mean after migrating you can use 2GB Turbo memory?

from:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... in05ww.txt

Software Name: Intel Turbo Memory Driver

Support models:
ThinkPad R400
ThinkPad R500
ThinkPad T400
ThinkPad T500
ThinkPad W500
ThinkPad W700 Non-RAID Model
ThinkPad X200, X200s, X200 Tablet
ThinkPad X300, X301

ThinkPad R61
ThinkPad T61, T61p
ThinkPad X61, X61s, X61 Tablet
ThinkPad Reserve Edition

Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit, 64-bit

Version 1.6.3.1001-8.2.4.1005

Issue date September 12, 2008

Support devices: Intel Turbo Memory Controller
Intel 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller
Intel ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller
...

NOTES

Do not use the Intel Turbo Memory Controller device in a
ThinkPad W700 RAID Model or you will experience bluescreen.


So the answer is apparently no, at least for now. Although Turbo Memory apparently does work with RAIDs when using the desktop version of the W700's ICH9M southbridge chip, the ICH9R (what follows is translated from French, so pardon the grammar):

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... ode%3D2868

"Furthermore, in its first edition, the Turbo Memory technology required that the Serial ATA controller is configured imperative mode Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI), which did not pose particular problems on a laptop. However, on desktop computers, many users to operate their controller Serial ATA RAID with multiple hard drives. It was of course not possible to require users to give up their RAID simply to enable a feature like Turbo Memory. As a result, this driver TMD [Turbo Memory Driver] 1.5 also provides compatibility of the Turbo Memory technology with the features of the ICH9R RAID. AHCI mode is no longer compulsory for Turbo Memory, although in both cases (AHCI or RAID), the prior installation of drivers Matrix Storage Manager is still required."

Thanks fo rthe inforamtion

My W700 shipped today and should have by Friday, then i can play too.

First will be to install two 200GB Hitachi in Raid 0 and see how fast htat runs

Then it I dnon't like the speed try two Samsung 64GB SSD or maybe 128GB.

Waiting Waiting

MTWIZARD