Thinkpads Forum

I'm a senior in college (nuclear engineering major) and planning on purchasing a new desktop replacement laptop to use for the next several years (2-4). I currently have an X61t that is small and portable, but it is starting to show its age. Also, I have a decent quad-core desktop machine with dual HP LP2465's for heavy office work and gaming. I want to keep the price under $1,700. After looking at the the options available in the Thinkpad W line-up, I've narrowed my decision to either purchasing a student discount W510 w/ i7 720 and FHD screen or a W700 w/ Core 2 Duo and 1920X1200 screen refurb'd from the outlet. The W700 is a lot bigger (which is both a pro and con) and has a much older, albeit sufficient hardware. The W700 is also a lot cheaper ($1,250 vs. $1,675) than the W510. The W510 is smaller but still a decent sized machine and looks to have a much newer hardware with plenty of upgrade options. Has anyone else had to make this choice? Or does anyone have both and can give an honest comparison that would help guide me.

Thanks

I only have a W700, so can't do a side by side comparison. However, I did consider some similar things like you.

* W700 - rock solid, very nice BIG screen, better expandability for extra monitors, if that matters to you. Great bang for the buck. Maxes out at 8G memory, if that matters. Kinda BIG, though...

* W510 - more portable, smaller(squint) screen, and pricier for what you get. Some more recent hardware, but that only matters if it's particularly relevant to your needs. Maxes out at 16G memory, if that matters.

If both machines can fulfill your requirements, I suspect it comes down to portability and cost issues, for which only you can determine which is better. Either is probably good for the next few years on reliability.

Have you considered a W500? Small/portable, much better bang for the buck than a W510, and the availability is pretty good on these units.

Whatever you get, I'd recommend picking up a cheap external monitor(I like 1920x1200 WUXGA), as these really save your eyes late at night when hip deep in the 'puter

I've got a smallish screen in my X61t as it is. The screen size isn't really the issue with it, but more of just small proportions all together. I'm not exactly sure how big the W700 is. My university has the W510s in the bookstore, and they are are fairly large. I've been reading in the forums that they are hard to fit into any standard bag. As I stated in my first post, I have loads of awesome S-PVA real estate with my desktop machine. Honestly, that's where I try to do all my work if I can anyway. That said, I'm currently leaning more towards the W700 just because it's cheaper and has a larger screen. If I require ultra portability, I can use my tablet.

Haven't looked at the W500s at all.

Nblanton, I'm an engineer myself (electrical and computer), I have a W700, and would go for that over the W510:

SCREEN: It's significantly easier for your eyes to resolve 1920 pixels on a 17" screen than a 15.X" screen. The W700's screen, as it comes from the factory, is more than a third brighter than that of the W510. BTW, screensavers are worse than useless with LCD displays, and you should always instead set the system to turn off the screen and its backlight during periods of inactivity. Otherwise, you'll prematurely age the display's fluorescent backlight. The W510 screen is RGB-LED-backlit, which ages significantly more slowly.

PROCESSORS: If you check threads in the W-series forum both here and at lenovo.com (for example, here, here, here and here, as well as many other threads), you'll see a lot of evidence that the cooling system of the W510 is not sufficient to make full use of Intel's current quad-core processors. Next year may be a better year for quad-cores in 15" machines. You don't mention which GPU the W700 you're looking at has, but the 3700M soundly beats the GPU in the W510, and is much more powerful than any Intel quad-core processor. So the graphics performance is better. If you write software as part of your work, you can also use available development tools to run your own general-purpose code on the 3700M's 128 cores for blazing speed.

RELIABILITY: Hands down, the W700 wins. See here for a number of reliability issues the W510 has had (and, for a number of the issues, apparently still has). Plus the W700 runs one heck of a lot cooler, because its cooling system is so much better. Cooler electronics live longer. The only issue I'm aware of is that some W700 owners (and owners of many laptops from many manufacturers) have complained of latency spikes caused by NVidia's graphics drivers under Windows 7 (I'm instead running 64-bit Vista, which experiences no such issues). Some users report that the latest drivers direct from NVidia may help in this regard.

If you buy a refurbished W700, I recommend putting the narrow crevice tool on your vacuum cleaner, and vacuming out the small vent holes in the bottom of the laptop's base, which may be partially clogged with dust by now. Without a flashlight pointed directly into the holes, it's very difficult to see the dust. I don't know whether Lenovo catches that or not during the refurb process. And don't delay when you want to buy a particular computer from the Lenovo outlet store -- they disappear fast.

For more info about the W700, check the link in my signature.

Good luck!