W510 vs Sony F12

[freebird]

I think it's come down to these two machines. They are similarly configured (I7-720/Lenovo I7-740/Sony; 500gb 7200rpm; FHD; 4gb ram; dvd/rw).

The differences are as follows. The W510 has the trackpoint, which I'm very used to, and the color balancer deal. There is also the option to get the multitouch screen, which I'd probably do if I went with the W510.

The Sony offers a Blu-Ray r/w, DVD r/w optical drive. That alone has me leaning towards the Sony. That's something I'm sure I'd make good use of. I'm really disappointed that there is no Blu-Ray option at all in the ThinkPad series, let alone a r/w one.

Other factors. I've been using IBM and Lenovo laptops for 15 years or so now. So very used to the keyboards, trackpoint, etc. After doing a TON of reading/searching here and other sites the last several days, it seems the initial build quality of the Sony is a bit higher (latest consumer reports mags bear this out, too). Lenovo's ranking on reported problems in CR is pretty bad. But Sony seems to have a much worse customer service/warrany service rep compared to Lenovo. Lenovo seemed poor a year ago, but seem to be doing much better the last year or so, based on what I'm reading.

So Sony has good initial build quality, but if you need service, watch out! Where Lenovo is more likely to have issues, but service will be less painful. A conundrum!

I'm an admin with over 50k posts on a motorcycle forum. So I realize you tend to only hear the negative on forums like this. It seems most folks that buy these systems and never have an issue will never visit these forums, let alone to say "Wow, what a great, reliable system I bought!". But when they have an issue, they find these forums and we hear all about what a horrible machine they have. So I am taking that into consideration, too.

I'm not asking if the system specs are right for me. I've already pretty much figured that out. The quandry stuff is just bells and whistles, but fairly important ones to me.

So tell me why I should go with the W510 over the Sony. Or the other way around, if there are Sony fans hanging here. I'll probably post this in the Sony forum too. Hope that's not against the rules here.

[ZaZ]

There's a blu-ray reader available for the W510, part number 43N3295. It's available here. There's also a blu-ray burner available if that works for you. I can't find the part number right now as the service parts page is having issues right now. I'd also suggest looking for the blu-ray drives for the R400/R500/W700. I suspect they'll probably have a different part number, but would work, though I have no firsthand knowledge. They tend not re-invent the wheel.

As to the rest, I don't have much experience with Sony laptops or the W701 quite frankly. I'd say if you've been a happy Thinkpad customer for 15 years that's probably a better guide than some information you've found on the internet, which can be all over the place and open to interpretation in my experience. Good Luck.