W520 some infos

[aeternal]

Hello, I saw that our university gives good discounts to Lenovo laptops. However there are just three models.
Namely a W520 and two different t420 (one with ssd and the other without).
My main idea is to buy the w520 in order to use this discount. However I still may buy a T520 at full price, in order to make my decision I would like to do some questions:

the w520 system is (you can't customize it):

Processor: Intel QuadCore i7 2720QM (4 cores, 2.2 GHz, 6MB, 45W, TurboBoost 3.3 GHz)
RAM memory: 8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz (2 sticks 4 GB)
Hard disk: 320 GB 7,200 RPM + 80GB mSATA
Screen: 15" 1920 x 1080 px
Graphic card: nVidia N12P-Q3 Quadro 2000M 2GB
Battery: 6 cells.

Here start my doubts. It's clearly a good machine, buy I would like to ask few things:
I will probably buy a 9 cells battery because if not I won't have enough autonomy. At school there isn't in each class a power adapter therefore it has to survive just with the battery. Given this configuration, how much do you think it will last? I saw people saying 10 hours, others just 1. Im really confused. So, if you have it, how much it lasts with "normal" usage (some C programming, surfing the internet however not much more)? Consider that I will install debian on it, therefore I will disable the discrete graphic card while at school and as far as I know neither Turbo boost works on linux. It will be essentially a quad core, at 2.2 Ghz using only the integrated GPU.

Another problem is the weight. Even in this case I read different things. This system with only the 9 cells battery, what's its weight? And the power adapter, what's his weight by itself? (170W, I read that the 135W is even heavier than this one, is that true?)

You may ask why I don't buy a t520. Well there are few reasons. First, this laptop has a discount in the price (quite big..)
Second, even if at the moment I won't use it, I would like in the future to program cuda. I'm not going to use CAD or similar, but in the future I may start learn how to program cuda for optimize neural networks/bayesian networks simulations. Said so the t520 offers a graphic card which isn't that good, but still nice.

However if you say that the autonomy with this w520 will be very limited (just using a 9cells battery without carrying the power supply) I will chose the t520.

A last question is about resolution, my brother says that 1920*1080 in a 15'' is too much and that I won't be able to read things because they will be very small, is that true?

Thank you very much, I hope to be a Thinkpad guru soon

[Colonel O'Neill]

People are reporting ~8.5 hours on the 9-cell in Windows for the W520.
You should be able to turn up the DPI to suit your visual needs.

[aeternal]

So I guess that since I will disable the discrete graphic it will last even more?

Can you tell me something about weight?
More precisely:
weight of the laptop without battery
weight of the laptop with 9cells battery
weight of the 170w power supply?

what about noise?
thanks

[kirayamato26]

So I guess that since I will disable the discrete graphic it will last even more?

Can you tell me something about weight?
More precisely:
weight of the laptop without battery
weight of the laptop with 9cells battery
weight of the 170w power supply?

what about noise?
thanks

I can get ~8.5hrs out of my W520 (2620M, Quadro 1000M, 1600x900 screen, 320GB HDD) with a 9 cell on a balanced profile with the brightness set to 9/15 and Optimus if I'm doing really light surfing over the internet with Wifi (as in, loading up an article and reading it). Haven't bothered to really play around with the power settings. I get 6hrs under flash based web browsing (YouTube), and about 7hrs doing miscellaneous things (some YouTube, 1080p video, 720p video, web browsing, etc.). I believe I can get maybe 2hrs if I'm playing a game or something, not sure though, because I've never really tried. Though, if you are running like LinPack + Furmark on battery, don't expect it to last much more than an hour at most (NotebookCheck did a full load test and reported like an hour and a half). For average use, I'd say you can probably expect at least 6 ~ 7hrs under Windows 7 with Optimus on. I have a thread here (http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo- ... -life.html) about battery life.

The weight of the laptop without the battery is probably around 4.5 ~ 5lb, not really sure. LaptopMag reports about 6.2lb for their system with a 9 cell, Lenovo says something like 5.7lb minimum with a 9 cell, so I'm guessing 6lb-ish is accurate. It doesn't feel that heavy to me, but then again it is my first laptop. The 170W power supply is about 1.4lb as reported by LaptopMag, I can tell you that it is probably as close to a brick as you'll get with a laptop power supply.

In my opinion, it is pretty quiet. I can't hear the W520 over my desktop, and I use Arctic Cooling fans in my desktop. I don't use TPFanControl either. If you open a window or something, you will barely hear it at max RPM.