Thinkpads Forum

hi there,

i’ve got some questions for you experts, i read on this page that notebooks such as the T530, are meant to be used by businesses that give them to their office workers to write up reports, participate in video conferences, all the usual 9-to-5 cubical work stuff. does this mean that the w 530 is not suited for such tasks? should i conclude that the t530 is better equipped than the w530 in this regard? will the quality of the video conferences by the w530 for example be less than by the t530? is there any task which the w530 can’t perform in comparison with the t530? (writing up reports, participating in video conferences, all the usual 9-to-5 cubical work stuff). the second question would be, if i decide to buy a w530 with a i7 3520 M, would i then be able to upgrade the Ram only to 16 GB? There must be a reason why the i7 3520 M is more expensive than the 3630 QM prosessor! My 3rd question is the following: i’ve read that the battery of the t530 can run up to a time of 23 hours or more unlike the w530. what would be the reason. i’ll be very grateful for any comments

Regards from Germany

The case, screens, keyboard, etc. are the same on the T530 and the W530. The two main differences are the GPU is much better on the W530 and if you order the W530 with a quad core CPU, you get four memory slots instead of two, which would allow for 32GB of memory.

lenovofever wrote:There must be a reason why the i7 3520 M is more expensive than the 3630 QM prosessor! My 3rd question is the following: i’ve read that the battery of the t530 can run up to a time of 23 hours or more unlike the w530. what would be the reason. i’ll be very grateful for any comments

Regards from Germany

Hello,

I use a W520 every day in the office for the tasks listed as well as software development. I agree there is no difference between the W530 and T530 (similarly configured) in those functions. The i7 3520M is the top of the line chip in the dual core line - there is no faster dual core mobile chip presently. By comparison, the 3630QM processor is a lower mid-range quad core part - it's still quite a powerful chip, but it's missing some of the features of a faster quad core part (like Intel vPro technology, Vt-d, trusted execution, etc). Regarding the 23 hour battery time for the T530, that would be configured with a dual core processor and no discrete graphics card - and I wouldn't count on getting anything close to that if I were you. You can get a W530 with a dual core chip, but you can't get a W530 without discrete graphics card, so that's likely why you don't see similar claims for the W530.

Hope that helps...

Thanks ZaZ, thanks wolfman,

i may then conclude that the T530 isn't in anyway better than the W530, one might even say that it's the other way around? how would a combination of the dual core processor 3520M and the discrete graphics card influence the battery life? i don't think i need a quad core processor, especially not when it shortens the battery life, so i'm probably going for the W530 with the dual core and the 2GB Nvidia Quadro K2000M. how this will affect the battery life i don't know yet. i'm just looking for a machine which will last, which won't let one down and which can compete with the new models still to come, in the next 5 years at least. i am a student and always on the move so battery life pretty matters to me but i don't know if a 6c Li-Ion would do just fine since i am going for the dual core 3520M, the 9 cell battery is fine but a bit heavier than the 6c Li-Ion battery? i read people were quite annoyed having to drag the heavy 9 cell battery every time they were on the move. i could need some advice here and thanks in advance to all those who r willing to help.

best regards