How easy is it to use the T530 away from a desk?

[biffa]

I'm interested in the T530, but would like to know how others find it when working away from a desk- in an armchair, sofa, bed etc. My current laptop is a dell d830, which I hate to lug around the house because it's so big and heavy. I'm also looking at the Carbon X1, but I don't know if it would have enough power for my needs as I often need to run a few VMs at the same time. I'd also be interested in hearing anyone's experience running a few concurrent VMs on the T530.

Thanks
Phil

[chevy05]

I have a Dell D820 Lattitude that is basically the same as the D830 in regards to design and weight that I just replaced my D820 with since the Nvidia video chip is going bad again. Just received the T530 this week. The T530 with the 6 cell battery weighs about 5 1/2 pounds and feels a lot lighter than the D820. It is slightly longer, slighter thinner, and slightly narrower than the D820. I jumped to Lenevo T530 as I took an E5530 Latitude from work home one night and with the 10 key pad making the chassis a lot longer than the D820, I did not like it sitting on my lap on the recliner or in my bed. The T530's mouse pad is taking me some time to get use to as the buttons are very close to the front of the chassis and easy to bump when hunched up sitting in bed. The raised bumps on the pad are taking me some time to get use to. I'm still tweaking it and am slowly moving over from the D820 before I tear it down and try to redo the heatsink with more copper and less thermal padding. Dell depends on way too much termal padding for sucking the heat from the Nvidia chip. Needs copper shimming. I am then going to use the D820 for Linux.

[biffa]

Thanks for the detailed response chevy05. It's good to know the T530 feels a lot lighter than the dell. I was planning on getting the 6 cell version too - mainly to keep weight and size down,

[chevy05]

I purchased a spare 6 cell battery and a second 90 watt power supply with mine. The meter on the desktop tells me I have close to 5 hours of runtime, but I never use it more than 1 1/2 hours at a time and throw it on the charger whenever I am finished with it. I went with the Intel HD4000 gpu to save the battery since I don't game, and we have had issues with the dual gpu's switching back and forth on the Dells at work. I also went with the most expensive Intel wireless option. Can't recall the model number off the top of my head.

[biffa]

Yes, re the wifi, I'd read it was best to upgrade to the Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN - which I intend to do if I get the T530. I haven't researched the graphics card - thanks for the info on potential issues with a dual gpu. With regards to the display resolution, I'm would probably go for the 1080p.

Thanks
Phil

[chevy05]

I originally ordered a 1080p but got scared after reading reviews on the resolution on a 15.6" display. Sounds like it is a wonderful screen, but some people claimed on other sites that the fonts do not scale inside some programs. Some guys mentioned they were programmers running in virtual worlds and the fonts were small. I don't do anything in VM yet, but I chickened out on the 1080p because of my 50 plus eyes with bifocals. I cancelled the order and reordered the 1600 X 900 to be safe. You might have better eyes or might not need anything but Window's and IE's DPI scaling. Your original post mentioned VM so please do some more research on 1080p. You know the old saying, your mileage may vary. I'm going on a trip next month and am going to try to weigh my notebooks with a postal scale at home this weekend to see what several of my old notebooks are and my new T530. I would rather take my new T530, but I'm not afraid to take my Dell D600,D610, or a D630.

[biffa]

I'm also concerned about the 1080p as my eyes are not so good and I also use bifocals. As it's difficult for me to try a T530 beforehand, I went to a high street computer store to try out other 15.6" laptops with 1080p. They were running windows8 and seemed pretty good for my eyes. Unsurprisingly, there was no VM software installed for me to try; however, I would like to see what Ubuntu or other flavor of Linux looks like with 1080p on the 15.6" display. I may be wrong but I think I read somewhere that in the UK Lenovo let you return the laptop within 7 days of delivery if you don't like it for any reason? If that is the case I guess 7 days would allow me to see if I could cope with the 1080p. Anyway, I'll do some more research as you suggest.

Thanks
Phil