Upgrading a new P50?

[hellosailor]

While I was looking at options to replace my cranky W530, I priced up a P51 and was amazed at how quickly it added up. But I see the remaining P50 stock, with limited choices, is very attractively priced. Except, I need the backlight keyboard (just believe me) and there are none left in stock. Does anyone know hard hard/expensive it would be to replace a new P50 keyboard with a backlit one? Or add the lighting, whatever it is that is done?

And whether the fingerprint reader is standard, or an option that could be ordered with a new keyboard, all in one shot?

Really stretching my luck, can the WWAN card (which should have a GPS build into it as part of the 'cellular' bits, yes?) something that can just be added in, or does that mean pulling out something else to free up a socket?

All the new swapee-swapee PCIe memory versus real drive slots and having to make sure the right mount/adapter in in any new machine just makes me certain anything I order will be configured not-quite-right.(G)

[RealBlackStuff]

P50 KB with backlight: http://www.ebay.com/itm/172600061676 (~$40)
P50 palmrest with FPR: http://www.ebay.com/itm/322652145572 (~$118)
WWAN: no idea, never did/never will need one.

If I were you, I'd get the P/N or FRU from your current one and look into a new motherboard for your W530.

[w0qj]

Almost all our Thinkpads have WWAN (Mobile Broadband); that's why we stick with Thinkpad

1) We briefly flirted with your same idea of P50 with WWAN last year, and our conclusion as follows:

a) Early versions of P50/P50S/P70 with RAM DDR4 2400 MHz cannot use WWAN (WWAN also uses this very same 2.4 GHz frequency, causing possible interference between WWAN and RAM).
[Edit: 2400 MHz = 2.4 GHz]

b) Later versions of P50/P50S/P70 uses RAM DDR4 2133 MHz, hence can use WWAN.
~For example, USA market has a later version of P70 with RAM DDR4 2133 MHz, and with WWAN option directly from Lenovo:
http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/th ... TO1WWENUS3
[Edit: 2133 MHz = 2.133 GHz and will not intefere with WWAN, or vice versa]

2) A second opinion on this topic, from a respected website:
www.thinkscopes.com/2016/04/10/thinkpad-p50-review
quote:
"...P50...When going through the specs, you might have noticed that there was a question mark after “WWAN upgradeable”. This is because there is no definitive answer if this machine is WWAN upgradeable or not. ... This machine ships with a 42mm M.2 slot for WWAN modules, has the WWAN antennas and also the SIM card tray, so logically, it should be upgradeable. However, Lenovo has stated that these early revisions of P50 / P70 are NOT WWAN upgradeable, because of a bug concerning the frequencies of the LTE cards and the DDR4 memory. There seems to be a new batch of the P50/P70 with WWAN available now, so if you want to be sure that WWAN works, get one of the revised machines."


3) Note: Third party external USB WWAN (Mobile Broadband) also use 2.4 GHz, so may also interfere with Early versions of P50/P50S/P70 with RAM DDR4 2400 MHz.
Unfortunately we had to skip the early versions of P50/P50S/P70 for this reason.


4) Note: ***Ensure that your LCD panel has a WWAN antennae, otherwise no signal due to no WWAN antennae in your LCD panel!


5) Note: *IF* you consider P51/P51S/P71, again check to ensure that its RAM is using the newer RAM DDR4 2133 MHz, hence can use WWAN.
(For our region, Lenovo is still using the older RAM DDR4 2400 MHz for P51/P51S/P71, so no WWAN (2.4 GHz) option again!)

[hellosailor]

Blackie, that shipping from Oz is ridiculous. (Well, not really, but compared to China post.(G)

w0-
Invaluable! I'll bet there were some amazed and unhappy engineers when they heard "Waddayamean, the cell phone and the ram are fighting?" It took me forever to find out the GOBI "card" in my W530 contained a full working GPS, which has been useful at times. Why they call this a WWAN card when it is a cellular connection card...damfino. The celco makes it much more rational to use my phone as a hot spot than to put the computer online by itself--so far--but I like keeping that option. (For instance, I just don't use hotel or other public wifi for anything that involves banking, customer confidential, medical, or other information that I don't want stolen. Isn't worth taking any risk there at all, and cellular is the least risky access.)

Maybe I'll just go down to Chinatown and see if Abacuses-R-Us is still around....

[w0qj]

Just an addendum, Lenovo USA website still sells later version P50 with proper RAM that works with WWAN, all ordered directly from Lenovo:
http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/th ... TO1WWENUS0

ie:
P50
~compatible RAM DDR4 2133 MHz (=2.133 GHz)
~WWAN built-in directly from Lenovo/Thinkpad, with WWAN antenna built into LCD panel
~Backlit keyboard also!

Lucky you

[Disclaimer: We are fellow users of Thinkpads; we do not work for Lenovo!]

[hellosailor]

Very interesting. I'd have to go back and look again, but I'm suspecting that the machine they offer at greaet prices, are the higher speed memory chips with the WWAN conflicts--which is why they didn't bundle the two.