Should I wait?

[jb6]

I'm in the market for a W520. Any rumors of an update coming out some time soon?

Thanks

[http302]

Last update was in November '11. They may add or change configs, but I don't see a W530 until at least late summer/early fall 2012 for Ivy Bridge.

[PeterNY]

You can always wait because something new will always be released. When you buy later in the game of an existing product however you usually get the most bang for your buck. Early adopters virtually always over pay and do not get to use their product to the full advantage yet because other products (e.g. software) have not yet fully embraced it.

[Q-Ball]

It's likely that the W530 (so to speak, I don't know if they're changing naming conventions) will be released September-October of this year.

They didn't announce new models (aside from the T430u and some Edge models) at CES, but since they pegged the release date for those Ivy Bridge books in Q3, I'd expect all the models to be refreshed then.

You'll likely see the i7-3720QM inside, bolted to a QM77 chipset and some sort of Quadro graphics solution (depending on whether or not nVidia's shipping Kepler parts but it's likely going to have a nice-sized boost in performance and better power consumption) though I couldn't speculate on model number. 1500M, maybe?

Power dissipation is still 45W for now (though we may eventually see a 35W quad they haven't announced anything yet),

[RonS]

I've noticed over the last two or three releases that Lenovo tends to put the just-released models on special during the initial release, then the price goes up for a few months before the "normal" price reductions kick in. With my T60p, W510 and X201, my release-day pricing was the best I saw for a long time.

[Alejandro Audisio]

I've noticed over the last two or three releases that Lenovo tends to put the just-released models on special during the initial release, then the price goes up for a few months before the "normal" price reductions kick in. With my T60p, W510 and X201, my release-day pricing was the best I saw for a long time.

Great tip... thanks for posting this. I always thought that the new releases were expensive and had no "specials"... this is very good to know.

Related question... does Lenovo update its CPU's across all the Thinkpad series machines at the same time, or do W series builds get updates quicker than T series builds...?

Thanks
Alejandro

[Alejandro Audisio]

bump in case anybody has some updated insider info...

[stuartf]

No new information, just some questions.

As I have read, Ivy Bridge represent a "tock" in the "tick-tock" sequence of Intel chips; I have learned that this means no great boost in performance BUT some better power management. I am mostly on AC power so this is not a big concern.

If Lenovo were to do a big screen upgrade that would be compelling but my schedule really requires that I pull the trigger before September.

I see some resellers dramatically underselling Lenovo, even with my employees "discount", any drawbacks ordering from these sources. I have always ordered directly from Lenovo and one big drawback is no return policy. But under $1600 for a full zoot machine, 8 gb RAM, FHD screen 500 gb HD, i7 2760 processor looks pretty good to me.

[wolfman]

Agree with the above, hence just ordered a T420 (see sig, should be here in a few days) as there really isn't anything compelling about Ivy Bridge that makes me want to wait.

[Alejandro Audisio]

So, a purchase right now would fall under the laggards in the above graph, or...? I wonder how much $$$ there is to be saved by waiting a few more months to buy the current CPU series before the new ones are announced.... (due to further discounting of current prices)