After a one year run, how's the W520 holding up? Would you..

[YW-Slayer]

Got it in or around Sept 11. Quad i7, 80GB Intel mSATA (ordered separately), Crucial M4 256GB replacing the 500GB HDD, 1920 screen, 9-cell battery.

Only weak link is the screen. Otherwise it's a brilliant machine. Incredibly fast and slaughters everything I throw at it in the office - which isn't much - and even allowed me to finish Mass Effect 3!

Only problem is the green bar and colour offset in Youtube that others have posted about (due to NVIDIA/Intel driver shenanigans). Haven't been bothered to fix this though as I shouldn't be watching Youtube at work anyway!

Obviously newer notebooks with higher specs etc. will and have come out, but to answer the question: Yes, I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Probably one of my best purchases.

[davidhbrown]

Only problem is the green bar and colour offset in Youtube that others have posted about (due to NVIDIA/Intel driver shenanigans). [...]

Just to reiterate, I fixed this by locking Firefox to integrated graphics in the NVIDIA control panel. Supposedly there are some initiatives under way to do more with 3D in browsers, but the only one I was really interested in (as a web developer) is the 3D css/layers/style inspector in Firefox -- it's working just fine with the Intel 3000 graphics. (That might be because I set webgl.force-enabled = true in about:config... just tried turning that off again, but no change immediately; maybe I'll loose it after restart.)

[YW-Slayer]

Thanks, just tried that and will see how it goes. I am running a triple display setup, so wonder if that will help.

[YW-Slayer]

Works great. Thanks for the tip!

[windv]

Have had the w520 for half an year now coming from e420. It is much louder compared to the e420. And the track pad is smaller?!
The fan never stops spinning. I am thinking now of installing tpfancontrol to put it under some control.
The right palm rest squeaks when pressed even gently and dives arround 1mm.
The battery doesn't sit firm, i had to put a piece of paper to stop it moving around.
When closed, the display isn't held in place by the locking hinges and it moves up and down.
I totally lost the feeling of having a "strong build machine".
As mentioned the mouse pointer freezes from time to time no matter what pointing device i use. Could't understand why.
Apart from all that i guess its good...but not so much as i expected in terms of build quality.
But i am already thinking of selling it...

[davidhbrown]

...
I totally lost the feeling of having a "strong build machine".
As mentioned the mouse pointer freezes from time to time no matter what pointing device i use. Could't understand why....

The battery wobble is unnerving, though I've never had it shut down even when I shake it on battery only. Nice thought with the paper; I might try a few layers of electrical tape somewhere to stabilize it.

For your pointer freezes, I'd suggest you take a look at the Event Viewer to see whether any drivers/devices are timing out. Could be a symptom of a different problem.