programming laptop, looking for 16:10 aspect ratio

[jgwentworth]

After familiarizing myself a bit with the Thinkpad ecosystem, I've tentatively decided I want a T5xx to act as my coding laptop (for the 15” screen). However, reading this forum has introduced me to the disdain people have for the Thinkpad screens and aspect ratios. Are they really that bad?

This will be my first laptop and will be used for some CS classes, I'm looking for something that will last a while and idealy be pleasing to look at (screen-wise).

I have a 16:10 monitor at home and would like to keep the same layout. A quick search on Thinkwiki shows that the T500 has a 1920x1200 screen, but nothing else since then. Are the benefits of a good screen enough to overcome the costs of older hardware?

What are my options? What are your recommendations?

[jgwentworth]

Towards answering my own question, it might be a stretch to find a T500 in the 16:10 configuration I'm looking for. Most of the laptops I've seen seem to all have lower resolution screens.

So would it should my question instead be between buying a T5x0 FHD or buying a T500 and sourcing the 16:10 screen?

[brchan]

The 1920x1200 screens found in the T500/W500 laptops are pretty good, but I would not call them excellent. If you are looking for a great screen, I would recommend the W510/T510 with FHD display. Those displays are very good, especially when calibrated properly. However, you do lose some vertical pixels because of the 16:9 only aspect ratio. Well worth it IMO, and you have access to much faster i7 processors vs core 2 duo.

Also, T500/W500 units have reliablity issues with the left hinge snapping and/or cracking the lower left display rollcage. This generation (including the T400) also have weak usb port tabs, which can snap off if care is not taken when inserting/removing usb devices.

[jgwentworth]

Great to know! I was originally leaning towards the T520 -- anything which would make you recommend the 510 over the 520?

[brchan]

The main benefits of the T520/W520 are increased speed and cooler running processors over the T510/W510 series. If you can afford a T520 or W520 with FHD display, then I would recommend them over the previous generation.

[ajkula66]

Also...

T520 can utilize a mSATA SSD (when installed the WWAN slot) as a boot drive, leaving the HDD in main bay for data.

T520 maxes out at 16GB RAM, where T510 stops at 8GB.

[jgwentworth]

T520 maxes out at 16GB RAM, where T510 stops at 8GB.

From the T520 thinkwiki page, I was under the impression the 520 was also capped at 8GB:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T520

Is this incorrect?

[jgwentworth]

...T520 can utilize a mSATA SSD (when installed the WWAN slot) as a boot drive, leaving the HDD in main bay for data.

What would I need to take advantage of that? A hard drive bay? Is this the first model which can take advantage of that?

EDIT: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/ ... rimer.html

[bit_twiddler]

I have a T420 which I use for program development with 16G of ram installed.
I'd be surprised if the T520 took less, since it is also a Sandy Bridge laptop.

If you plan on keeping the machine for a while and doing software development,
less than 16G is pretty marginal, especially if you intend to do Java development
and/or run virtual machines simultaneously.

I like to be able to boot different operating systems, so I have replaced the DVD reader
with a hard drive caddy and boot off the "B" drive, leaving the "A" drive as
my data drive. This is one of the strong points of the Thinkpad line. You might
be able to do the same thing with other makes, but only by accident.

[jgwentworth]

I like to be able to boot different operating systems, so I have replaced the DVD reader
with a hard drive caddy and boot off the "B" drive, leaving the "A" drive as
my data drive. This is one of the strong points of the Thinkpad line. You might
be able to do the same thing with other makes, but only by accident.

Is there a reason you chose to do it that way vs. buying an mSATA drive and putting it in the WWAN port?

[bit_twiddler]

Re: Is there a reason you chose to do it that way vs. buying an mSATA drive and putting it in the WWAN port?

I have to be able to boot different operating systems both for development reasons and
because I have clients which use different O/S's. I used to put them all on the A drive
and have this really complicated setup so that I could boot them all. It really is a trick
to do this in a way that they don't all decide to clobber the boot sector on an update.

By making the B drive the boot drive, and only putting data on the A drive, I can completely
isolate each operating system. It also simplifies backup - all I have to do is to make a
backup of each boot drive using RedoBackup, and I can get back to where I was after
something goes wrong.

Replacement of the msata drive requires disassembly of the machine, which would be inconvenient.
Furthermore, I don't need every system to be super-fast. One of my boot drives is an
SSD, while the others are old 160GB HDDs that I had lying around.

If you are going to replace a hard drive with an SSD, and it is a SATA-3 SSD, then I would
put it in one of the 2.5" bays on a T520, which are SATA-3. The msata slot on the T520 is
probably only SATA-2 if it is like my T420, and while it is a huge step up from
a mechanical hard drive, SATA-3 will give you twice the bandwidth.