W530 for Uni?

[Francismac]

I thought I'd come to a thinkpad-centred forum, as I presume you're the experts on these matters. I'm looking at buying a used W530 w/ k2000m for Mechanical engineering, and I was wondering if I could have a few questions answered (I hope to join the Thinkpad loving family).
Firstly, is it that useful as a portable laptop, or more, as a desktop which happens to be portable? I've noticed the "feature" of CPU throttling under battery power, unless GPU is disabled. Does this render it useless over other, slimmer, laptops, as they generally have lower power hardware, so wont see as harsh throttling. Further, I saw rarely that people said that the Quadro could only be utilised on an external monitor. This would render the entire card useless, as I intend to mostly use the built in screen. Is it able to output from Quadro directly to screen whilst connected to mains? Finally, (sorry for the text wall), is it a good idea, in your personal opinion, to use this laptop as a portable CAD/CFD/Rendering workstation, or do I have better (cheap), options?

Thanks in advanced for any replies, and if I've broken some rules with regards to the forums, I apologise,
Francis.

[jaspen-meyer]

Here is an edited version of the OP's post:

Is the W530 a suitable, and portable, CAD/CFD/Rendering workstation for a university student?

[bit_twiddler]

Recommend looking at:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Len ... 062.0.html

and skip down to the section entitled "Throttling."

I have a similar machine, and consider it to be very portable with a good backpack.
I'd suggest looking at a Gunnison 32L Marmot or something similar with a lot
of padding.

If I can carry one, and I'm probably an old geezer compared to you,
then you shouldn't have any problem.