Bargain basement W700

[at both ends]

I picked up a Vancouver Olympics surplus W700 (2752RZ2) today for $700 + tax, brand new in the box, T9600, 4GB/160GB, BT, FPR, camera, basically everything, with about 16 months of onsite warranty still to go. Pre-Xmas blowout as far as I could see. Could not resist the price.

My ThinkPad experience is all with R and T series. I love my Flexview T60, running Ubuntu 99.44% of the time, but I'm maxing it out occasionally on some heavy number crunching (not graphics).

I would love to hear some opinions.

- Do I stick with the T60 and put the unopened W700 out for bid, or should I "upgrade"?

- I see some W700 models carry quad processors. Can I swap the T9600 for a quad cpu on the existing board?

- 4 GB installed, Lenovo datasheet says 4 GB max, but I see mention of more. Can I upgrade that to 8 GB, as I could dump a desktop then, especially if a quad core replacement is possible?

Thanks in advance for all answers.

[QFoam]

You can certainly install 8GB of RAM, although only 3GB will be accessible if the machine is running a 32-bit version Windows. Click on the link in my signature line if you want more info about the W700.

I suspect you can physically install a quad-core processor (it will have to be one of those that were offered by Lenovo with the laptop), but you'll void your warranty.

Other things to check are whether you have the Blu-ray drive (it also writes Blu-ray discs), whether it has the QuadroFX 3700M graphics processor, whether it has the built-in graphics-tablet/color-calibrator, whether you have the 1920x1200 pixel 400NIT display, and which WiFi card it has (Intel 5300/5350 are the best). Those all affect the value of the laptop.

My guess is that it doesn't have Blu-ray, and that it has 32-bit Windows pre-installed.

I see that $700 deal listed on various websites, so I doubt you'll make any money by reselling it, but you never know. Check eBay prices for similar machines.

[dlai]

Found this on the web, here are the specs for the Vancouver W700s being unloaded from the Olympics:

# 2.8 GHz T9600 Duo Core CPU
# 160 GB SATA Hard Drive
# 4 GB RAM
# 17" Widescreen Monitor 1920x1200
# Features full size keyboard with number pad on the right
# 1 GB NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M graphics card
# 5 X 2.0 USB ports
# CD/DVD Multi Burner
# Gigabit Ethernet
# SmartCard Reader
# Integrated Fingerprint Reader
# Integrated camera
# Built in Bluetooth® 2.0
# Built in Wi-Fi
# W700 Adaptor
# Windows Vista Business 32-bit installed but NO restore discs provided
HD is 7200rpm. Wifi is Intel 5300.