T520 vs W520 - a few questions

[Alejandro Audisio]

What are the build differences between a T520 and a W520 machine.... does Lenovo use different materials in the casing, keyboard and other materials that I need to worry about..? Also, I think that T series machines have hard drive protective tools that guard against falls (or they've had them in the past)... do machines of the W series also incorporate these features...?

Final question... is the W520 the only series currently available or are there also current W710 series machines for sale.... Im looking at the Lenovo website and can only find W520s to customize....

Thanks !!
Alejandro

[dr_st]

T520 and W520 are exactly the same machine, chassis-wise. W series may have more high-end hardware (better GPU, quad core processors, USB3 support...).

[antskip]

dr_st has it spot on. the T and the W are the same machine, but "machine" is a family of versions - the W section included the higher end versions, the T the lower end. The W also has usb3 and other options like RAID, and twice the ram capacity (quad W). The most glaring high end feature in the W not available for the T is a choice of a couple of powerful CAD-optimized gpu's. The best available gpu in the T is a strictly business-gpu. Most T's are intel-gpu only. But higher end T's can be configured with quads.

The W series has been discontinued. Its place is functionally taken by the W520, which inherited from the 17" W's the premier gpu and cpu's. This is made possible by the new generation of cpu's that are so much more efficient in the use of power. Before, one needed the 17" form factor to thermally manage the high end components. Now the 15" form can do so.