Lenovo E530 - upgrade questions

Just got an E530 - ordered online through lenovo
it shipped with 4gb ram and tech specs say it can take up to 8gb
Is that true, only 8gb?

my friend saw my new laptop and ordered an E530 from a bigbox store,
and somehow got one without the numeric keypad (she is very pissed)
I told her I'd find her a wireless Number keypad, but the only one I can find with a Unifying usb dongle is out of stock everywhere.(logitech N305).. is there a bluetooth alternative out there somewhere? or another brand that uses a slim usb dongle that will synch a mouse and keypad at the same time?

her laptop came with 6gb (4+2) and since she doesn't need anything too advanced, I have offered to give her my 4gb ram and 16gb mSATA(hers came without) And then upgrade with better ram and a 128gm mSATA.

which brands are the top 2 that I should be looking at for my RAM upgrade/replacement and the mSATA upgrade?

thanks for any help!
Dagnabit

 

The maximum RAM supported depends on the CPU but I would say that any IB based i5 or i7 system should do 16GB easily.

As for the mSATA (or any...) SSD, I would only be looking at 240GB or larger capacities (for best, sustained performance and reliability).

See:
Newegg.ca - Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD3 mSATA 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)


For the RAM, any brand name with lifetime warranty at 12800 speeds should be a good match:

See:
Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3 1600MHz SODIMM Kit (2 x 8GB) at Memory Express


Curious if on your setup you have a Lenovo/3rd party program that setup the 16GB mSATA as a cache - or, is it Intel RST drivers that are handling that?

 

I know exactly what you're talking about when you say your friend's E530 did not come with the number pad. Prior to going to an Office Depot not to far from where I live, I knew the E530 had a number pad because I'd seen it on the Lenovo website. When I seen the E530 they had on display I immediately knew something was odd between what Lenovo was selling and what Office Depot was selling. The OD E530 didn't have a number pad and it had the speakers next to the keyboard and not in front part of the notebook. And speaking of keyboards, the OD E530's keyboard was not like the Lenovo E530's keyboard either. The keyboard felt a lot more plasticky and cheap. The keys themselves were smaller and even the paint on the keys appeared to be a step down in quality. The keys were not of the same quality as the typical AcuType keyboards of previous and current Edge laptops. The keyboard was like a fake AcuType keyboard to me, but atleast it was actually still pleasant to touch type on and still had the UltraNav trackpointer.

Here's a review of that "Office Depot E530" I'm talking about. Its hard to tell from these photo but believe me knew the difference right away.






Compared to "Lenovo's E530"

 

The driver (standard w/ OS installed from lenovo) is intel ExpressCache

discovered today that the 16gb mSATA loses an 8gb partition if you turn on hibernation (or perhaps some fancy new express hibernation)
leaving about 6.89gb for ExpressCaching... ordered the 128 crucial m4 today.

also elsewhere I saw someone post that they only saw 120gb after upgrading with a 128gb msata, must have been the hibernation thing. The one thing I now wonder is if the 8gb represents the max RAM (supported) or if it represents 2x the 4gb RAM installed. I mostly wonder because I've read on other posts of 16gbRAM working in the E530, but if that means 32gb of the mSATA "eaten up" by the hibernation partition -it would leave only 96gb to divide between an OS(+some other Main drive stuff) partition and ExpressCache. How much is windows 8 supposed to need?(when it gets here)

I'm sure I'll make due... now i'm looking at the Dynadock U wireless (discontinued?)

and to david, my friend ordered a wireless Logitech number pad w/ unifying usb tech. out of stock almost everywhere found an amazon e-seller with 3 left. Logitech doesn't even list the item on its US site but found referred to on the UK site, perhaps this means a Bluetooth model is in the works.