Just curious: when will T530 be available?

Just curious. It appears Thinkpad has a new model each year. I want to skip T520. Thanks for any info.

Cheers!

 

If past patterns hold, Lenovo will release an updated T-series as soon as Intel releases Ivy Bridge. That means somewhere around Q2 of this year, I believe. Obviously, shipping will take a while at the beginning when production is just ramping up, so realistically expect a month or so after IB is released.

 

Thanks so much for your info.
Regards.

 

Translation: October

 

I think in May, because Intel will release Ivy-Bridge in April.

 

Lenovo may decide to wait for Win8 to come out before releasing the next gen Thinkpads (which would be Q3). The Lenovo Ideapad Yoga has to wait for Win8 due to its heavy reliance on the tablet software, but the traditional Thinkpads maybe could debut early with the promise of a free Win8 upgrade from Win7 like last time. Could go either way.

 

Usually, Lenovo's release of their business laptops are delayed a few months after Intel's release, at least for the past few iterations.

 

Someone's a pessimist

There are downsides to being an early adopter: you wait a lot longer for your laptop to ship (although in the past few generations, it usually wasn't longer than a month), you pay more, and you sometimes miss small revisionary fixes/improvements (ie, T400 keyboard backing improvement).

For the X- and W-series, yes. Not so for the T-series.

 

You mean pragmatist.

Seriously though, how does Lenovo usually handle releases like this? There are two happening. Intel Ivy Bridge and Windows 8.

If Lenovo ships ahead of Windows 8, then they will typically offer a free upgrade period and promotion. However, by shipping early it means they have to build two sets of factory images, deal with the changeover, etc.

That's why I was thinking October.

 

Notebook OEMs don't time their releases with Windows versions, only with hardware revisions (like Ivy Bridge). In the past, for both Vista and W7 releases, MS has funded OEMs to provide a free upgrade to those who bought laptops several months before the OS' release. I would imagine the same thing will happen this time around.

As a side note: during the Tx00 generation, the laptops shipped with Vista preinstalled for most of the generation's lifecycle, with free Windows XP install disks included. In the months before W7's release, you would also get a W7 upgrade kit mailed to you as well at no cost. So, it was actually possible to get three different OS licenses at one point. I wouldn't worry about Lenovo's handling of disk images, etc

 

I hope the T530 retains the standard touchpad and point mouse and hope it isnt based on the T430u

 

Oh right, I only paid attention to the W series

 

any rumors that T530 will have ATI graphic card? I would love to have three external displays.

 

You realize the T520 with Optimus will do four today, right?

 

Yeah but I think one of them is via VGA and that is unusable for me. I think you cant do three outs digital (2x dock, 1x from the NTB)
BTW I just red that the new graphic core in Ivy Bridge can do 3 displays on its own, but the question will be if they can be used this way (i.e. not 1 internal + 2 external, but all external)

 

Well, you asked about three so you still should be covered with the T520.

All bets are off for the T530 until it ships and someone does real testing.

 

you don't want to buy right after it's released cuz
1. you will be a non-paid beta tester (to be fair, it's the same for every other maker)
2. you will be paying a lot more for the notebook. usually, the price drops by at least 30% after 3-4 months...

 

It does that 2 dGPU + 2 iGPU displays I believe. In theory an AMD graphics card would allow for at least 3 + 2 if not 6 + 2 provided sufficient physical ports.

 

Not necessarily. I bought my X220i the first day. Mine cost $750 shipped. There's been a couple times it's been lower, but mostly doesn't dip down to that price often.

 

If you have the right dock, they are all DisplayPort and DVI.

 

you can't use dvi+DP on the same channel.