Lenovo W510 Owner's Thread

I guess I'll just throw my own tale of woe out there -- I ordered my W510 on 1/31, it was supposed to ship 2/9, then 3/1, and today it was pushed to 3/6. ARGH.

 

The Lenovo site said 4 weeks for FHD Multi this morning.

Nobody knows what the exact issues with the FHD and Multi FHD's, but it seems that 2 or 3 months is average. I'm not saying I like it, but it is what it is and seems normal for Lenovo.

I will say that the hardware world seems screwed up because of the economy. I think some component manufactures reduced their yields too much to compensate. Getting server and networking hardware is realitively difficult right now. I've had to delay large projects where I work due to HP and Cisco's inability to supply gear.

 

If they post-pone me again, I am just going to cancel... there have been a couple of occasions when I have called Lenovo CS and they told me my machine was currently on the assy line! If it comes down to it that they lied, I won't deal with liars!

My good friend of 6 years is from Hong Kong and he said the minute that mainland China took over IBM PC Business Operations, that it was allll gonna go to s4it... let's hope he is wrong... but I trust him as he is Chinese, and in the laptop repair biz... that's 2 strikes, China... How's it gonna end?

I have been a stinkpad user for mannny years, but this keyboard flex nonsense, the HDD ultra-bay gap, and the ghosting thing is all sophomoric and not sitting well with me. I am upwards of 2500 clams here and I would expect utter refinement from that price point. My Sony F Series is in the neighborhood of $1500 and I have yet to see any shortcomings. If I were to drop $2500 on a Sony (granted we are talking consumer and corp application) I think I would be pleasantly surprised with the fit and finish. But I digress...

I also don't like the idea of an add-on cable for the "display-port". HDMI not standard enough for you LeNova, or we just want to make some more optional sales on the back end?

This sony isn't LED, unfortunately, so I am really counting on this 510 to be my main squeeze for the next couple years. I hope that is a reasonable expectation.

 

Very nice tyrell, thanks for recording this.

 

Spot on you said everything I wanted to say but ghosting is getting worse I have done the update of the calibrated profile that "LYuan kindly posted"but to no avail FAIL as it made things more red in many ways red looks more like burns on faces when editing the images. I will call UK support to see if they are willing to send me replacement panel I dont trust sending them the whole PC LOL

 

My W510 runs surprisingly cool (i7 820, Intel SSD G2 drive). The keyboard stays cool all the time, while I can feel the heat on my T60p and T400. No doubt that the W510 is designed to run cool.

I've been through several generations of Thinkpads (including original IBM Thinkpads) and there is no doubt that quality is going downhill. However, feature wise, the W510 is truly on the bleeding edge. This is why I got the W510, there is nothing better out there for power, feature and ...call me old fashion, but I really like the Thinkpad look

 

canceled my order and now will wait for non touch screen display to be available.

Oh.. Any one has any things to say about Envy 15?

 

Gorgeous display, super light, sucky battery power.

 

yeah it runs cool thats a Yes and yes must admit quality going downhill but problem is theres no alternatives to match even this thats why I took it. I just wish that they would hire me to do the engineering for them (us) I would make it way better.
but chaina mainland would sit hungry for longer?! 3-5 years who wants that? no one thats why 2 year warranty is a must with any current laptop. plus insurance

 

dont have a newer Wx10 or Tx10 series on hand, but my T400s is way superior in quality to older T6x and T4x series i have sitting around. The thing is lighter, faster, runs cooler, looks sleeker and generally feels like a higher quality item than older models.

This might be due to the fact that T400s is a more "premium" model than others, but in my book this is probably the best built and least clunky thinkpad i've played with.

 

Just got confirmation that my multi-touch w510 has shipped. No tracking number available yet. Shipping was pushed from 2/12 to 3/1, so they did keep their 3/1 shipping date.

 

My 720QM with HD+ just arrived. Doing the recovery DVDs first, then pulling the hard drive and memory to upgrade to an Intel X25-M and 16GB DDR3 RAM.

Anybody interested in any particular pictures as I go?

 

Let us know how you like the screen. With the problems being reported on the FHD, if the HD+ is still nice and crisp, I might go with that and save some money.

 

close-up of your SSD and one of the 4GB module if you can.

 

Hells yeah, mon frere

 

pictures of screen next to desktop monitor displaying similar image would be nice.

Also some pictures showing viewing angles of the screen would be nice as well.

thanks!

 

Adding more RAM modules changes the electrical characteristics of the memory bus. When you have more than 2, it becomes out of tolerance for what is required for the faster speed, so it slows down so they all work correctly.

 

I think this might have already been asked, but I can't find the answer anywhere, but can somebody tell me what type of lcd screen is been used for the FHD in the w510. Is it a tn, ips, s-pva, or a s-mva?

I've been hearing about the red ghosting issue and I think it might be attributed to a va screen (see below):

http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/lcd-panel-types.php

P.

 

Ok...here's the scoop on the ultrabay drives.


The Lenovo one lacks an LED. No activity signals are being given.
The generic has an LED, which should show drive activity.

However...where the Lenovo lacks the LED, there is a little pressure switch that is absent in the generic versions (both the 9.5mm and 12.7mm), which is likely what turns on the drive. Unfortunately, the plastic housing of the 12.7mm enclosure doesn't seem to allow for an easy swap. You'd need to dremel it at the very least.

 

I don't know how I am going to behave once my order actually arrives! I think I check my status page 4-5 times a day. It's mostly wishful thinking, but I am hoping against hope that this thing gets expedited so at least the unknown is out of the way, for all of us.

I feel sorry for the ppl that ordered in Jan and still have no feedback or hardware in hand... I was on the fence in Jan or I would have ordered then too. I was hoping, judging by Lenova's roadmap, that the W710 would be out as of Feb 1, cuz I am really into the whole bigness of thangs. But judging by the turn-around for the new 510's and thinking about the price point of the W700's with older chipsets (Didn't these intro at close to 5k?), and applying that to the i7 chipsets, I opted for this route. Now it turns out that there may be a 1-2 month lag on the Dub510's, the 710's *SHOULD* be out by then!!! POOP!! What to do, what to do?!? Maybe the Dub710's will be offered with a BD-ROM/Burner as well??? There I go wishful thinking again!

I read an earlier post that said for this to be an owner's thread, there doesn't seem to be a lot of actual owners in it... that struck me as funny, because it's true.

 

About time we got some new freaking owners in this massive speculative thread.

 

Mine shipped today! I checked early today and it said 4/7/2010 estimated ship date and it turns out it was probably leaving the warehouse at that time. I'm thinking they must have got a bunch of multi-touch FHD in! Good luck to everyone else waiting!

 

So what is the story with the ram? Can the w510 only run at 1333 using 4gb modules? Would it work to put 4 x 2gb 1333 sticks in it?

 

Great news! This news may have me hold off canceling for a day or so if they postpone my order again since their site and warehouse/factory doesn't seem to run parallel with info.

I wonder if someone that receives theirs in the coming days/week would do a video unboxing for the thread? Be interesting to see the contents prior to receipt. TIA

This post seems to explain it as good as I have heard it...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5958538&postcount=917

I wonder what would become of only 3 sticks being used, however?

 

Turbo-boost actually works perfectly fine under Ubuntu, you just can't see that it's working with any of the existing utilities. If you download i7z you can see it, powertop "sort of" shows it as well. Rest assured though, the CPU is DEFINITELY using turbo boost under Ubuntu. i7z shows my machine making definite use of turbo boost reaching over 3GHz when one core is at 100%. The built-in CPU monitor tools all want to measure a single "core", and there's essentially 8 so they really don't show anything relevant.

The very latest nVidia 195.33.08 driver released just last week seems to take care of the X lockups. I've been running for 12 hours now since I upgraded this morning with no problems. Compiz, Gnome Do, lots of firefox activities, etc etc...

My W510 runs VERY cool, much better than any laptop I've ever had before. Without the "real" nVidia drivers it seems to run a bit warmer, I'm guessing the open source drivers don't do proper power saving on the GPU. Temperature is a big factor for me since I'm primarily a lap user. Mine has the i7 820qm btw. It's definitely cooler than the multiple different Apple Macbook Pro's I've had, the HP business laptops or my old Toshibia.

I have the non-multi touch FHD display. My wife is a photographer and I worked in a print production lab for quite some years so I knew what I was getting with a wide gamut display. Some users are shocked by the vibrancy of colours with the wide-gamut screen but it's MUCH more accurate than the garbage displays on most laptops. I'm extremely happy with the screen (save the one stuck pixel mine has). It compares very well to the IPS screens she has for editing.

If you're a Linux primary user be aware that at this point suspend is not working. This seems to be true of most laptops with i7 and the Intel 5-series chipset - it's simply too new. If you're the type that is willing to live with this for the time being for the long-term gain of having an i7 laptop then this is a good purchase. If you want something that "just works" and are content with a Core 2 Duo then the T500 / W500 might be a better purchase.

 

Well, as of this morning my order went from this week (according to the customer service liar yesterday) to 04/22. To me this is simply ridiculous. A 6 week shift in ship time should be something that is available to customer service reps, regardless of the "excuse" that the warehouse is a separate entity from the sales force/customer service folk. At this point the useless customer service people can only be called that - liars (paid to be so of course). Slightly frustrating, as this would make the order turnaround time 3 months (I was actually defending it a month ago as being acceptable...). Lenovo certainly isn't the company it used to be...

 

Ok folks, talk me off the cliff's edge here... My order, placed on 1/11, was just pushed back, AGAIN, to 3/23.

Why shouldn't I cancel the order?

 

You should not cancel the order because hot keyboards might cause carpel tunnel, and your hands arms are very valuable. This laptop has cool contact surfaces for the computing power delivered.

Ancient dell laptop nightmares have consumed too much of your life...

... At least that is what I am telling myself.

 

I'm mostly disappointed. Boggles the mind why these machines get delayed with no notifications and no explinations.

My built to order BMW M3 was assembled and shipped from Germany in less time.

The W510 was a spontaneous purchase for me. The CPU and touchscreen were the motivators. Maybe this is a good thing. I'm coming from a Sony Z, so the size of the W510 has been a concern.

I'll call Lenovo today. If they can't give me some information, I'm out.

As of right now, I'm looking really hard at the new Sony Z.

 

I have ordered from Lenovo in the past, and while they do like to push back ship dates with annoying frequency, they are also known for shipping well in advance of those dates. Just because they pushed your order back to April doesn't mean they won't ship tomorrow.

It's a very frustrating system in what would seem like a very predictable process.

 

Thanks for the link. I conclude its S-PVA/MVA type screen. that by itself explains nasty lag I particularly have and uneven brightness. also in the total darkness when full brightness used you can see the RGB from top to bottom of the screen effect appear as horizontal stripes inch thick. this is most definately worse than even my T30 screen which evenly lit 5 years on!!!

yes it will. I got better question would it take the 1600 RAM? if not I will be ok with the 1333 max 8gb i would be happy having 16gb split in two with 1 as ram drive of 8GB with super quick response times .

another question whats best between these two 4GB CL5 1066 or 4GB CL7 1333???

anyone?

I'm going to order the 1333...

 

The speed of the RAM is almost irrelevant. Any RAM that is rated at a faster speed will almost certainly work at a slower speed as well. If you buy RAM at a faster speed, it will not run any faster than the system supports, so if the max is 1333, then 1600 would only be a waste of money.

Also, using a RAM drive is pretty much useless except in extreme situations on a high performance server where you might be doing extremely high I/O (disk) operations. On a laptop it would be a total waste.

Modern versions of Windows (and Linux) automatically use all extra RAM as disk cache, which works exactly the same as a RAM disk, except the OS automatically manages it and it can grow and shrink as needed. You are much better allowing the system to use the RAM in this way. If you carve out a RAM disk, the OS cannot use that RAM for this type of performance boost.

 

well I use the ram drive as "a drive for HD video clips" that is making the seek and cut times 1000 times faster. and thanks for confirm I was right to choose the 1333 but what bothered me is the latency advantage on 1066.


Add there is no problems with the FHD screen supply so delay is non related to that. mine is going to be replaced this week.

 

placed an order at 18/02/10.

I was told by a cust rep that the estimated shipping date is
Mar 8, but now I call again and it was delayed to at least late march
due to lcd supply shortage ( my order was with hd+ )


....
does this delayed shipping happens a lot?

 

ZoinksS2k,

Have you been able to configure RAID on your W510? I have one on order right now. I looked at someone else's W510 (model 4318-CTO) and the BIOS did not indicate anywhere that RAID could be enabled. Curious.

 

Yes, please.

 

Only select W510 models come with RAID. See the tabook.pdf for those models. I have never seen it as a selectable option at lenovo.com. What else is new.

 

from what i understand about RAM Speeds here it is:

if you order 1066 4 GB and then add 3 4GB 1333 then all 4 dimms will run at 1066 speed. so to save money order 1 4GB 1333 and then find 3 4GB 1333 from outside.

 

u cannot notice any difference between the 1066 and 1333 in terms of performance... even though 1333 is only 4 mhz away from 1337

 

I'm starting to wonder if these laptops really exist. I ordered a FHD version January 26, with an initial ship date of February 10. Two days before the ship date, the order was canceled due to a "web error" per the guy I called to yell at. It was rescheduled for a ship date of March 1.

Last night at midnight, the ship date moved to April 22. I called and yelled at another nice man who told me the FHD screens are back-ordered. Rat s. It's not hard to do bleeding edge laptops if you don't have to deliver them until they're obsolete.

 

i know but why pay the extra money

 

If the W510 is like other machines with Intel RAID, you have to change the SATA option then config RAID via the Intel Option ROM menu. It's something like CTRL-A or S to access the RAID BIOS.

And no, haven't tried it. You need to actually take delivery to do that

 

you are wrong check new egg price is the same! CL5 1066 120$ and CL7 1333 is120$ now can you tell me which youd pick and why?

 

I've reached the limit of my RAM timing knowledge, but I'm pretty sure the higher CAS is the tradeoff for the higher frequency. Basically, both of those RAM chips are the same speed because of it. If you want more information, I'd check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_timings

RAM is already one of the fastest parts of a system. Whether you have 1066 or 1333 is going to be almost completely irrelevant, except maybe in benchmarks.

You're better off spending the money on a faster disk or SSD, as disk is by orders of magnitude slower than every other part of the computer. Everything your computer does is slowed down by waiting for the disk.

 

I had the similar situation to you, I ordered on Jan 21, and it was delayed to April 22 yesterday, but this afternoon ,it suddently showed that My W510 was shipped out. I ordered one with multi-touch screen Hope you will get the same email as well.

 

He's right! Mine just shipped out today!

 

I was just postponed as well!! COME ON SHIPPING NOTIFICATION!!!

 

Thanks. I'll hold on to that thread of hope. I'm sure not holding on to a w510.

 

Not really there are lot of applications I use that require memory. Or even the apps I develop use memory to swap then when the disk IO is free I will flush the buffer/serialize the cache.
I am not a gamer so i really do not care what speed the mem is. For me when i tried to find memory i got 1066 was cheaper than 1333 (maybe i searched in wrong place). If the case is where 1066 is same as 1333 I will put 1333. If 1066 is cheaper then of course I will go for 1066.



DDR Speed Memory clock Cycle time FSB Bus clock Module name Peak transfer rate
DDR3-800 100 MHz 10 ns 400 MHz PC3-6400 6400 MB/s
DDR3-1066 133 MHz 7.5 ns 533 MHz PC3-8500 8533 MB/s
DDR3-1333 166 MHz 6 ns 667 MHz PC3-10600 10667 MB/s
DDR3-1600 200 MHz 5 ns 800 MHz PC3-12800 12800 MB/s




Thanks

 

What he said, agreed.