Lenovo W510 Owner's Thread

Hello - been following this thread. Lots of good information, thanks!

Just got my w510 the other day and was wondering if anyone noticed erratic behavior with two-finger multitouch scrolling on the touchpad?

Sometimes it does not respond at all and I have to sometimes swipe my fingers a bunch of times on the touchpad for it to respond - and after that it seems to work better for a little while.

I have been using synaptics touchpads with the new multitouch drivers and they have so far performed flawlessly with very responsive scrolling. Except with this computer.

Does anyone else notice this? I am wondering if it might be a hardware defect - or a problem with Lenovo's drivers for the touchpad.

 

Hi!

Few questions:

- how long your battery on this notebook last? If I have full battery charged I can use notebook at normal use 1:45 minutes.

Friend which is having new HP model similar specifications can use it around 3 hours ?!?! So what is happening here that HP have much longer battery performance?

- we did a test with performance programs how fast cpu is and HP with i7 620M is much faster than my (they say better CPU) i7 Q820 processor.

Why is that so????

 

I have a similar issue. And I would like to hear what could be wrong.

Another thing is how to get rid of RED cast which is most visible when monitor shows black picture or when loading windows where there is a black background.

Thanks!

 

I have noticed a similar issue as well. Sometimes it just stops working for a few seconds. Most of the time it comes back in a few seconds.

 

I noticed it to. FYI, it happens when using the generic Synaptics driver as well as the Lenovo one, in case you were wondering.

 

So I am still not clear -

When I receive my W510 with 4GB in 1 Dimm, it will be in Slot 0?

I then add the second 4GB Dimm which is coming in which Slot to achieve Dual Channel performance?

 

Another question - on the fingerprint reader - can you set it up to have two people recognized by said reader?

 

Just scan one or two of your fingers and one or two from the other person.
It works on my T61p and W510.

 

What's with the fingerprint reader still turned on/operating when the computer is shut off? I shut down my computer and saw that the fingerprint reading light was blinking slowly. Once I swiped, it turned my computer on and logged in, which was nice, but how can I disable this function if I want to?

 

On the memory, the upper DIMMs are the "0"s. Revising my previous statement, I "think" you have to put your paired DIMMs in both upper slots to support the dual channel mode. That means one under the chassis and one under the keyboard in the topmost slots. With that said, if the DIMMs are not perfect matches you may not realize the performance gains anyway. That's why they recommend buying them in pairs.

All users can log in via the fingerprint reader if you allow it.

When you open the laptop the power comes back on if you only put it to "sleep" as opposed to "shut down". My computer cannot be powered on from the "shut down" state by swiping alone to my knowledge.

EDIT: Son-of-a-gun!!! Just tried it and indeed the finger swipe powered on my W510 from a "shut down" state. SWEET! Sorry for doubting you. In order to turn this off:

Start>ThinkVantage>ThinkVantage Fingerprint Software>Settings

Under Power-on Security remove the check from the box labeled Use fingerprint scan instead of power-on button. Again my apologies.

Also, one of the other tabs in settings allows you to turn the lights on the reader off independent of the swipe to power on feature.

 

"On the memory, the upper DIMMs are the "0"s. Revising my previous statement, I "think" you have to put your paired DIMMs in both upper slots to support the dual channel mode. That means one under the chassis and one under the keyboard in the topmost slots. With that said, if the DIMMs are not perfect matches you may not realize the performance gains anyway. That's why they recommend buying them in pairs."

So the Dimm with the 4GB installed on my yet to be delivered W510 will be in the upper Slot under the keyboard and the other identical 4GB Dimm that I ordered from Lenovo would go under the chassis in the left or right side Slot (as there is not a upper or lower under the chassis) if the palm rest is pointing toward me upside down?

 

Upper and lower DIMM slots applies to both locations if memory serves. That manual linked to above by orev shows both pairs as upper and lower. I'm not sure if the installed DIMM will be under the keyboard or under the chassis. Like I said, mine had two DIMMs when I received it, and I really don't remember where they were. Must have been the excitement of installing 16 GB of ram into a laptop that overtook my senses. At any rate, the panel underneath is the easiest to remove so check there first, once your unit arrives.

 

Can anyone give me their experience utilizing the Slice Battery (57Y4545)? Also, what should I make of this listing and price for a external battery charger: LVO THINKPAD EXTERNAL BATTERY CHARGE - Z - CDW Internal Use/Service Pts - 40Y7625-BSTK - CDW.com

 

After fidlding around with the Lenovo touchpad settings for awhile, i've managed to get much better responsiveness.

I think the unresponsiveness has to do with it trying to detect valid movement on the touchpad. What I did was disable edgemotion, and all of the smart check settings(palm check, etc). Essentially everything besides "enable two finger scrolling".

Now it seems to be working better, and is for the most part on par with what you might expect with the multitouch performance.

Hope that helps.

 

Excellent. Thanks for figuring this out.

 

NP, after being wrong I felt I had to go the EXTRA mile to redeem myself... LOL!

 

Hello Forum readers and responders,

I just receive my Lenovo W510 (intel 820QM, 320GB, 4GB ram, and FHD display) yesterday (12/09/2010), and I thought I would share some of my thoughts with the community.

Overall I am extremely pleased with the laptop. I am an architecture graduate student and I was looking to replace my IBM Z60m Thinkpad with something more powerful. I was also happy with my old Thinkpad, but after 4 + years it wasn't able to keep up my needs. I primarily multitask between different CAD, graphics, modeling, and GIS software while listening to music. I looked at many different laptops before choosing another Thinkpad. I concede to the fact that I now might be a case study for how brand loyalty and recognition are important marketing tools. The main competitors were a Dell Precision, Dell Latitude, HP Envy 14, and an Apple Mac Pro 15. I chose the W510 because I felt it had the right balance of hardware specs, build quality, visual appeal, and price. As a self proclaimed designer I appreciate good build and aesthetic quality for a reasonable price.

Upon making my decision to purchase the w510 I was concerned with how the Thinkpad quality had changed over the years. The Thinkpad z60m was one of the last laptop models designed under the IBM name. I had formed an understanding that IBM's Thinkpad product line represent a high standard of quality, which is why they were the choice for many technical and business companies around the globe. When IBM sold the company to Lenovo I was concerned about the retention of product quality, and the ultimately the Thinkpad name. After one day of use, I am willing to claim that not only has Lenovo retained the product quality that IBM established, but might have also improved on it. I understand that my claim is bias. I probably still suffer from cool-new-fast-tech-thing syndrome, but the quality looks and feels very high. The screen alone is enough to make a blind man cry. I also think the keyboard has improved. I'm not sold on the Cliclet-style keyboards yet.

Finally, a few notes about my initial experience booting up the laptop. First, I notice that my DVD player wasn't working. I wanted to test the sound and video quality but Windows 7 said the device was powered off. Second, I tried to uninstall Office 2010, but it got hung up uninstalling 75% complete. I have a copy of 2007 and that is enough for me. Third, when I tried shutting off the laptop after I canceled the uninstall office process, again the computer had me waiting for a while. After I rebooted the system I found everything to be better. What I took away from this experience was that anyone with a new W510, or any new laptop for that matter, reboot the system immediately after the first initial boot. I assume I was moving to fast for the computer and tried to do to much initially. I assume everything wasn't 100% initialized yet.

Despite a small discouraging experience at first boot, I am extremely happy with my new W510. I would recommend the laptop to anyone that that looking for the best combination of tech specs, build quality, aesthetics, and price. As noted earlier, I am bias because I am still under the spell of a cool new tech device with a megawatt screen. Now only time will tell if my observations are well founded or not.

 

The slice battery is a bit bulky if you consider taking it along often, but in the end the extra autonomy and the slight tilt that it brings to the machine and keyboard position are well worth it! Highly recommended!


Current configuration: W510 i7-920XM, 16GB RAM, 160GB SSD, 15.6in 1920x1080, 1GB nVIDIA NVS 5100m, Blu-Ray RW, Intel 802.11agn, Vodafone WWAN, Bluetooth, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint rdr, Color Calibrator, Camera, 9c + 9c slice, Win7 Enterprise 64

 

"The slice battery is a bit bulky if you consider taking it along often, but in the end the extra autonomy and the slight tilt that it brings to the machine and keyboard position are well worth it! Highly recommended!"

How much battery life does the slice give you?

 

Guys did anyone found fix for the touch pad?
Also have anyone tried this hybrid HDD?
Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB Internal hard drive - 300 MBps - 7200 rpm

 

1) Yes. Please read the forum. The answer is only a few posts above where you posted this question. http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/453245-lenovo-w510-owners-thread-267.html#post6956335

2) I already answered your questions about hard drives here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/453245-lenovo-w510-owners-thread-263.html#post6943316 There are so many hard drives you are never going to find someone who can report on a specific model used in a specific laptop. If you really want to see reviews of hard drives, look at storagereview.com and make your decisions based on those reviews. Any 9.5mm height SATA drive will work in the W510.

 

cpam,
I got that same hard drive off of Amazon a week or two ago, with a data transfer kit and some mounting bracket, the kit was $149.00 for everything. I got this drive to transfer the files for my new W510. The transfer was quick but I haven't installed the drive as of yet. From what I'm hearing it is a good hd, and I couldn't beat the price at all.

 

Thanks Val0673,
Pls tell us what you think once is installed.

 

Hello all,

I just got my w510 and I have to say that I've hit some glitches that make me wonder about the choice. The system came with Windows 7 32 bit pre-installed (an oversight in not specifying 64 bit, caught too late after I ordered and which I intend to fix). After booting into Windows one, not long after having finished the preliminaries, I left the machine running and noticed that it logged me out after a while. After a bit more time I noticed it rebooting spontaneously. I had left the Windows Update settings unspecified so that it was not doing automatic install and restarts - this was a crash.

Later, I tried to use the DVD writer to write an ISO image out, but the drive wasn't visible. I thought something must be wrong (later I saw that the Power Manager removes it after a while, but it can be re-activated). Thinking that the system should probably be brought up to date, I went through both Windows and Lenovo updates and installed pretty much everything that made sense to me. After these updates, things started to go wonky - the video driver was disabled somehow (went back to some unaccelerated version), the audio driver was disabled, the modem, the integrated camera, as well as another entry in Device Manager called "Plug and Play Software Device Enumerator". I spent the rest of the day trying to play around with things to get these things working again (updating to latest NVvidia drivers, re-installing from the SWTOOLS directory, etc), but to no avail. Finally I restored the system back to the initial state and things are back to working in the Device Manager.

I noticed a few pages back in this thread that someone else had reported problems after updating. I don't understand how the Lenovo updates that are specific to this system could cause a problem. Same with the Microsoft updates - I'm usually very prompt in updating with these on all my other systems (including an older X60 tablet), and I've never had the number of errors reported here - I even had one where, while installing a driver, there was a problem reading a file, but repeated attempts finally succeeded. Before someone says that my problems could stem from a faulty hard disk, I find it too coincidental that the issues I see (the exact devices not working) were previously reported.

Can anyone confirm that they have applied all the MS updates and all the important Lenovo ones without issues? I guess this would be with the latest as of today just to be comparing oranges to oranges. If we must be so careful, I have to say that this many problems all at once is a first for me and I've been doing these kinds of updates forever on other systems.

Cheers,
Adrian

 

Have you try reinstalling different copy of Windows? I had similar problems in the past with one of my other laptops. Sound like you may have dodgy OS... As well as drivers! I have all updates on my W510 and the only problem is the touch pad… which is ok for now.

 

Exactly the same as the regular 9-cell battery.

 

ebay US price of $US1600 Vs $US4400 (in Australia) for the same W510 model makes its irresistible.
New Intel i7 CPUs are just around the corner: Sandy Bridge (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Should I wait or should I buy it now?

 

I can assure you that the Sandy Bridge will be more expensive when they come out and I think you will find for pure speed that the i7 offerings on the W510 now are not that much slower: Mobile Processors - Benchmarklist - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Thanks for the link Dauntlessone76008.
I can only see 3DMark06 results for Sandy Bridge i7. i7 2820QM score is 5790 and 820QM is 3226. That's almost an 80% improvement. This could be due to a powerful GPU on Sandy Bridge laptop.

I guess we have to wait and see...

 

Turns out that one of the sticks of RAM that I bought was defective. I probably corrupted the pre-installed Windows so that even when I tried removing the additional, third-party, RAM to see if that was the problem, I was still getting all kinds of flaky behavior so I wasted lots of time looking at other possible causes. I bought the system with only 2GB and bought an additional 8GB.

An additional mix-up was that my order had listed the pre-installed RAM as 1066 MHz type and I bought the 8 based on that info only to find out later that the 2 GB was 1333 MHz. I ended up removing the 2 and only using the 8 so that I could have them run in dual channel mode which wouldn't have been possible with 10 GB installed. Oh well, better faster RAM (10.6 GB/s vs 7 GB/s with the 1066 MHz ram) than a bit more, but slower - everything's running smoothly now, after a complete re-install.

 

This was the very conundrum that I was in when I ordered the W510 on the 26th of November - due to be delivered today. I got what I think is a great price for the W510 with the 820QM and everything but the Multi-touch. I weighed waiting on the Sandy Bridge configuration, but in the end I decided that the configuration had everything I needed and that the Sandy Bridge option would be more expensive (an unknown) and when they would actually be out might be sometime in the first of 2011 (another unknown).

In the end I decided that at the price point I was purchasing the W510 at I just could not be making a mistake.

 

Hi Guys

How long did it take for you to get W510?

I ordered on on Nov 26, shipped out on Dec 4, but still not get it. It is waiting for Custom Clear. Is that normal? Why the Custom takes so long to clear the package? Is that because of the holiday season and the weather?

I can pick up the package once it gets to my local UPS, but can't even check the delivery status from UPS, because my package is not entered in their system yet!

So mad!

 

I too ordered a W510 on the 26th of November and it still is not here - although UPS seems to think it will be here still this week - I have no idea.

 

Can't go wrong with a 7.2k Seagate Momentus. I've had several and all gave excellent performance for a good price.

 

Are you able to check the status from UPS website? I always get "UPS could not locate the shipment details....." after I entered the shipment reference number that Lenovo gave to me. I double-checked the number with Lenovo and was told that the number is correct. The Lenovo agent told me this is normal and it means the package is still hold by Custom!

 

Go read the first 10 or 20 pages of this thread and see how long shipping was taking this spring. It's all relative.

 

I just received my W510 today and I have to say that it exceeds my expectations.

 

Congrats! (I guess that's what you say for such an occasion, huh?) You finally got it. I know you'd been waiting on it for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time...

 

Unfortunately it seems that I have the whine coming from the processor problem that others have mentioned - and it apparently is not just with Lenovo but other manufacturers - so I am off to tech support. It is a very high whine and coming from the upper left of the W510, but it is not something I want to try to just live with. Other than this whine the W510 is arguably the best laptop I have ever owned.

 

I'm hearing some whine or noise, too, though I haven't gone as far as to figure out exactly which corner of the machine it's originating from. So it's a processor issue? I guess I need to search around for this, too.

 

Hello everyone,
I’m a new ThinkPad owner, a W510, and so far I love it. There is one thing that concerns me though. It may seem petty, but the fingerprint reader seems loose. Now, I’m not sure if this is normal or not as I’ve never seen or touched one before. I’m considering sending it back for repair. But, before I make a stink about it, I’d like to hear from others whether this is normal. Does your fingerprint reader move around like it is spring loaded, or is it fixed solid to the case?
Thanks,
RH

 

Mine does move up and down very slightly, but until you mentioned it I didn't notice it. If it feels really loose to you, I would have it repaired. It shouldn't move more than 1mm or so.

 

Thanks for the response. Mine also seems to move only about 1mm or so. It’s enough that I can feel and hear it creak and pop when I slide my finger over it. I was thinking it may be spring loaded and just part of the design. I don’t know. It just seems odd to me, as the rest of the machine is built like a tank. If no one else chimes in I guess I’ll just assume it’s normal.

 

Mine moves and it appears to me to be by design. In total, it moves downward less than a mm and swivels a bit to and fro when I swipe. Even still it feels nicely constructed and does not seem to be defective.

On cpu whine, as I understand it the only way to eliminate the noise is to run the cpu in performance mode continuously which would kill battery life. I have had the last several iterations of intel processors do this while the were down clocked. It appears the fixes are use the AC or use performance mode even when on battery. The battery life is already lackluster for a laptop, so I just grin and bear it.

 

Creak and pop? Try using a lighter touch. I don't think you can blame that one on Lenovo

 

Hey Adrian,

Just to let you know you're not alone. I got my W510 last May and had a similar event happen when I tried the Lenovo Update Application. Mine kept trying to boot but would give me the BSOD when trying to boot up. I had to reinstall from the recovery drive, and everything has been fine. The only other issues I've had were a dead pixel right out of the box. I sent it in for replacement (this was the HD+ screen) and they sent it back with an HD screen. I sent it in again, and for my troubles they gave me a FHD screen...worth it since they were out of stock when I originally ordered it. I've also had to send it in when it stopped booting. I know that sounds like a lot of trouble but all in all this is the best performing laptop I've owned and nice and sturdy (I'm in the military and I wanted a rugged laptop). I had tried both a HP DV6t Quad Edition and Envy 15 and they were nowhere near the quality of this one...nor performance. The Envy had the much better video card though but I'm not a gamer.

 

The battery life is lackluster overall for a laptop but I wouldn't say it is bad for the power it has. As I just mentioned I tried a Envy 15 before getting this W510 and the battery life on that one was horrible. It only came with a 6-cell which lasted an hour and a half if you were lucky and everything else turned off. The 9-cell slice got you a total of about 2.75 hours if I remember when I tested it. That was with a Core i7 720QM that was also permanently performance limited to 800MHz when on battery power. You couldn't change it and HP wouldn't fix it...part of the reason I went to Lenovo.

 

My point was that if you put the laptop in a mode where the CPU does not down clock to eliminate cpu whine, you would have abysmal battery life, probably much less than the 1.5 hours you mentioned.

On the other hand, this is truly a portable workstation, and I celebrate the horsepower it brings to the table. Otherwise, I would have ended up with a Macbook, lol. BTW, In an era where laptops run for an entire business day, I consider 2-3 hrs of battery life lackluster (just my opinion though).

 

To be specific, the whine usually comes from the CPU going to C3 or lower, with C2 being ok. Limiting to C2 does have some impact on battery life, but it's not that dramatic.
Maybe you could get a tool that allows finer power mode control than whatever win provides and play with the settings.

My fingerprint reader doesn't move at all.

 

Which of the USB ports is the USB 3.0?