Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

Hi guys,

I have a W520 (with Quadro 2000m) and I want to connect it to my TV in order to watch movies (so both image and sound should go to the TV). What cable/s do I need to buy? Does it depend on the TV that I have? I would of course prefer being able to watch in HD if possible.

Thanks!

 

I read Intel will release mid September... man... now I'm almost tempted to cancel my order and hold off until Lenovo updates.

This is my first CTO build with Lenovo, do they charge a fee for cancellation? Are they like HP, where they will try to convince you with a partial refund ($100) to keep the order alive? You guys think Lenovo will update the CPUs as soon as they're released? And I wonder if the promotions will disappear for a bit when the CPUs are refreshed?

 

From what I've heard, requesting a cancellation will speed up the delivery process.

In all seriousness though, it seems like few cancellations actually go through and you get a machine delivered to your doorstep anyways. Though, Lenovo should give you a box to send the package back and you'll get a full refund. From what I've seen, a lot of manufacturers do not put in the refreshed processors until a little while after they are released (probably to get the most out of their current stock of processors). So, if Intel is refreshing in mid September, expect the refreshments to make their way into laptops in like mid October to November. But really, does that 100 MHz really matter that much?

 

Has anyone ever had any issues with the volume control on their laptop? Occasionally for me the buttons stop responding for a minute or so. It seems to to happen most often after I actually start pushing sound through the speakers, youtube videos etc. But that's likely just a coincidence.

 

Truth be told, I'll probably never push the CPU to its very limits. However, it will be somewhat annoying to see Sandy Bridge refreshed days after I receive my W520.

i7 2720QM ---> 2760QM is a .200ghz bump
It's essentially a free 2720QM to 2820QM upgrade
And I'm thinking I should have just upgraded to FHD through Lenovo, since I've read that I'll void my warranty if I upgrade it myself. I already have the AUO B156HW01 V.4, so that's why I skipped on the upgrade.

 

I got my w520 yesterday! but I was really disappointed with the display color! Colors are over saturated, I see bright reds and make my eyes burn. Sadly I didn't add the color calibrator Now I'm stuck.

I did try windows calibrator and didn't help. I found Color Management wizard on windows and I saw you could install icc files. Which have the color calibration settings.

Now, someone with color calibrator please share their .icc file. The files are located in Windows > System32 > Spool > Drivers > Color

It will be helpful for anyone who owns w520 without color calibrator! Thanks in advance.

 

Can somebody read Chinese? The message poped-out now, I do not know what is it about, screenshot is attached.

 

BIOS 1.30 is out:

Readme: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8buj09us.txt

Download:
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8buj09us.exe

 

to wolfindersteppe:

it is Chinese, but just some random char no mean anything.

 

did you notice any improvements with this bios? after blasting my hard drive with the bluetooth update a few months back i'm a little hesitant...

 

The company I work for just announced that Lenovo Thinkpads will be new corporate standards for laptop, replacing Dell machines. And we speak hear about 50K+ employees . Now I just have to try to persuade my boss to refund my W520 .

 

Nah, hide your W520 and persuade your boss to buy you another one.

 

I wouldn't mix my work and pleasure anyway. It's never a good idea (excluding telecommuting).

 

I haven't installed it yet. I am currently travelling, so I wait until I get home. Others are reporting positive results:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/BIOS-1-30-Posted/td-p/521453

 

I installed the 1.30 BIOS yesterday night. So far, so good... My system will now restart with an extra monitor attached. I'll let you guys know if there's any hiccups.

 

Finally have a ship date after having my order cancelled once billed to my credit card 3 times, fingers crossed should ship next week.

 

Woo W520! ^____________^

The FHD panel does indeed have very saturated reds, but I don't think it's actually oversaturated.

For example, on Contrast - Lagom LCD test, each shade of red is clearly distinguishable.

NotebookCheck's ICC made things look way worse, so I went back to the Windows provided scRGB profile.

Also hitting 80C in Crysis at 1920x1080 on high at 27fps (33fps with a modest GPU overclock).

 

Here is my result with a Crucial M4 with the new 009 firmware and the 1.30 W520 firmware

 

thanks. i'm traveling as well. i think i'll wait until i get back on monday or tuesday. that way if it bricks my laptop i won't have to wait several days to get it fixed.

 

Whats the highest transfer rates people get with SSDs? Non raid of course?

 

I've installed 1.30 without any problems. There is some TurboBoost on battery now @ 2.4MHz, no stuck CPU when going from battery to AC, CPU is running a bit cooler, several other enhancements/fixes reported by others (AES-NI now works).

 

here's what i got.[/ATTACH]

 

I have now updated to BIOS 1.30. It appears stable and no problems. But no noticeable improvement for me either.

My PCMark 7 benchmarks:

On A/C: 4466 PCMarks
Battery: 2162 PCMarks

Power Manager settings: Maximum Performance, Maximum Turbo, etc.

Note: PCMark 7 rates "everyday productivity performance". It is free and can be downloaded here: http://www.pcmark.com/benchmarks/pcmark7/download/

 

Did anyone else noticed any problems with DPC latency on their W520? Using DPC Latency Checker I can see huge spikes that happen on average about 2-3 times a minute (sometimes a lot more often), usually reaching over 90000 µs. The threshold that's considered acceptable is 1000 µs. This makes listening to music completely unenjoyable.

I tried killing every non-system process and service but it made no difference, which makes me think that it is driver related. I noticed that the only way to help it is to disable the wifi and unplug the network cable. Obviously, that's not really a solution...

I made sure that both wireless and ethernet drivers are up-to-date but it made no difference.

 

I listen to music a lot, using both the built-in speaker and my headphones (JVC Gummies, and the Sony in my sig) and never noticed any problems with the (low, I admit) quality of the music coming from them. Maybe to an audiophile it would be unacceptable, but for an average listener I'm sure they'll never notice.

 

It's not that it's necessarily low quality, the problem is that when the latency spikes up like that, the music stops playing for that period of time or gets distorted. It's really very hard to not notice it.

 

Eh, I haven't had that problem yet. Though if it happens I'll now know why at least.

 

Im gonna purchase a W520. Could we call Lenovo rep to negotiate prices like with Dell? I was just wondering. I actually chat with a Lenovo Rep, but he seemed quite unhelpful and terse.
By the way, my budget is quite limited, so I m not sure should I go for FULL HD or should be happy with 1600 x 900.

 

Retail for the configuration I ordered (in my sig, minus 8GB RAM and with a 500GB HDD instead of a SSD) was $2167 for the laptop, whereas I bought it for $1500 through haggling. I also added a 2yr TPP warranty and combined with taxes, was still only ~$1770, compared to a nearly $2200 W520 w/o warranty. So yes, you can haggle Lenovo.

 

haggle via phone or chat?

seriously don't know how my laptop search ended with this... Had almost settled for an elitebook, been going back and forth between the two...

 

So do they end up sending a quote via email, or do you just provide your payment details over the phone/chat session?

 

Anyone still found a hard drive caddy that fits properly from eBay?
I know the newmodeus ones fit fine, however when shipped outside of the states, they do cost a fair bit!

 

Phone. Spent 90 minutes over a two day span (Friday and then the following Monday). I can give you my rep's info if needed. Really nice guy.

Because I waited over the weekend, I had him email a quote to me (it's still a good idea to have something in writing regardless of the situation). When I was ready to order, I pulled out my mom's credit card (my debit card was still in the mail, and I immediately paid her back since I already had the cash for it). and provided the numbers over the phone.

Online Chat reps don't have a lot of wiggle room as far as haggling goes, so you'll be much better off talking to a live Lenovo rep, especially from the US like my rep (US reps have more wiggle room than outsourced counterparts, so I hear).

 

Also remember you can always call back for a new rep.

My first rep refused to haggle because I was calling through the B&N discount and she couldn't authorize any further discounts but the 2nd guy I called I managed to lower the price $100 further (on top of the 10% Labor day and B&N discount)

 

2nd HDD hard drive Caddy For LENOVO Thinkpad T510 W510 | eBay
This fits perfectly

 

I'm not seeing this at all. Usually, the spikes are around the 1250us range.

EDIT: NVM. Looks like I jinxed myself. They're popping up, but not audibly distorting audio for me.
It never happened with the stock 7mm drive...

LatencyMon is pointing the blame at IaStor.sys...

 

Greetings. A newbie on this site. I just received my newly purchased W520 two weeks ago. The color is atrocious, and scanning the site, I see this is addressed.

More troubling for me is the keyboard seems to be rubbish- it is el cheapo incarnate. This is rather disappointing because one of the primary reasons I bought a ThinkPad was for the keyboard. I have a T410i sitting on my desk, and have used different models over the years- all had the best keyboards imaginable- precise with great touch. This thing has a keyboard like a piece of sh*t Dell Inspiron circa 1996. Any other recent production folks out there with the same impression?

What with the gawd-awful color, poor alignment of text (too), and the cheap keyboard, this is, even given it is tax-deductible, a disappointing purchase. Anyone else have the same impression? Did the keyboard settle in? Did you manage to get your turqoise and red undercontrol?

Should we just expect this to be the product evolution as the Chinese owners start wringing out the value of the firm? Were it not that I needed to run the Bloomberg API using .NET on this machine, I would have gone with the MacBook/Bootcamp solution. Maybe that will be the only solution for decent hardware in the future.

 

@observer_xyz,
Which display panel do you have? HD, HD+ or FHD?

The keyboard is fine for me, except it feels notably shallower in throw or action than the previous generation of keyboards.

The T410i and W520 use the same keyboard; maybe you just got a bad manufacturer for the W520 one?

@RikoOnWeb,
Something I did made DPC latencies rocket up to ~2000us 100% of the time, and it turned out to be the Ethernet NIC. Disabling that made things happy, and I'm going to update it with Intel drivers.

 

Thanks for the response Colonel.

The keyboards are the same layout, but the feel is extremely different. Hence my suspicion that the cost reduction demons are at play. Truly and unfortunate turn of events.

The monitor is 1920x1080. Is that FHD?

I have another question and you might have the answer-

I did not order 8GB memory. There is a possible solution on Digital Tigers for $30:

Kingston KVR1333D3SO/4GR Laptop Memory Module - 4GB, PC3-10600, DDR3-1333MHz, Non-ECC, CL9, SODIMM at TigerDirect.com

Having looked at Lenovo past purchase thought, the 8GB option, which would have had 2x4gb modules, versus the 1x4gb I purchased, cost and add'l 180 or so. That makes the $30 seem too cheap, and raises the question of whether it is truly compatible. Any ideas?

 

That was TigerDirect. Digital Tigers are my desktop guys.

 

There should be three different manufacturers for the keyboard: Chicony, ALPS, and NMB. Each has it's own feel, and some are [subjectively] better than others. You can try a straight swap between the two.

1920x1080 is FHD. I haven't seen much of a tint. Poor alignment of text is more of a Windows issue; Windows defaults to 125% DPI scaling here and it doesn't work with every program. Consider dropping the DPI scaling back to 100% if you can still read it. Not sure about the color tint; it looks fine to me.

The RAM should be compatible. I moved a 2GB Kingston PC-10700 RAM to my W520 and it works fine (surprisingly it has a temperature reading in HWMonitor whereas the stock stick doesn't).

 

Colonel-

Many thanks for the input. I am astonished at your level of knowledge. Manufacturers of keyboards? I wouldn't know where to begin.

Thanks Again!

 

Ordered:

W520

i7-2620
FHD
Quadro 1000
4GB 1333Mhz [ soon upgrading to 8GB]
320GB 7200RPM [ upgrading to Intel SSD soon]
Intel 6300

$1290 after tax and shipping

 

Was this made with the LABORDAY eCoupon deal earlier today? I was checking out this deal earlier and it seemed to be a solid deal. I was thinking of getting a similar W520 (minus the FHD) but it looks like they just downgraded this Labor Day sale! They actually seem to be charging more now *with* the eCoupon than before this sale even took place (based on prices from last week)! The same laptop you have listed above now runs (with eCoupon LABORDAY) for $1358 before tax!

 

How much is there a difference between the Quadro 1000 and 2000? Not worth the price if I am not into rendering right?

 

I am really wondering about lenovo's processes, I placed order for w520 for total with taxes $2,546.34. the cs on the phone authorized my cc right away for several transactions that total 2500(approx) that was 1 Sep. Sat night (3 Sep) they got authorizations for another 2500. Called my bank and they said they are known for this and the authorizations will expire. But if i didnt have credit available on my card, would they cancel order again. Strange way to do business

 

Unless you plan on some heavier gaming or heavy CAD, you'll be fine with the 1000M. The 2000M is really just a 1000M with extra CUDA cores (128 vs 92, IIRC); bus, memory, etc are all the same.

 

Actually, it's 192 vs 96.

 

Hi. I was thinking of buying a W520 for college. I might be buying during the cyber monday, would that be a good date for sales?

Also I want to know how good the keyboard of this compared to a macbook pro.

 

A MacBook Pro can't even dream about competing with a ThinkPad in the keyboard department. The ThinkPad keyboard is way out of the Mac keyboard's league. I'm personally a touch typist that can type 120 WPM on a standard desktop keyboard (about 110 ~ 115 WPM on the ThinkPad keyboard). I can do about 95 ~ 105 WPM on a MBP (or actually almost any keyboard), but it just doesn't feel anywhere near as nice.