Lenovo W540 Announced today

I wouldn't call it an epic fail, though machine is definitely not without it's issues. Specifically, if you rely heavily on TrackPoint (not TrackPad), like I do, you should know that getting it to work right will take a good deal of tinkering with software. There is a patch for evdev in Arch Linux to make it work relatively well, if you use Arch all you should need to do is to make sure your evdev is up to date and you have a certain config in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/. If you use another distro you should still be able to apply that patch and build your own evdev if you're familiar with patching process, but if you're not or if you use Windows I'm afraid a cannot help you.

Other than TrackPoint issues and a worse keyboard layout compared to W520 (but better compared to W530) I actually had pretty good experience with the machine so far, and I'm loving the 212+ dpi of the "3K" display (2880x1620) - fonts look superb. The function keys defaulting to multimedia - it appears Fn lock state is preserved across power cycling/reboots/sleep, so I had to enable it only once and it stayed on ever since. I'm not particularly bothered by lack of HDD/SSD activity led, not anywhere as much as I thought I would be. I've heard other people complaining about poor sound quality from built-in speakers on Linux (lack of Dolby software), but I'm always using either headphones or external speakers, so I can't say much about that. One more thing is that it appears new Ultrabay is not hot-swappable, though that doesn't bother me personally much either as I don't use optical drives anymore so I have two SSDs permanently sitting in my laptop, with additional storage accessed as SANs.

I'm not sure if choice of OS matters in that regard, but on Linux the 4900MQ appears to have no problems getting up to and staying at 3.8GHz on AC. Haven't paid attention on battery.

 

Any hands-on opinion about the IPS panel?

 

This may not be enough, but see right above:

 

Why is there still only 1 video on all of youtube of the w540?

Reading in the forums it seems some people have already received them. Id really like to see a closeup of the computer.

 

There are some closeups on Lenovo site. Or do you want a specific angle that's not there?

 

I wouldn't call the machine itself for an epic fail, but the launch of the machine combined with what we get is an epic fail. They are extremely late compared to Dell and HP and in addition the computer has all different kinds of flaws. I would expect a wide launch nearing 5 months after the competitors means that they should have had time to fix issues and trim BIOS and so on. If you are late you should have higher quality.

I suspect Lenovo is going for the title "worlds largest PC supplier (in units)" meaning that they will focus more and more on cheap computers with lower quality. From what I have seen of lenovos latest offerings such as the L540 it feels more or less like an acer computer.

 

You can find a few user-made photos here: www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=240&t=3760956

 

Just received an e-mail with a 10% coupon for the W540 work station. This is kind of ironic since barely any W540s is delivered to Sweden yet. Hopefully this means that they are ramping up production and somehow understands that they need something to pick up sales from HP and Dell.

The interesting thing is that if a secondary hard drive in the ultra bay is selected the expected shipping is increased from "1-2 weeks" to "more than 4 weeks". This points to the fact that they are having troubles with the design of the ultra bay adapter. Just manufacturing shouldn't be a problem since its basically just some plastic with SATA connectors.

 

I like how in both posts you made on both sites you put it as W450

First thing i got into work was check these two threads

 

Now I have got the eighth push back of the delivery. This time to Mars 12. If it is released that date (i highly doubt it), it will be more or less exactly 6 months after my friend got his ZBook, and about 5½ months after my company got their first Dell 4800 delivered.

At the same time, the customer where I do my consulting has chosen to switch away from Lenovo for all their hardware. I cant take credit for that switch, but they have heard quite alot of the W540 fail (including the BIOS bug that would brick the computer if used with a Samsung 840 SSD), and it has influenced their decision. After all, being able to deliver on time and with quality is the most important thing when dealing with enterprise customers, and Lenovo have failed both. Although Sweden is a small market for Lenovo and the loss of sales for 800 units its not that big deal globally it might be the start of a trend.

 

Finally I have got my W540 from Amazon Amazon.com: ThinkPad W540: Electronics and now exploring it. I love NVIDIA K2100M graphics performance and HD720p camera. Currently it has 8GB memory but I can easily upgrade it to 32GB. It's coming with 3 Year Lenovo Depot Warranty. So what was your experience? Have I made right decision, I think so. If anyone here had some bad experience with W540 then must share with me.

Thank you

 

1. TrackPoint, or specifically lack of dedicated physical buttons - by far the biggest "bad experience".
2. Keyboard layout - it's a marginal improvement over W530, but it's still a huge step back compared to W520.
3. Clickpad - I keep pressing it by accident. If things could go my way I'd do away with touchpad completely, leaving TrackPoint only, but having old school trackpad with small separate physical buttons would be nice too.
4. Unlike previous generations it heats up quite a bit in under the left palm rest, almost to the point of uncomfortable. But then I haven't noticed any throttling that other people keep talking about, so maybe that's why.
5. Yesterday I carried the laptop on it's side, and I noticed that lid doesn't stay closed tight. That made me resent the lack of lid latches from previous generations.

The one last bad experience is shared with all of the other ThinkPads and laptops in general since around 2008, namely 16:9 screens.

 

Do not attach a Samsung 840 Pro or Evo SSD to your system. If you havn't disabled Rapid Start in BIOS, your computer will be bricked and the motherboard has to be replaced. A new BIOS is on it's way. There is a thread on the lenovo forums that covers this issue.

 

That's independent from your system. Don't attach Samsung hardware to anything... in general.

 

Oh? Used plenty of Samsung hardware over the years, so far cannot complain.

Using Samsung EVO 840 1TB drive right now in my W540. The option to bypass some of the BIOS checks is turned on. So far everything is good.

 

I agree with Moon, that Samsung makes some fine products.

Lenovo made some fine products, too, at one time in the not too distant past. Now they have downgraded the W series by coming out with a half-baked machine, with some major BIOS problems, resulting in bricked motherboards. Apparently their recent BIOS update fixed the issue, but it is pretty embarrassing, given that the W540 was released so late in the Haswell life cycle.

The build quality has also taken a hit. It is no longer the rugged, robust build we have come to expect.

I love the Thinkpads and desktops I have procured for myself and my customers over the years, but there is a definite degradation in the product as of late, and I feel it necessary to look at the alternatives.

Sigh.

 

Completely agree with regards to Samsung quality. They might make a LOT of products with some appealing styling on the surface. But on closer examination, the workmanship and material quality is rarely there (cheap plastic). In addition, the reliability is atrocious. My opinion comes from experience with their products dating back to the early 80's with their green monochrome monitors to dot matrix printers. I've also owned a couple of their CDMA cell phones and one LCD display. I've had to return repair or replace all of these products at one time or another. Although I've never owned anything from LG (Lucky Gold Star), I've heard some bad experiences there as well.

I know the bulk of the insides of most electronics products contain something Samsung made, I will never buy Samsung end-product again.

 

My only experience with Samsung is when I bought a S3 phone last year. The earphone jack on the first one is non-working. Exchanged for a new S3, but its mini USB port broke in a month while I was traveling. Certainly not a nice experience.

 

Had Samsung RAM multiple times, worked perfectly fine. Samsung monitors - no problems either. Had Samsung Galaxy phablet - still works perfectly fine more than 2 years later, though back panel did become squeaky. Samsung HDDs - had several, only one died within week after I bought it, it was from faulty batch. IDK, maybe I'm just lucky that tech overall rarely fails on me.

 

That brings up a question. Will the Ultrabay that fit the W520 also fit the W540? I now have a large M500 SSD (960 GB) but am used to carrying two SSDs in one machine.

 

It looks like they use Serial Ultrabay Slim in W540, not the Serial Ultrabay Enhanced that was used in W500-W530 So unless the adapter you use is Slim one (Slim can fit in Enhanced, but will have a gap) you'll have to buy new one or order with second drive already in.

 

Well I just pulled the trigger on a W530 from Amazon (#20BG00016US). They had the 3k screen, K2100m, 4800mq processor and 256GB SSD for under $2000 shipped, including a 3yr depot warranty. It even had a few things I wasn't terribly concerned about, like color calibrator, fingerprint reader and AC wireless. It was a better deal than I could get by going through a Lenovo rep directly. Hopefully I get one with a less-clacky trackpad, but honestly, in the 8 years I've had my T61p I can hardly see any wear at all in its trackpad, so I'm not all that concerned about it. Having a brighter screen is going to be nice. I ordered 16GB of CAS9 ram separately, in addition to the 8GB it comes with.

It pretty much ticks all my buttons. Primary use will be Solidworks CAD. I would have preferred the 6-cell battery actually, since I will almost never use it on battery alone, but will have to travel with it occasionally, so if anyone with buyers remorse on their T540p with only a 6-cell wants to make a trade, I'd be interested.

 

Indeed it does not. Very annoying issue for a $2,500 WORKSTATION. The issue occurs when running large statistical analysis, Malwarebyte scan, Database conversion, and other such real world Workstation tasks.

Often I do not know if the computer is working, program crashes, or 'locked' if there is no screen activity.
Lenovo could look into the possibility of a BIOS patch to activate that useless 'I' dot on the ThinkPad logo do act as a Hard Disk activity indicator. It's like working with a Black Box.

Also annoying is the lack of "on" light on the PSU brick. I have an in line switch to turn off the power, but I need to 'feel' the switch as a reminder that I turned off the power, else the batteries might get killed, or danger of short/overheating and burning the carpet or building!!

 

Modern Mac laptops don't have an HDD/SSD activity LED either.

 

Macs are entertainment devices rather than workstations.

 

Hi everybody

I have a couple questions about W540/T540 (or even 440P, I don't think so but who knows...).
First, let me say I got a X23, an X60 and a Macbook (which I don't hate but no more thank you).

I know there's been changes in designs etc and I certainly wish they didn't but hey, if I could live with a Macbook for 5 years, I should be able to live with a modern Thinkpad

Now, more specifics:

* what about the optional mSata SSD. Is that only a cache or can it be used as a real boot drive.? Crucial makes up to 480 GB SSD in mSATA format. Or those compatible and can be used as boot drive. If so, that would a allow a HardDrive + boot SSD +optical drive. No need to remove the optical drive. But.. will work?

* The 3K screen is, I guess, almost unusable for casual desktop use? Office apps, Internet etc..
I'd be happy to have a 3K for Photoshop/Lightroom but if it messes up the rest... For what I read in other threads, it seems the 3K screen@1920 is of very good quality. If confirmed, at least it would secure an IPS panel although used only as an FHD one. TN sucks.

* Except the possibility of 4 RAM sticks and better GPU, not much difference between T540p and W540 i think. What other difference? I couldn't find a clear 'real world' weight for both. What about the power brick weight?

* T440p@FHD or T540P/W540@3K... much dpi difference ? I'd screw the calculation and prefer not to write stupid mistakes.

* Will any of those accept my older DDR3 sticks although they're only 1067Mhz, that'd be 8GB free to reuse...

* Where can I find coupons useable on Lenovo French webshop. I'm in Belgium but there's NO customization possible so I'll shop in France and get a friend's help.

Thank you all

 

Hi thibsie,
I'm typing this on my W540. I have upgraded it to m2SATA, 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM. It's a nice machine.
m2SATA can be boot drive, that's how I have it set up, but mSATA is not supported, has to be m2SATA and only 42mm also.
I have the 3k screen and it is superb. Windows 8.1 desktop scaling works great for recent apps, some older apps look atrocious.
The power brick for the W540 is lighter than for my old W530 by some stretch, I don't know about the T range.
I always get in trouble talking about RAM. I bought my W540 with 1 x 8GB stick in it and added 3 x 8GB from Crucial.com

 

It won't, I have one here, the drive is around 5mm thinner.
Also, the drive cannot be removed without taking the bottom panel off and removing a small screw. Bit odd when in the past we had plug and play capability.

The laptop is a good deal thinner than the W530 though, so this may be related.

 

Hi,

My W540 is arriving in serveral days, I have purchased a 840EVO SSD and am thinking about switch the original HDD with id, I wonder if the brick-issue has been fixed?

Thanks.

 

It's been fixed. Just get the latest BIOS.

 

Thanks APJ, it helps much.

I found (was it Ebay or Amazon... Amazon I think) a 42mm M.2 SSD of 128GB.
That should be OK as a boot. Data disk will come later, SSD or not.
If I can't find a suitable boot SSD, I'd keep my current m3 240GB as boot and replace the optical by a 750GB 7200rpm WD disk, or something along those lines...

I still weighting pros and cons but I'll probably go W540 rather T540.
Hope weight will be manageable for my back, everyday..

 

Yep. In the past they were used a workstation because of software essentially.
For couple years, software is, with a couple exceptions, no reason to use them as such and very recently, well...
Apple and their hardware are completely going to the entertainment side of things.
And this is part of what brings me back to PC, very quickly (running fast).

 

Is NBR going to review this laptop or not?

 

Given the lack of traffic on this thread I see that most have given up on ever seeing a new Lenovo Worksation with a Touch Screen in the near future.

 

First, Lenovo themselves said they had no plans for W540 with a touch-screen.

Secondly, I doubt many people in this thread care about touch screens.

 

I care about tablet PCs with active digitizers.

Touch screens are great for tiny devices like phones , iPads , and the like.

The W540 doesn't need a touch screen but an active digitizer would have been nice though...

 

Anyone has an idea about ETA ?
I placed my order on French store the 17th march and order is still 'processing'.
I'd be happy to at least get a notification stating it is delayed 3 weeks or something but at least I'd know :'(