Lenovo vs. Sony

Hi everyone,

I am trying to decide between Lenovo w510 and Sony F series. They have same i7 processor, i could load 8 gb on both and drives are same and they are both FHD.
Sony has the bigger screen:16.4" vs. 15.6" and actually is about $500 less for a similar spec.
I had some questions about the W510s:

1) I am currently using IBM/Lenovo T60p with 15.4" screen and a resolution of 1680 x 1050. The font is just the right size (sometimes wish it was bigger). I am really worried of how small it will get when you go FHD (and HD+ is not an option because I cannot go from 1050 to 900). Sony at least has a little more screen real estate to compensate. For those of you who own a W510 how does FHD look like from a readibility perspective? I know you can increase the DPI setting to 125% but that to me is a crutch and something I should not need to do on a 3k laptop.
2) RAM: If I went with Lenovo I was considering 16GB RAM. I read that some of you will get the 2GB and then buy the rest from other places. My question is how much money would that save and how would do you know which memory will fit?
3) Drive(s): I am considering an SSD but I am a bit nervous. I use my laptop for work and will do a fair amount of Visual Studio and SQL databases. I already know that SSDs are great for read performance but I have seen some mixed reviews on write performance in general and once it starts to get filled up. Cost is not necessarily an issue if I knew that I will not end up with worse write performance (or a drive that fails) if I went the SSD way.
Also, while cost is not an issue, space will be with some of my dbs. So I was thinking that the best solution would be an SSD for OS disk and a regular large 7200 rpm for data. Do you know if this can be done with Thinkpads T510 or W510?

I have had this T60p for 3-4 years now and it if werent for the fact that it only has 2 GB of RAM I would not give it up. It is amazingly sturdy and reliable and it has been running almost non stop (less so since I stopped playing WOW ). So I am leaning towards Lenovo vs Sony but the screen thing is pretty big to me since I need to see what is on it . I almost would prefer a t510 15.4" WSXGA+ screen with all the other stuff from w510.

Any input will be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

you can upgrade the ram to 3 gig on your T60p, which is the highest it will support.

T510 doesn't have 15.4 inch LCD it has the 15.6 inch lcd in HD and HD+ format.

regarding ram, it depends on how much Lenovo charges, which can vary quite a bit. Check newegg.com for price comparison if you are in North America.

 

Hi lead,

My mistake: I meant T500 and their 15.4" monitor.

 

The SSD & HDD combo is what I'd recommend. You'll need the UltraBay adapter to mount a second drive in the optical bay.

SSD's employ wear leveling to drastically reduce the chance you'd burn one out. The better ones (e.g. Intel X-25M G2) support Trim and aggressive write combining to ensure lasting write performance. In short, get an SSD, you won't regret it.

 

My personal experience. I have an old Thinkpad 1200i that is 7 years old that I got for Visual Basic programming. I never had any maintenance problems with it. Most of my Sony products have had reliability issues, so I stopped buying Sony.

 

For question (3):

The deteriorating performance when the drive is filled up problem is generally exaggerated. Yes, performance does get worse when filled up, but the performance is still excellent and you will only notice the deteriorated performance in benchmarks. And this problem is 90% fixed with TRIM support (Windows 7 needed). I would recommend getting only SSDs with Intel or Indilinx controllers. Intel has the best random read/write performance, but not-so-hot sequential write speed. However, the sequential write speed is still miles ahead of traditional HDD.

SSDs with Indilinx controllers have much faster sequential write speed, and although their random write/read speed is not as fast as Intel's, I don't notice any performance difference in normal usage (I have both Intel SSD and OCZ Solid 2, with has an Indilinx controller, on my computers).

Almost all SSDs with Intel and Indilinx controllers support TRIM with appropriate firmware, except the first generation of Intel SSD.

FYI, I have a 1+ year old first generation Intel SSD. It was installed on my X61, which I had been using everyday (till 2 weeks ago, when I got my X200). I had not noticed any performance degradation. On my desktop PC I have an second generation SSD, and on my X200 I have a OCZ Solid 2. I am very satisfied with the performance of each of them.