SATA III SSD on Lenovo?

Hey guys,
I've read through this forum quite a bit and finally decided to register.

Anyway, I'm looking for a new laptop (for college industrial engineering student) and one thing that I really want is for it to be able to take full advantage of new SATA III SSDs with 6gbps speeds.

Do you guys know which Lenovo laptops, if any at all, are SATA III? I was looking at the Ideapad V470, but can really go for any Lenovo computer.

Specs that also interest me:
Quad core processor
Preferably, though not necessarily, on the smaller side to increase portability.

I will be upgrading RAM and the SSD on my own.

Thanks!

 

Most of the current generation ThinkPads (such as Tx20/X220/W520) have SATA III capability. If you want a system with a Quad Core processor then you probably want to be looking at the T520 or the W520 which are 15.6" notebooks. Unofficially the 14" T420 can take Quad Cores (this is a DIY job) but it does struggle on stress.

 

Hi,
I have never seen an ideapad in person, but I'd recommend you stick to the Thinkpads from Lenovo. They're built better.

The Ideapad line was created to compete against consumer notebooks from Dell, HP, Acer. They are made mostly out of plastic to reduce costs.

The Thinkpad line is made to compete against the business notebooks from Dell and HP. The Thinkpads have a magnesium chasiss that is covered with plastic panels. This makes the Thinkpads more durable, I'm still using my x40 from 2005.

 

Every single Sandy Bridge Lenovo supports SATA 3. Given your needs you'll likely want to look at the W520 or the T520.

Main question is your main purpose in getting an SSD? Unless you do tons of I/O, SSDs are mainly just a plaything. With SSD's you'll need to live with limited space, as well as paying through the nose for a decent sized SSD. You'd probably be better off with more RAM and a fast 7200 rpm drive.

 

If space is a concern you could always buy one of the intel mSATA SSD, install your OS on that, and keep all your data files on a large HDD.

 

SSDs also make a fair difference in battery life - both from not needing to spin the drive itself, and from not having to handle the extra heat generated. They're also usually a bit lighter.

Another consideration is that usually SSDs will fail to read only, so you can still recover data.

I also noticed a significant boot in performance and responsiveness on my laptop when I upgraded from a 7200rpm disk to a modern SSD.

 

Actually it's only when you move from a mechanical drive to an SSD in a laptop that already uses very little power will it result in a significant battery life gains. In a gaming laptop, the battery life savings is hardly anything, while in a netbook the results can be tremendous.

There is also which brand uses less power, and the answer is Intel and Samsung. IIRC there was a Kingston series that had horrendous battery life due to a super aggressive GC algorithm.

Heat from modern drives should hardly be a consideration for an SSD, perhaps vibrations yes but I hardly notice them in my machines.

Sure boot times and overall responsiveness is improved, but does that result in additional profits? Sure time is money, but does having an application load 1 second faster translate to more money made vs the cost of buying that SSD? Again, for most people, SSDs are playthings. Very few people "need" SSDs.

SSD's are more durable, but reliability is another story. Take a look at all the horror stories of OCZ and overall SandForce reliability. Also data recovery is more difficult AFAIK. We send out failed drives all the time to data recovery specialists. Of the 5 SSDs we sent out, only 1 was successful in recovering some of the files, 4 were complete failures.

 

I suspect this is one of those 'tools for the job' moments.

On my T420 is made a reasonable difference - about an extra hr or so on the battery IIRC - and as it's a working tool for me I wanted excellent battery life, reasonable weight and as little heat as possible for when I'm using it on the move on my lap. Against all of these things, and as it's a company laptop, an SSD is a trivial cost.

What probably also makes a difference is my only ever buying Intel SSDs - the X25-E's before and a 320 this time round for the self-encryption. Capacity is largely irrelevant for me as I rarely use more than about 60GB of any laptop drive. Like I say, tools for the job, but IMO an SSD is far from a plaything - it's something that quite genuinely allows me to be more effective for work.