T400 vs W500

I am wondering to know sth about diffrent between T400 and W500:
can you help me:?

 

Look at the graphics options. And the screens.

 

The T400 has a 14.1" display and is available with Intel integrated graphics or ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3470 discrete graphics.

The T500 is the 15.4" sibling to the T400. In addition to the larger display (and available higher resolution), it also has the ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3650. The HD 3650 has roughly twice the 3D-capability of the HD 3470.

The W500 is very similar the to the T500. It has a variation of the ATI HD 3650 graphics card (ATI FireGL V5700) which is more suitable for specific, high-end professional applications with demanding graphics requirements. It also offers the highest resolution display of any Lenovo 15.4"- WUXGA (1920x1200) compared to the T500's WSXGA+ (1680x1050).

 

The T500/W500 also come standard with a card reader (it is an option that replaces PCMCIA on the T400), and DisplayPort is included on the notebook (a dock is required for the T400).

The principle differences though are screen size/resolution, LED backlight, physical size/weight, and video card.

They both use identical keyboards, have similar ports and layouts, and comparable build quality.

 

Well, I am looking at buying either the T500 or a W500, and I am not sure which is better for my needs, based on screen choices. I will use this machine primarily for photography. The W700 is awesome, but too large, too heavy, and I want battery life in excess of 4 hours. The integrated graphics on the T500 are actually adequate for photo processing, I believe. IP-S screens, self-profiling features...nice, but not currently available in a 500 series....

A laptop is not comparable to a proper, profiled wide gamut pro monitor, but I know lots of pros who do a majority of their work on their laptops while in the field. Only critical color work is done back at the desktop. I want the best photo laptop I can get in a current 15.4" model.

I want a bright, accurate screen in a 15.4" (I have a Compal Hel80 currently, the matte screen ended up a disappointment w/ muted colors) with great to fantastic battery life (for plane rides, primarily). I sure wish there were a way to see the T500 and W500 side by side, with all the screens available to compare...

There are pros and cons to a high resolution display in laptops- higher should be better for picture sharpness, digital sensor noise display, and subtle adjustments made in processing photos....but the screen text size is tough for my old(er) eyes...

Any thoughts?

 

The w500 is definitely your choice then.

 

I doubt you need a W500. Based on your usage you have no need for a FireGL card, and your statement about your eyes makes WUXGA on a 15.4" display less than ideal.

You also could consider looking for a T60P FlexView. This was the last 15" notebook released with an IPS display. The T500 is certainly faster, but for most things you won't notice. Plus having an IPS display is easily worth a small step down in performance for photo work.

 

The Compal Hel80 is matte, 1680 x 1050. The colors are muted, flat. Text can be trying, sizing it up in the browser screws up the page formating, sometimes there's no choice after a long day...

My impression is that the matte screen is too dull compared to most glossy screens. I chose matte to avoid screen glare, but I think that was not the best choice. By "bright" I mean "vibrant". Cranking the brightness up or down defeats the purpose of profiling your LCD. Setting white point and brightness is the first step in profiling.

I am aware of the T60 w/ IP-S....and I wish getting one was the solution - Problem is that these are older, and it's more an issue of the backlights aging than the power of the components - although that is an issue too. I shoot RAW, 10-20 megapixel sized, and you really can bog down a system just building previews in LightRoom, much less stitching 5 or 10 shots in Photoshop, or running a noise filter, for example.

Low power, long battery life during travel, combined with having a strong system when plugged in to the hotel/conference room power, is the sweet spot. I'm planning on Vista 64, 4 to 8 gigs of Ram, and a pretty high end CPU. I'm running Vista64, 8gigs ram, a couple Velociraptor 150's for boot/program and scratch disks, and a Seagate 1T for data (gonna change THAT out pretty quick!) and a Quad 9550. GTX 260. All stock, no O/C. It's .....adequate.

 

I still learn something every day! So, card reader is standard on T500/W500? And DisplayPort is standard as well on those models?

Aren't the T500 and W500 identical in terms of design and dimensions? The T500 being the successor to the T61 and the W500 the successor to the T61p?

 

In short, the typical WSXGA+/WUXGA matte screens that are on ThinkPads (and on the other business notebooks) aren't exactly great quality, and they may actually end up being worse that the screen you have in your Compal, which most people around liked, so that's hardly what I would suggest for photography, actually I wouldn't at all.

Try the Dell Precision M4400, it's an alternative to the W500 but it has an optional WUXGA RGB-LED backlight screen, which is a wide gamut screen (100% Adobe Gamut) and should use a better TN panel as well, if you calibrate it properly it should be decent, probably about as good as you could get in a 15.4" notebook nowadays (IPS is dead for the notebook industry at this point). They only offer it in glossy unlike the 17" versions, which come in both, but still I would give it a try. Also, Dell has a good return policy unlike Lenovo, so you have nothing to lose anyway.

Here are some pictures of the 17" RGB-LED backlight screen (on the right) just to give you a general idea.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4311761&postcount=8

And if you are still interested in the T500/W500 for some reason, which have the typical under 200 nits, 45% NTSC color gamut, "muted colors" and "dull", as you put it, matte screens, than there are reviews with some measurements of the screens:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Thinkpad-T500-Notebook.11970.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Thinkpad-W500-Notebook.11683.0.html

 

It was surprising to me that even the optional/upgrade displays (CCFL and LED) for the T500 and W500 are just 200-nit. But the much less expensive SL300 has a 300-nit LED display...

 

Thanks for those links, Dreamer - I definitely need to research and think more about this....I feel I didn't make the best choice for my purposes in the Compal. The battery is getting weak, the HD is only 100GB...and I'm not sure I want to do upgrades vrs putting money in a new unit....
Where O Where is the Photographer's portable dream laptop? (Not the W700!)

 

DisplayPort is standard on both. The T500 and W500 are identical except for screen options and graphics card. You can think of the T500 as the T61's successor and the W500 as the T61p's successor. If you disregard integrated graphics, both the T500 and W500 have video cards from the same ATI chipset. With the T61p, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M based on the 8600M GT was far more powerful than the 8400M GS-based NVS 140M in the T61.

 

whats discrete graphic ? does it mean dedicated ?

 

Discrete and dedicated are the same thing. It means the graphics card has it's own dedicated memory. This would be different than a integrated graphics card, which borrows memory from the system memory.

I'd love to see pics of the RGB-LED next to the ThinkPad IPS screen, just for comparative purposes.

 

BAM! SO I MEANS DEDICATED GRAPHIC RIGHT ? so w500 fireglv5700 has a 512 dedicated graphic ??

thx for replying

 

have any of u tried dota on w500 ?

 

yes, it has a dedicated card, and if you want to play dota then for the love of God don't insult your Thinkpad by installing that pos on it.

And don't double post.

 

That is why the W500 is your best choice....and the reason I bought mine with the 2.8 GHz CPU, 200GB 7200 RPM drive, 4GB RAM & Vista Business 64. I shoot only RAW and Lightroom2 and Photoshop CS4 both run very well on it with the FireGL V5700 and 512MB RAM. W700 might be better but I don't feel like lugging a monster around.

Also use it for programming and CAD.

Couldn't be happier with it.

 

Oh snap 512gig of ram :O.

 

Let this be a lesson to you kiddies...don't let mind and fingers wander too far apart when replying.

Edited to correct.

 

I have "old eyes" and have been using a a 15/15.4" UXGA/WUXGA screen for reading for the past 9 years. No screen gives as clear an image as printed text, but the higher the density of a screen the closer you get to that perfection. The SIZE of text is quite a different matter- that is up to software settings. Photographs are of course much better in HD screens as well. The poorer your eyes the MORE you want a HD screen - the higher the density the less work your eyes have to do to translate an equal digitalized image to the eyes, that only read "analogue" (as long as the size of the text is equal!).

 

The T400 is more of a mobile notebook and better IMO.