T400, T500, or W500 -- Which one?

I'm speccing out the new Thinkpads, looking for a good college/work laptop to last me indefinitely, and I'm torn as to which to get. They all have the same (T9400) processor, 2GB of RAM, a camera, the nice Intel Wifi, a 9-cell battery (I don't gave a damn if it sticks out) and so on. The only difference is the screen and graphics.

The T4-500s have the ATI Radeon 3650, and then W500 has the new ATI Mobility FireGL V5700.

The T-W500s have a WSXGA+ CCFL screen, and the T400 has a WXGA+ LED screen.

Which do you think would have the best battery life? Which do you think would have the best gaming performance? Linux drivers? I need input.

 

The T400 with the 9-cell battery gives you alot more battery life. I think its over an hour?

Also, since its for college, I would suggest the T400 since its a bit smaller and lighter for you to carry around the campus. Carrying a 15.4" actually makes a big difference, you can feel the weight difference alot!

LED is also better for battery life aswell since that is important to you. Good luck, you win either way with the T500 or T400

 

Also note: As of this morning, the T500's w/discrete graphics are showing a est shipping date in late September (T400's, T500 w/integrated and W500 are all late August). If time is an issue.

 

Are you sure it's all T500's with discrete graphics? Could it just be a specific option? I'd heard choosing bluetooth had caused some delays.

 

I am wondering about the difference between the graphic cards on the T500 and the W500. Can anyone comment?

 

Easy enough to check. Go to the lenovo website, add your config to a cart and go through the guest checkout (or log in, it doesn't matter really). When you get to the payment page (step 2), it will give you the est date. Right now, I haven't found a single option that I can change on the T500 w/discrete graphics that will move the date into August. All saying 9/22 today. Was saying 9/18 yesterday.

p.s. I did check w/o bluetooth, and 9/22 is still the date.

 

The GPU in the W500 is a workstation GPU, tweaked for OpenGL application and other professional 3D works. It's also IVS certified.

 

Do you plan to game or do 3D work(ex: Maya etc)? If so go for one with a powerful GPU. If battery life is important for you, then go for one with an integrated GPU. Also the first thing you should decide is if you want a 14" or 15" laptop. I would start there first. If I traveled a lot, I would probably want a 14" machine. Please give us more details about what you plan on doing with the machine. For example you said that it would be used for college, but do you plan on bringing it to classes a lot or leaving it in the dorm most of the time. If you plan on bringing it with you to class most of the time, then size and weight become more of a concern. What kinds of classes are you taking?

In my case I planned on using the machine mostly at home, taking it out one in a while so I wanted a 15" or 17" machine.

 

I checked on Intel x4500 graphics and iwlwifi/iwlabg/iwl5000 drivers yesterday.

On the graphics front, the intel X.org driver appears to already have the needed model ID numbers for GM45-based graphics and a few code paths that apply to it. However, I can find no one mentioning specifically that it does work. So that's something to worry about. I would anticipate it not working for awhile yet.

Linux 2.6.27 has the wirless bits as far as I can tell; it's not clear if the 5100 and 5300 wireless are similar enough to "just work". ath9k driver for Atheros wireless with N support is coming along but will not be in .27--it was excluded from the merge window.

 

Hi,
I'm thinking to get me a new TP W500 T9400
15.4 WUXGA TFT
160 GB Hard Disk Drive 7200rpm
ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 with 512MB VRAM
Intel Turbo Memory 2GB
Express Card Slot & PC Card Slot
Intel WiFi Link 5300
Prices: $ 2,613.00 (with up to 4 weeks waiting)

Is this price worth it, or does anyone have any coupon code that I can use.

I'm also looking at the T500 with ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 256MB, which is much lower prices.
I'm working on AutoCAD and MastaCAM, I don't know which one is best suite for these software.
Please give any advice if you have.
THANKS.

 

To be honest with you, my Compaq R4000 runs AutoCAD and MasterCAM pretty well. Actually, it runs them really well. I only have 128 mb video, 1 gig ram, 2.2 ghz AMD processor etc. Nothing special.

Your system config seems pretty robust. Not sure of the price, but you can definitely run that software on it and more. If you ever end up doing more 3d CAD work (Pro Engineer, Catia, UGS Unigraphics, Solidworks, etc) then that config would be pretty good still I think.

Again, as a benchmark, I can run Solidworks and Pro Engineer Wildfire 4 on this laptop, although I would much prefer a W500... lol

The T500 may be sufficient too.. depends on how well the vid card can handle any CAD you throw at it.. but it seems you are not doing anything ridiculous.

 

I made a cart just now (including Bluetooth) and it's estimating 9/1...

Also my T500 (w/ discrete graphics) order status page is still showing late August.

 

Hmm... Well I hope you get it on that date.. There is always the possibilty you dont..