T520 - Quick preview...review..lol

Lenovo ThinkPad T520 Review: First Thoughts | StorageReview.com

 

Uh oh... this doesn't look good.

 

Sata 2 ?

 

We're working on getting an answer on the SATA interface issue...unfortunately this exact behavior has occurred before.

 

Come again?

The T510 uses CFRP for its base, the T520 uses GFRP. Both are plastic.

 

Interesting, we have a T510 in the office as well and the materials feel different. Maybe I am thinking back to when the lower chassis were still made of metal. In the full review we will cover the differences more, thanks for the clarification - we'll spend more time investigating that.

 

Well you're not wrong in that they *are* different materials. Perhaps a difference in the surface finish or method of coloring? (I know less about the physical appearance than you do, obviously -- I'm just reading from the tabook.)

IIRC the lower chassis has been CFRP for a long time. The T60's base is CFRP and the T43p's base is "titanium-reinforced CFRP" (which I assume refers to the titanium bracing near the back of the laptop.) From what I remember, it's typically the X series machines that have a solid magnesium alloy bottom chassis (since they lack an internal frame and thus depend on the shell for structural support.) The one exception to that that I can think of is the T400s/T410s mechanical, which uses magnesium alloy for its bottom cover.

 

No...it doesn't...hopefully it's just something with the firmware? This really could be a deal breaker for me.

 

I called Lenovo to check on this. The sales guy wasn't too sure (he was reading off the specs of the 3Gb/s hard drives offered by Lenovo at first) but I got him to look into it for the motherboard.

He said the T520 DOES SUPPORT 6Gb/s and sourced Intel, and said he wasn't aware of any modifications made to the motherboard/firmware by Lenovo to throttle the chipset. I'm going to go ahead and order a 520 along with a Micron C400 SATA III SSD. I really hope that Lenovo gets a response to the people at Storage Review to figure out the discrepancy.

==Update===

Ok, cancel that. I called again to double check and got this response in email form:

"I just spoke with our Product Manager and he said that the 6 Gb/s would NOT be supported. I asked if we had modified anything, but he went offline before I could ask him anything else. He specifically said NO to our question though. I'll cancel your order if you like. Sorry for the confusion, this is what I was looking at to confirm though."
(he shows a screencap of Intel's specs for a motherboard supporting 6 Gb/s SATA).

So I'm less than optimistic now and put my order on hold until I figure this out. Can anyone else suggest a similar mid-size 15-ish inch screen unit with the quad core i7 that doesn't break the bank (sub $2k)?

 

oh gosh! This is insane. Thank you for your message. If I want to have the machine for 4 years it seems to be a step-back already to have this limitation. I'll just wait until somebody confirm that on W520 but I am guessing it will be the same...

 

Anyone knows whether 8560p supports SATA-3? How about the E6520?

I'm sorry to see Lenovo bringing out their latest without both USB3 and SATA-3 and I hate to get anything else, but some things are just unacceptable and their pricing in the euro zone is just miserable(you get less and pay a whole lot more).

The one thing I'll be really missing is scrolling via the stick. Does anyone else know whether it's possible to scroll with the stick on an E6520 the way one can on a thinkpad? It looks like the mid button is meant for that, but I don't know for sure.

W520 or a W HP is no option for me since I don't need the big graphics (I would love to both underclock and undervolt any gfx in my notebooks, but those days where it was possible are... gone) and I appreciate the extra battery, but much more importantly, the silence and a cooler notebook.

 

It looks like the no 6Gb/s was a bug that corrected itself. Looks like the first look was updated to show that.

 

Gah, now I'm confused as to why the Lenovo product manager said it didn't support 6Gb/s...unless he was confused and thought that he was being asked if Lenovo offered drives that take advantage of 6 Gb/s speeds. I'll try and get this cleared up.

 

Pretty sure the staff at lenovo doesn't have much of a clue since I was told the T520 had usb 3 and sata 3 and then another person told me the exact opposite.

 

Pretty sure that this is just a misunderstanding and that the tech support from Lenovo is pretty much clueless about this issue.

 

My T520 will be here today, so I've been following all the T520 threads closely. It's got the 500GB 7200 HDD, which is way more storage than I need 99% of the time. Actually, the T520 is way more computer than I need 99% of the time, but I chose it due to reputation for quality and reliability, and increased battery life from combination of SB processor and 9 cell battery. At first, I really won't have much on it, just OS (Win 7 Pro), a few applications (Office, Acrobat, etc), and some small work files (less than 2GB). I could easily put all of that on the 80GB Intel SSD 310 with room to spare, right? Later on, I may have several hundred GB of pdf's to load on the HDD, but those would be read only files to be accessed on an occasional basis for research purposes.

Here's my question: If all of my applications and "active" files were on the SSD, so the HDD wasn't spinning, would that increase battery life significantly? Is there any downside to this course of action?

 

Assuming you're using a decent drive with good firmware you should get better battery life. The only downside is that the drive is smaller and more expensive than a traditional.

 

If you do not constantly uses the files on the 500gb hdd, it will increase the battery life on your t520. If you are constantly using file on the 500gb it might actually decrease the battery life. Overall the difference in battery life saved/loss would be less than a hour.

 

I'm anxious to see a full test. StorageReview said "it still easily beat the overall system performance of the ThinkPad T410 we reviewed by a factor of two. PCMark Vantage scores doubled, coming in at 12,329 PCMarks, even with the base mSATA 80GB SSD."

That Vantage score is about 50% faster than the MacBook Pro reviews I've read with the new Sandy Bridge. Example: PC Magazine

Is it the SSD? Or is Lenovo using some magic pixie dust?