ThinkPad X1, X230, X230t, T430, T430s, T530, W530, L430, L530 Official

Agreed! Plus if you feel it's too small, you can always scale the resolution down to your desired setting 1300x768 or the like. Having an option always helps.

I recall a study about giving two kids ice cream, one chocolate and other vanilla. While they were happy, they weren't fully happy, until they were given the option to switch their flavors. My happiness is highly correlated with this option to upgrade/downgrade resolutions.

 

Because most business users don't need powerful graphics. They get the W series for the better GPU. Though I do wish Lenovo would up the GPUs on their W line.

Doubt the X1 will have dedicated graphics due to thinness and leaning heavily against IPS on it too. Similarly, the T series probably won't have IPS either.

 

Funny I didn't realize that my E420 has only 6 rows until now. But my 13 yrs old i1454 does have 7th rows.

 

Wonder if the 1600x900 "upgrade" on the x230 is a TN. I hate playing the speculation game, but I missed it being stated anywhere.

 

I'm afraid this is another speculation.

 

Actually this 2048x1536 on iPad3, which is precisely 4x of iPad2 resolution, and iPhone4 having precisely 4x of the original iPhone resolution is an acceptance of a problem. It does exist, and by going this route Apple just demonstrates that convincing average developers not to create pixel-by-pixel interfaces is pretty much futile.

It's hard to create user interfaces that scale nicely with different fonts, and create icons that can scale from 16x16 pixels to 128x128 without looking ugly at the extremes. Windows 7 actually does a fair job doing the automatic scaling, but there is no silver bullet here. Poorly written apps, where developers have never thought about testing with different font sizes and screen resolutions and aspect ratios, will always look less than ideal

 

Well, the screens and ebook pages I look at on the new iPad are not "scaled up" from the same screens and pages that I used to look at on the iPad 2. They are identical, content-wise, layout-wise and proportion-wise, except that those screens and pages are rendered much more beautifully on the new iPad.

The situation is as old as laser printers have been in existence. When I print my pages on a 1200x1200 printer (upgrading from a 300x300 printer), the page contents are not "reduced," causing the "fonts too small" problem! All objects fill the physical page just as before, but are rendered much sharper now.

 

And that happens either because the devs of the app have created the application for iPad3 (for precisely 2048x1536, including bitmap graphics of higher resolutions etc.), or created it for iPad2 1024x768 (and all non-fonts part of the UI is merely taking double pixels, w/o causing artefacts).

Problems start to show up when application can take less than a full screen (so need to resize and re-layout everything nicely and often dynamically), and individual pixels are big enough to be visible and even one-two pixel imperfections and rounding errors are very noticeable (for example, rendering vector fonts, such as TrueType, is hideously complex in low resolutions, with bad fonts looking significantly worse than good, properly hinted, fonts). Printing is more forgiving, as even 300dpi resolution is quite high, compared to ~100 ppi of an average screen.

Anyway, 1600x900 on 12.5" screen is not a lot. It's exactly the same ~140ppi as 1920x1080 on 15.6" screens of T/W520, and just slightly more than 132 ppi of the original iPad. Looks fine even with the default 100% fonts in Windows 7, where even the apps made by the laziest of developers look OK.

 

Not always. Last time I checked, there was this thing called scrolling.

Anyway, let's take up this discussion elsewhere.

 

For X230T tablet, if Lenovo gives you a chance to select a higher screen resolution you should take it and run ... and don't stop until you covered the half marathon distance at the very least. You never know otherwise, those evil Lenovo engineers may take it away from you by force.

With tablets you keep your screen closer to your eyes compared to regular laptops. (Think about the distance you keep while writing on paper.) Those smaller fonts and bitmaps would actually look bigger as you keep the screen closer.

 

The new keyboard is a massive disappointment.

 

I think some people just cant get used to change, maybe they do not want to use the same keyboard for 20 years, and i dont see anything wrong with the new ones, they are nice to type on.

Either way, the keyboard is a lot better than what you will get from dell, hp or acer. At least there is a backlight option now.

So, whatever happened to the X1 hybrid running android?

 

At least they keep the ThinkLight.

I bet major customers make their purchase decisions based on that.

 

my 13 yrs old thinkpad does not have a thinklight, so it is relatively recent.

the difference between the new and old keyboards has been blown out of proportion.

 

The "New" keyboard isn't that new, the same layout was used in cheap "Thinkpads" like Edge series for a few years already.

Just a shame this layout, with many keys physically removed, replaced the previous, better, and introduced just in 2009, in the "proper" Thinkpads now.

Most users don't care either way though, and all who do are in this forum already

 

I didn't have too much of an issue switching to the island/chiclet keyboard style. I do spend 90% of my time at work typing and I did love the previous keyboard but sometimes you just have to adapt and move on.

 

Looking at the product page for the W530:

Up to NVIDIA® Quadro® 1100M or 2100M 2GB graphics

while the T530 has:

Up to NVIDIA® NVS 5400M 1GB switchable graphics

It looks like these are new and I can't find any kind of benchmarks on them. I can't find *any* information on the 1100/2100Ms.

 

That's interesting, the T430 is listed as up to NVS 5400M 2gb, rather than the 1gb from the T530

 

Not Acer, no. AFAIK the Edge design is done in-house (although the assembly is almost certainly done by one of Lenovo's partners.)

But IBM did. The ThinkPad i series? Designed (in part) and built by Acer, who licensed the brand name from IBM.

 

You haven't even tried it, but a ready to declare it a failure?

 

Also looks like the quadros won't be Kepler this year.

 

A disappointment is a failure of one's expectation. @notbob's expectation could be simply visual, in which case there would be no need to try anything with the fingers.

 

I will reserve my comment re: keyboard after I try it out.

Any confirmation on what Nvidia GPU is offered in:
T430, T530 and W530?
Just curious as to what the gaming capabilities are?

 

The T430 has an option for the NVS 5400M? That complicates things a little for me...

 

They're on their product pages on lenovo's site. But the gpus don't have any benchmarks and there's zero info on the quadro 1100m/2100m.

 

Thanks. I was on there last night and no news on the T530/T430 models.

T430 - Up to NVIDIA® NVS 5400M 2GB switchable graphics
T530 - Up to NVIDIA® NVS 5400M 1GB switchable graphics

A bit strange that the T430 can be had with more graphic memory. I am sure this is a typo. T530 with an NVS 5400M 2GB would be able to game quite well it sounds - anyone disagree?

 

I haven't quite gotten up to speed on my gpus, but the 5400M has 96 cores while something like the 650M has 384 (I think). I think the 5400M is comparable to the quadro 1000M.

I could be completely wrong though

 

My wife has a x120e with that keyboard, and it is actually pretty nice.

 

Why? Do you see a benchmark comparing the NVS 5400M to the NVS 5200M?

 

Could be a typo? But, I wonder if they are saying to us that if we want the best graphics in their 15" line then we need to buy the W530... The T5xx has probably cost them sales of W5xx in the past. While, if you wanted a more portable 14" solution with stronger graphics performance you may not have entertained either 15" model and looked elsewhere for graphics. Purely one man's opinion, but maybe this is marketing strategy.

 

Lenovo's page says the T430 will have a 5400M 2GB so it will be 128Bit. Thank the lord! This is probably the nail on the head for me. It says it has improved cooling with two exhausts? I don't see it anywhere on the images of the T430 unless those are beta pictures. The dock will be the same, check! I will be getting the backlit keyboard as well! I have to do some research to see if my extended battery will work, I would assume so since the dock connector has not changed. i am disappointed they did away with the eSATA port... now I have to get the dock that features eSATA or an express card so I guess no big deal..

 

I have an X220 on order. Not sure if I should cancel it and wait for the X230 with the ability to drive more external displays and the possibility of 1600x900.

I got a good deal on the X220:
4GB, with bluetooth/camera/IPS camera for $650 shipped w/ tax.

I know it's starts at $1,179 but what kind of pricing can I expect with a new X230 and discounts?

Anyone think there's a chance the X220 would dip below $600 in 2-3 months?

 

5400M has a wider memory bus than the 5200M.

 

Who says? The pictures of the T430 bottom, back and side indicate it is the same as the T420.

 

"Cool, quiet thermal design with dual vents"

it's in the "do List"

https://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/t-series/t430/

I was guessing two vents on the back.. idk. Guess I was thinking something different. When they said "Improved" It threw me off.

 

I can read specs. But how it translates in real world performance for the average user is a different story.

Maybe you'll get to flip Diablo III from medium to high detail. But don't count on it.

Dual vents != dual exhaust with dual fans.

 

According to

ThinkPad T430s - hard-working, rock-solid business laptop from Lenovo (US)

edit: dunno why the pyerlink wont work, its
http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/t-series/t430s/#

the t430s will only have UP TO nvs 5200....

kinda sucks, a jump to nvs 5400 would go from 64 bit to 128 bit according to

Tech Specs

if the nvs 5200 ends up being similar to the Nvidia 540m from last generation, i'm getting the t430s, if not, then might go with the y480.

I always drop my laptops, so a t series would be ideal

 

so it's not really improved at all.. just something they threw in there.

I would have to guess that it is very similar in performance to the Quadro 1000m. If overclocked to 1000m's Core clock/memory clock, it might even be dead even. I don't see a difference at all with the Hardware other than the names, which doesn't say anything.

 

How does the NVS 5400M 2gb compare to a NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M or 670M?

 

i doubt it will even be close. We would be lucky if it reaches the 540m

 

5400 vs 5200 vs 4200 nvidia spec sheet comparison
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs_techspecs.html

Apologies, didnt realise it got posted already

 

GTX 660M
384 CUDA Cores
835 MHzGraphics Clock (MHz)
30.4Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)
Memory Specs:
2000Memory Clock
GDDR5Memory Interface
128bitMemory Interface Width
64.0

NVS 5400M
96 CUDA Cores
Graphic Clock Up to 660
Processor Clock Up to 1329
Memory Amount Up to 2 GB
Memory Interface 128 bit

Well...no comparison. Looks like gaming is still out of the question for the next T series line. I am not too surprise though.

 

The NVS 5400M is basically on-par with the nVidia Fermi GT 630M as far as overall performance goes. It is definitely better than the previous NVS 4200, but not many orders of magnitude more powerful -- a little under twice as fast at some tasks, basically a direct modern replacement for what the T420 had. Enough to run a game like Battlefield 3 on Low @ native resolution at around 40 FPS.

3DMark 11 Compare:
NVS 4200 (T420): ~518
GT 630M (Equiv. to T430): ~942
Intel HD 4000 (New Intel Integrated): ~620

So much better than the T420, but still far away from something like the GT 650M (in the new Alienware M14X and rumored Macbook Pros) that scores 2078 on 3DMark 11.

 

there is no kepler 630m, the kepler line starts at the 640m and only in some models.

the 640m/650m/660m are the same card, with performance increase due to the choice of DDR3 or GDDR5 and the speed of the clocks.

It makes no sense for nvidia to release a low end quadro card with kepler, fermi was much more heavy on gpgpu, kepler is a fail in that area.

Sincerely the T and probably W line are faded to have a new keyboard and a new cpu, with the needed chipset to boot.

 

Sorry about that, does look like the 630M is a Fermi part. Either way, CUDA cores, memory interface, and clocks between the 630M and the NVS 5400M are pretty well on-par, so performance numbers should be somewhat comparable.

 

they should be, nvidia just renamed the chips to quadro and launched a driver with more features in line for what pro needs.

no need to be sorry though.

 

Regarding the possibility of being stuck with fermi based Quadros for the w530s.

Wasn't there meant to be a 28nm fermi based 600 series gpu? Hopefully they base the newer Quadros on such a part and we get the best of both worlds... i.e. Gpgpu and efficiency.

 

Some more information available on anandtech

AnandTech - Lenovo Announces Their 3rd Generation Intel Core Laptop Updates

The X1 carbon indeed appears to have a keyboard with a slightly different layout in the function buttons. I wonder where they get the extra room.

They made the L series resemble the T series a bit more, at least for the computing surface. But the L430 is unreasonably large; look at that bezel!

Anandtech says the T430s gets the 5400m with 128 bit memory, so not the 5200m which is positive.

Quadro K1000 and K2000 for the W530 means kepler?

ugh that keyboard layout is very disappointing

 

Wish Lenovo made their Thinkpads come with a standard expresscard slot (x1 2.0) that could double up as a Thunderbolt port. Ie: insert a card with a Thunderbolt controller that gives a Thunderbolt port. To do that would require them to route the x4 3.0 north bridge pins there and somehow provide an insert to plug into those pins. Could be tricky but Lenovo could surely sort something out.

Such modularity would mean third parties could make a custom x4 3.0 connector and an eGPU enclosure to tap such an interface. That way could bypass Thunderbolt altogether if MSI/Intel/Apple want to delay it indefinitely to safeguard desktop/gaming notebook sales.

 

The new L-Series is much better than last year series:
- HD+ Display for the L430 too
- Classic ThinkPad 180° Opening Hinges
- nVidia Optimus Option
- Backlight Option (it hadn´t ThinkLight before)
- Thinner and lighter
- Same Keyboards as T-Series
etc.

They will also retain the 54mm Expresscard-Slot.