Thinkpad W550s Owner's Thread

You should hit F11 on the bootup menu and it will allow you recovery options. You should be able to access the older restore points. You seemed to have run into the same issues as me. I thought my drivers updated fine, then the next reboot it would just go to a black screen. Pretty ****ty customer service as well.

 

Unfortunately F11 can not find a system image to restore to. For some reason it is looking for an image rather than a restore point. I did create a restore point just before my driver update simply due to knowing of your problems. Unfortunately I can not get to the restore point. Also we used to have a bios setting for switchable graphics in Thinkpads past. That no longer is the case.

 

Does anyone know where you can buy the bottom plate cover for the thinkpad w550s?

 

When you call Lenovo customer service, one of their options in the menu is to purchase lenovo parts. Give it a shot. I'm sure it'll be more pricey than waiting for your part to appear on ebay, but if you need it soon that's probably your best bet.

 

Since my "Create Recovery Disks" operation had not worked (created the boot disk but none of the subsequent disks had any data on them) I ordered a set of Recovery Disks from Lenovo. I suspected from the ordering process that I would get Win 8.1 disks even though I had bought Win 7 x64 downgrade from 8.1. They arrived today and I was correct....all 8.1. Anyidea how to find that key and then use it on a Win 7 clean installation?

At this point my Acronis 2015 BU won't restore the disk even though both Lenovo testing and Parted Magic testing show no problesms with the drive. Buying a new computer is simply not worth the time and trouble based on my experience.

 

You can only install Windows 8 with that CD, I'm assuming that's what you meant anyways. There is no need for a serial key, it's integrated into your motherboard which will be retrieved automatically by Windows so you don't need to enter anything. Honestly, you should just use Windows 8.1 anyways since it is a much better operating system. Try the video drivers, hopefully they work for you!

 

Given that I now have a touch screen I will try 8.1. I installed it on my X220 3 years ago when it came out and have never used that system as I hate the OS. However it is crippled without a touch screen. Actually I have little choice as I was unable to make my Acronis 2015 backup restore to the disk. I am in the process of using the recovery disks now. We shall see.

Good luck with your Black Screen of Death problem.

 

Thanks friend. I wish you the best of luck getting your laptop running! However a selfish side of me hopes it does the same thing as mine so I know its not just me! hahaha! Just kidding, but keep us updated!

 

On mine, youtube playback seems to be stuttering a lot at higher resolutions. 1080p60fps videos are unwatchable, but even regular 1080p doesn't play without hiccups. It's on the i7 5500U 2.40GHz 239GHz with 16GB of RAM. Is this to be expected? Is there anything I can do to improve it?

EDIT: It... fixed itself. Maybe it was still updating something automatically and I didn't notice. Runs fine now!

 

Major Props to Lenovo. I called Tech Support today and told them I had to use their recovery disks to recover the OS, but would prefer Win 7 as I had ordered with the machine. They are sending out the Win 7 disks 2 day delivery. I also upgraded my warranty to 3 year onsite from 3 year depot and that required a "return" of the 3 year depot and then a "rebuy" of the 3 year onsite. They expected 3 days to clear the return. It was done in 3 hours and I immediately rebought the 3 year onsite. I got both an email (from a rep in Argentina!) and a phone call notifying me that afternoon that my return had cleared and that I could reorder the warranty upgrade I wanted. I don't know who is running their customer service but this is World Class work.

 

Beware if you are trying to upgrade the base FHD TN panel to an IPS. You will not have any brightness controls....
I have a T550, although not a W550s, it is basically the same thing in terms of chassis. I installed a B156HAN01.2, no brightness controls. Others are having the same problem. Also, I bet if you listen real close to your speakers, you are going to hear some static. Put your ear to the speakers and hit the mute key off and on and you may (if you are unfortunate) hear static coming from your speakers.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...een-replacement-brightness-set-at-max.774101/

 

I have the stock 3k non touch display on my W550s, went to use my shortcut screen brightness down key tonight and it didnt work. Nor does brightness up, nor any windows control of screen brightness as well.

So i dont think the problems your having after screen swapping, it is probably a setting you and i changed somewhere. If/when (hopefully) I find it, I'll let you know.

 

For those that want it the Part Nos for the Recovery Media are:

Win 7 x64 Professional 00HU695
Win 8.1 x64 Pro 00HU743

The leading zeros could be O's for all I know. It is annoying when serial numbers or other important numbers are used with Zero's or O's in them as we can only guess which is which.

 

Please find out, this might be a driver issue on lenovos part*

 

@pkincy

Where can I download the Win 8.1 x64 Pro DVD ?

Can I use a normal Win 8.1 Pro iso file and burn to disc to install? I did not see any key attached here...

 

Order it with the part nos I posted. They sent it to me 2 day air. I was able to order the 8.1 DVDs (4) simply by going to my account and order them for no charge online. I wanted the Win 7 which came with the computer and got corrupted right off the bat. However based on recommendations here I am trying it with the 8.1. Nearly unusable as always until I added an aftermarket start menu. But as I have a touch screen I will try it for a bit to see if I can get used to it. How do we get that Lenovo Message icon off the taskbar. The rest of the Lenovo Crap has an unpin choice. That doesn't.

Also I updated Windows and am now updating Lenovo drivers but elected not to update the graphics driver as it has crashed at least 2 computers we know about.

 

Does anyone here push their laptop quite a bit? I'm not talking gaming and rendering, as I expect the following out of that.

But seems everytime I open a Internet Explorer or Chrome tab, CPU shoots up fans kick on, ect. Which is no biggie.

But after maybe 10 ie or Chrome tabs,at be a word doc or excell open, it really seems to be working the crap out of the cpu. Having hw info open, the cpu is thermally throttled quite a bit. Not that it really hesitates or becomes a usage problem. But I noticed throttling starts at 65c.

My normal office use, 10-20 ie tabs, excell, one note, 1 vm, and mouse without borders. Laptop screen off, pushing to 2 24" 1080p monitors. No real slowness, but notice throttling off and on all day.

I've got the i7 5500u, 16gb ram, 1tb 850 pro.

Just curious to see if this is a common thing with low throttling?

Thinking of getting a w541 as well, but between what I've seen with w550s and reviews on w541 I'm reconsidering.

 

What OS do you use? Do you have the preload on there?

I don´t have problems with throttling with my W550s. I am regularly playing some games with it, like Civilization Beyond Earth. No problems with the performance.

Could you perform Cinebench R15 and report the results? (download here: http://www.maxon.net/products/cinebench/overview.html)

 

I'm using windows 7. I took the recovery off stock 256gb ssd, put onto usb, then installed that onto my 1tb samsung. I've deleted or disabled all lenovo power management and fan cooling sh!t that actually effects performance.

I'm not saying that the system necessarily bogs down. I play borderlands 2 and prequel as well as diablo 2 without probems, other than bottom of laptop gets quite hot, but it sits on table or a tray if used on bed.

I'm just quite surprised by the inconsistent ability of the cpu to run. It's fluctuates all over, quickly, and it's low throttling threshold.

Daily decently demanding tasks aren't extremely noticable. But when maxing out while rendering,, I'm not expecting performance of a full powered wprkatation, the outcome is really wanky. Really inconsistant.

I've tried running my external monitors off the quadro gpu to relieve the onboard, but that makes no difference.

But all this, I'm still very happy with the laptop. And it's performance. These are just things I don't/didn't see while using the i7 4510u, or i5 5310u.

 

I'll post a quick two-week trip report in case it is of any use to anyone wanting to compare notes, since there's a lot of requests for that it seems:

Setup basics:

i7 3.2 model
1080p screen (not a fan of high DPI laptop screens until OS support improves)
Windows 8.1 (conversely, I am a big fan of this OS from a desktop point of view, I use Classic Start and ignore the new menu)
8gb ram
500gb spindle drive
Fingerprint reader
Internal 3 cell and external 6 cell batteries

I also have an Ultra Dock and monitor stand from my work, with a 1080p Asus monitor hooked up via HDMI and a 32 inch UXHD Benq monitor via DisplayPort - the Iris 5500 drives both fine, though I had one problem that I note a little bit later.

First thing I did was add 8gb of memory - Lenovo, not 3rd party - ordered base model with one 8gb module, got the second module from Lenovo directly. The reason for this is I get a nice discount from my work with Lenovo and doing it this way was far cheaper for some reason than ordering it built with 16gb. Even though it's still more expensive than aftermarket I prefer to use their memory because it's all under warranty this way, I checked.

Second thing I did was run a full system test, both with the included ThinkVantage tools, then Memcheck86, then Spinrite on the drive (this ran overnight) then finally 3D mark which is not really a diagnostic but I wanted to establish a baseline and work the system out a little bit to see if I could shake any problems out before I went any further.

Then I replaced the drives. I got a Trancend MTS400 256gb M.2 drive for that slot (reminder, it goes under the WiFi module, not next to it), then cloned it with Paragon, which does a nice job, aligns 4k partitions, etc.

Then I replaced the 500gb drive with a 2tb Samsung (Seagate) MT9. I happened to have one - they only sell them as external USB drives, they are the largest 9mm laptop drives on the market. People buy them all the time to take out of the case and put in their PS4s. I took mine out of the case, DBAN (low-level format) it, then ran Spinright on it just to be sure since the drives are known to be a little wonky out of the factory. Obviously it passed.

Then I got to work on the OS. Normally I flatten and reinstall and I've done that with my T440 in the past but this time I decided to see if I could just clean out the crud, so I did. Some Lenovo software is actually decent plus after all the diagnostics about I was running out of time before a trip

After that, installed MalwareBytes Pro, did a final scan with that, then ran my usual Ninite installer to put all the usual apps/utilities I like on hassle free (if you've never used Ninite before you should, you can also use the same installer it makes for you to keep the apps you choose updated. Google it.) Then I threw Office 2013, sync'd up Onedrive, and added a few movies and games for my road travel, and I was off.

So far I've taken it on one 4 day road trip and am about to embark on another.

Issues:

Only issue I have experienced so far has been with DisplayPort and my UltraDock, which was probably my fault - I think I accidentally changed something I wasn't aware of in the Power Settings and the next reboot my external DP monitor wouldn't work. Hours of frustrating troubleshooting wouldn't resolve it, fortunately I had a restore point from the previous night so I rolled back and that fixed it.

However everything else so far has been fine - performance is good, Chrome runs fine (I normally have two-three windows open with 10-15 tabs each, video from training places like Udemy, etc.). I run a VirtualBox Windows 7 VM in the background that I use for some office VPN stuff (my office VPN disconnects me from the rest of my home network which is annoying) as well as a development server I use for work (I am a software developer).

It's not as fast as my regular desktop rig of course but it's not too shabby either, I haven't noticed much in the way of stuttering, slowness, or high fan noise, unless I am doing something specific, like running two VM's at once, compiling one of my larger C++ projects, etc. Which is to be expected.

For games I have only tried World of Warcraft so far, which I still play occasionally, it's not too hard on hardware and runs acceptably well at medium-high settings, 1080p.

Movies on a plane play just fine.

Overall haven't really had too many problems yet, decent laptop, like the size a lot - great size/weight/power/battery life ratio on this thing, one of the best I have seen for a business laptop - but it's only been a couple weeks so we'll see.

I ran all the Lenovo and Windows updates but haven't done anything special outside of that yet, like get modded drivers for the nVidia card.

I wonder if the fact that so many reports I read here about problems from users have to do with the fact that most of you are running Windows 7?

 

I don't think the W550s will stand up to a quad core I7 W541, but for what it is it is a good machine. I got the touch QHD which was the thing I was looking for. I also like the power brick which is 1/10 the size of the W520 brick. But the W550s is not going to stand up to a quad core W541 for real performance.

 

First of all, great write up.
Secondly, I'm not expecting power out of the w550s. For what I bought it for, daily tasks with light gaming/rendering while on road.

I'm just saying, with all the fluctuations and throttling this machine gives, it has me worried about the w541. Review that was done on the w541 stated wierd fluctuations and major throttling. I see that on the 550s as well. If I were to buy the w541 to replace my msi or w541, I want 100% power. The w541 would be my desktop away from home, not my travel companion as the 550s is.

But the w550s, I'm thourally impressed laptop wise, performance wise it's adequate and meets my expectations.

Power wise 540 is good, my msi exceeds my expectations on. The msi is great but laptop wise I wish it had the lenovo Thinkpad feel to it, if that makes sense. So I was hoping the 541 with top end i7, 32gb ram, and k2100m would be good, and make up for the slight performance different. But if throttling is to be an issue, on already weaker components. Idk, I'll probably wait. But the impression on using the 550s just really makes me like the ThinkPad very much. Size, feel, keyboard, 3k screen, it's just a very plesent experience.

 

To all of you w550s owners: Why would I buy this w550s when I can get a 15" Thinkapd Yoga that can turn into a tablet, and even use pen input*? They weigh about the same, have the same graphics card (ish), same keyboard and trackpad, etc.

Reasons why the w550s might be superior:
-longer battery life
-Quadro vs Geforce
-Fingerprint reader
-TPM

Anything else that I'm missing?

*pen input is being rolled out in May.

 

I have the T550, not the W550s. However, they share the same chassis and basic architecture. To that end, I am experiencing the speaker hissing. Usually after a sound plays or if you are using a program with media. You can hear it for sure by muting and un-muting the sound. It is static sound. I am also hearing a coil whine in my model as well....not to mention other problems with replacing the LCD with an IPS....

 

If i recall, the pen intput for the thinkpad yoga 14 and 15, isnt digitizor its the new like anypen or something. So biggest thing there, is no palm rejection. I had the thinkpad yoga 14, loved it tremendously but had 5 in a row with either battery or hard drive issues. So I stepped up to the W550s.

Things I notice over the thinkpad 14 (not 15 so this could be different). Keyboard is better (thinkpad was still good), 2 level backlight vs 1 (still only use only the 1 so no biggie), better build quality on w550s, screen (i have 3k and gorgeous) but the 1080p was immaculate on the thinkpad, screen sturdiness better or w550s (though still quite well on thinkpad), trackpad on my thinkpad yoga 15 was that single button i hated that, more ports, better battery life (2x batteries), fingerprint scanner, more config options (though thinkpad yoga 14 was best buy exclusive so that might've played into this), included 'thinkpad' software limited on yoga but full fledge on w550s. Ethernet port (might be available on 15' yoga not sure). Cellular options (through m.2) on w550s, this was big for me. 3 year standard warranty vs 1 year.

Theres probably more. I really really liked the yoga 14, throw in the new trackpad and buttons and give me a machine that worked, id probably go back. It was great travel companion. But upon having the w550s, its larger and almost makes me just want to grab my w540 (if it werent battery life). But I really like the w550s, if it came in a 14" version with 3k screen option id buy that in a heartbeat.

 

Did I break my brand new machine already? Am I just noticing this now? Am I the only one?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vom7S3Ea9dk
Left hinge seems quite floppy, it flexes the whole corner of the machine too.

 

Wow, very unfortunate. How'd that happen?

I'd definitly call Lenovo about that. Even if its not covered by warranty, I'm sure it cant be a hard nor expensive fix.

 

I did get the accidental coverage for a year, but I really think its been like that since I got it and I am only just now noticing (its only been a week) hasn't taken any knocks yet so idunno, anyone else's machines do this?

 

i think it's normal... mine gives a bit as well.. as long as the hinges are securing the lid with no noticeable movement while in use I think it's okay.

 

Mines rock solid. Looks like the bracket got loose or the plastic holder cracked on it.

Idk, but if it were me id have it looked at. If you got onsite coverage just call a tech out to you to have a look at it.

 

Don't have onsite, but I have submitted a RMA request, will get the box tomorrow and report back when the machine is hopefully repaired and back in my hands.

 

Hi all,

I have no idea why my laptop is very lagggy, especially when I play a 1080p movie or even 720p clip Youtube. Should it be played smoothly?

For a simple tasks, such as install an anti-virus software, or open a task manager, the CPU can easily reach 80-90%.

I am running a windows 8.1 OEM with all latest drivers installed, and btw I cannot find the Battery Manager software like the one in Windows 7 anymore. Has anyone a link for that?

Another strange thing that I get is after installing Windows 8.1, the Fn led light does not light up when press anymore... Do I miss install any driver or software for keyboard or something like that

Please help...

 

Folks, I have had the W550s for about 3 weeks now. Due to work pressures and me relying for business purposes on my tried and true W520, I have only had about 6 solid days working with it. As a summary, I think it is a workable laptop and may actually take a spot in my work rotation but it will take a lot more work to get there. First, the left sided keyboard is hard to get used to, but once I quit working most of the week on a centered keyboard, I do expect I will be able to handle that and I can understand and sympathize with those that need the num keys. I do wish they had a way to make that an option however. The laptop build, the keyboard, and the trackpoint are up to Lenovo Standard, which is a very good thing. The backlit keys are a big improvement over that puny light at the top of the monitor we had in previous models. The smaller CPU, while slowing down the machine, does result in greater portability due to the much smaller brick. The touich QHD is neat, but the software needs to catch up with the hardware as scaling in horrible in about 20% of the apps I have found so far. My desktop twin 2770s have no scaling problems at all. I suppose because the huge real estate means the fonts are in native format.

My OS got corrupted on the second day and for some reason, neither my recovery disks nor my initial backup would restore it. I had gone online and order actual recovery disks the day I received the computer, so when those came in I used them to restore the machine. However what came in was Win 8.1. That is what I restored and Lordy is it a total POS OS. As you can see from my signature I have a few computers. 3 years ago I bought both a W520 and an X220 thinking the smaller machine would be a good machine to take to my daily meetings. Well, after I bought 5 Win 8 OS licenses on the presale that is the box I installed Win 8 on as a check to its use. That X220 3 years later is still new as the Win 8 is/was a totally useless OS without a touch screen and hence I have never taken the X220 anywhere. Now that I have a touch screen, I decided to try Win 8.1 and see what it can do. After adding the necessary aftermarket start button, I have been working with it in those 6 full days I have had time to get on the W550s. I can now report that with a nice touch screen that the Win 8.1 OS is still a total POS. It has a screen that has what Msft calls tiles and I will call icons or apps but that should be very cool to use with a touch screen. That is Win 8.1's raison entendre. Unfortunately they simply don't work. By that I mean are totally inoperative whether accessed by touch or mouse. Do a google search on that please. Apparently the only fix for inoperative tiles/icons/apps is a total OS replacement. Msft blames low resolution monitors for the problem as if the 2880x1920 QHD doesn't have enough pixels to support their OS. This is not a Lenovo problem and I only report it to dissuade anyone from actually either buying it with 8.1 or "upgrading" to 8.1 due to the touch screen. Win 8.1 will boot directly to the Desktop and if you utilize the desktop it will work and actually work fairly nicely. I will over time find which of my tiles/icons/apps actually work (seems to be about 15-20% of them. Those I will keep on the Metro UI screen and the others I will delete. Initially it appears that any tile/icon/app delivered with 8.1 will not work while any one that I buy (free or not) and download does work. I am not yet certain that is a 100% relationship but will check it out.

So, in summary, I could recommend buying the W550s if you get Win 7 with it, if you don't mind a CPU less powerful than your 520/530/540/541, if you don't mind scrunching your hands over to the far left of your lap/laptop to type on the keys, if you often use your laptop in a poorly lighted room (I do), and if you opt for the non QHD touch screen until the software catches up, and if you don't mind an annoying lag between typing on the keyboard and seeing your input appearing on the screen. Frankly so far, I think my beloved W520 will continue to be my "go to" machine for all work related functions.

Edit: I should add that the W550s has phenomenal battery life. I carry an extra 9 cell charged battery with me when I use the W520 and also quite often carry the large brick if I am traveling overnite. So the W550s battery life is a very good deal.

 

Hi,
I'm planning to order the W550s too with min memory and HDD and upgrade using SDD and 16Gb myself.
But, I don't like all bloatware installed by manufacturers so I'm planning to install my licence of Win7 PRO.
I only see people who clone lenovo hdd for upgrade, does someone did a free windows installation ?
Is there any know issues ?
Many thanks
Stephane

 

Review over at MobileTechReview is up. Not quite as technically thorough as a notebookcheck.net or Anandtech, but she does a good job of covering the high points and giving a good look at the machine (especially for those that haven't had a chance to lay hands on one yet).

Also, saw a w550s pop up on Lenovo Outlet briefly. I know I have read some issues in this very forum thread, but are problems so widespread that we are starting to see refurb units on the outlet this early?

 

I have one of these for review. It's the QHD touch model with Windows 8.1, the Core i7-5600U processor, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. I believe mine is a pre production model.

The fan is kind of annoying - especially when it abruptly comes on, it's pretty obvious and has a distinct whine. Anyone else notice the same - what are your thoughts on it?

 

Just got my replacement, exact same issue. Does not start. Boots up to a black screen constantly. Tried everything. Once out of 50 tries it will boot up, but automatically enter the startup device menu without me pressing anything. I will select the harddrive and it just keeps refreshing that screen over and over. I'm never buying another fking POS lenovo. Waste of 40 days and still no fking functional computer.

All I'm doing is pressing the power button to try to start it. Right out of the box it enters a black screen. Ridiculous.

 

MibuWolf,

I feel your pain. Sometimes nothing works. Did you get the Recovery CDs? No lost time to do a recovery at this time. Also no lost time doing a reset this early in its life. The reset was a huge help on mine. Still only about half the Metro Tiles work but that is way better than it was.

I am hoping their will be a driver update that fixes this annoying "type now, see the character 3 seconds later....." deal that is going on with these machines now.

Edit: I took my W550s on a 2 day trip today. The portability (very small power brick and super battery life) do make this thing a keeper. I like the touch screen and am trying to get used to Win 8.x and it seems to be better the more I use it. Still annoying that they have hidden all the things on the original start screen, but I have pinned most of the things I use a lot to the "Start Screen" which is apparently what they call the Metro UI.

 

I am using CPUZ to monitor the core speed and I have found out that there is an issue with the CPU (i7 - 5500) speed. It drops under load, such as watching 720p Youtube video. Anyone has a same problem when running Windows 8.1? Any fix for this?

P/s: The power plan is set to high performance and BIOS version is the latest one 1.07. In BIOS, the Intel speed step + CPU power management have been disabled. But the issue is still same.

 

Do you you have the Intelligent cooling enabled? If you do turn it off. It's in the lenovo system settings windows 8 app.

 

Thank you very much, jedisolo. It seems to solve the problem. Btw, this error is related to BIOS right?

 

I'm not sure but I think if you were to update the active protection system software it would solve that problem. I don't have it installed because my system is booting off of a 256 GB M2 SSD. The latest bios version is 1.07 release on March 19th 2015. Mind you when I first bought this laptop I tried the intelligent cooling and I didn't care for it so I turned it off.

 

I am super hopeful that there is a workaround for this. I really don't like the hardware app keys in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard especially the lock computer and go to homepage keys (go to homepage affects an open browser window it doesn't just open a new window). Is there a way to remap these to something else? I attempted the registry fix for the go to homepage key but this will not work for the explorer key or the lock key as it apparently sends a winkey+e and winkey+l respectively and I don't want to/can't remap any of those as I happen to use them... I can't seem to find a utility to tweak them or disable them and hope that I won't have to pry them off.

EDIT: Additionally I have seen mention earlier in this thread of the lenovo system settings app. I don't have this on my machine but I did a clean win 8.1 install and just ran the lenovo system update utility for apps. Is there a place to download the system settings app?

 

Hello. I bought a w550s about a week ago. If i am not wrong, the mini display should support 4K output right? I bought a Cable Matters MiniDisplay to HDMI 4K adaptor but my Seiki 39inch TV only shows 1920 x 1080 max resolution and displaying DVI connection instead of a HDMI connection. I called Lenovo support, the first person is very helpful and tried all the settings in windows and upgrading all the bios and drivers for me. But it didn't resolve the issue. Its when i get to the technical support it gets nasty, they are asking me to pay 199 for a 1 time software support to resolve this issue. I thought buying Thinkpad means better support? maybe it is not true?

Does anyone know is it the limit of this computer or it's the setting hidden from users that i have to change in the computer?

 

Well, I am 2 months in to my ownership experience with the W550s and I must say it is not making the grade for me. My go to machine for 3 years has been the W520 and the W550s operates like a 10 year old machine compared to the W520. It is slow and quirky. I have learned to live with the Win 8.1 as the touch screen and a bit of time makes Win 8 tolerable. But the W520 is so terribly slow on any internet based project. For instance, this board. Now admittedly I don't like the new supporting software, but it is totally unusable with the W550s. Everything happens 10-20 seconds after you type it or give it an input. Laggy, interrupted usage and I have over 10 mbps down by speakeasy/speedtest. The biggest problem is when I try and use the mouse to scroll down or up on a page. It will not slide. It moves in 10 second delayed jerks up or down based on what I am trying to do. I suspect it is simply a very bad mouse driver. Yet it is pretty responsive when I resort to fingers on the touch screen. It also takes a long time to load a new webpage. Again my wifi connection here is plenty fast when measured with a speedtest, but everything else internet driven seems to take forever.

The UHD screen is a bit of a pain on things not properly sized/designed for the higher resolution, but that I have learned to work around or simply live with.

At this time, I would not recommend it. Go to the W541 or wait for the W550. The S model is simply too slow both using the internet and that very slow small dual core chip now shipping in them.

I do have my upgraded to 16 meg of good fast memory and a 960 GB SSD, so that has not been the problem.

I have learned to use the offset keyboard so that is not a deal killer. But this delay that many of us have been experiencing is just a pain to deal with.

 

@pkincy,
maybe reinstall the graphic driver, or Windows itself if that doesn´t help? I can´t confirm any of that laggyness for my W550s. Not even my Yoga 3 Pro with a much slower Core M CPU is that slow.

The U CPUs are more than pwerful enough for the internet...

 

Still deciding between this and t450s laptop. Question about w550s, is the slot to install the m.2 SSD for boot drive accessable after removing the base cover on the bottom of the machine? If so, again where exactly is it located and thank you.

 

The 2242 M.2 SSD is positioned right next to the WLAN and WWAN card slots, and is easily accessibly after taking off the base cover.

 

Thanks. Any big performance difference between i7 5500u and i7 5600u?

Sent from my LG-D851 using Tapatalk

 

I am able to play the Witcher 3 on my W550s mind you at medium settings and turning the resolution to 1600x900 but it is playable. My W550s is plenty fast for my needs.