W530 Owner's Thread

Which mSATA Make and model do you have?

You can have a SATA III device in the slot and a discovery tool might report that the device is capable of SATA III speeds, but that doesn't mean the Intel controller is going to allow it on that port. You only get two SATA III ports in the current generation of ThinkPads. By design, it is the primary bay and the Ultrabay.

I would not worry about SATA II versus SATA III in the PCIe WWAN slot. You aren't going to notice a difference unless you have a really high I/O scenario on that drive. Considering most people are probably just booting the OS, launching apps, or opening small data sets, it just isn't worth measuring.

 

We're in agreement here. The main point is that programs such as HWiNFO report device characteristics, regardless of the capabilities of the ports they are attached to.

My initial question -- more curiosity than concern -- was that a device is reported differently when it is in the main bay (SATA 3.0Gb/s) than when it is in the UltraBay (SATA 1.5Gb/s).

By the way, Lenovo recently offered a "free" upgrade to 500GB drive. Now, I guess Lenovo got a cheap deal from Toshiba for a huge batch of first-generation drives.

 

Looks that way. So is there a way to get HWiNFO or any other software to show you what the device is currently running at or the port speed? Would be interesting to see if my mSATA is running at Gen2.0 speeds, not that it concerns me, just curiosity.

@Thor - Software reports my mSATA drive as a ScanDisk SSD U100 16GB.

 

I usually run CrystalDiskMark.

 

I just pulled the 128GB Sandisk U100 piece of crap out of my Samsung Series 9 NP900X3D.

 

Yeah I don't mind if it's a good mSATA drive or not, it's only used as express cache for my 500GB UltraBay HDD, for my OS and frequent programs I use an Intel 520 Series SSD in the primary bay. the mSATA just helps speed the 500GB HDD up.

 

Got my W530 toward the end of last week, swapped out the 4GB of RAM with 32GB of Kingston ValueRAM 1600MHz DDR3, and love this machine, but do have a question The config I ordered didn't include the standard pcie msata ssd (that slot is empty at the moment), and I'm wondering it it would make a big difference if I add one there. I'll be moving the 500MB HD to the dvd bay, and adding a 256GB Samsung 830 to store and run the OS from. If adding an PCIE MSATA SSD would make a big difference, does anyone have any recommendations as to which manufacturer/model would be best?

 

First I believe it's not a PCIE card, it's a mSATA card

Regarding what difference it will make to the 500GB HDD and if it's worth it, that comes down to how you use the storage. Sounds like you are suggesting using a mSATA drive as a cache, that means it will only speed things up once it's had a chance to cache them, so on the 2nd, 3rd etc use, not the first time.

It won't make any positive difference what so ever to the performance of the 256GB Samsung 830 series SSD, that SSD is actually quicker than the mSATA drive so I would recommend excluding it from caching. That only leaves the 500GB drive,. If you use the same files multiple times on the 500GB drive then there is a very noticeable difference on subsequent access times. For example if you install some frequently used apps on the 500GB HDD, on the 2nd and 3rd loading of that app you will notice a reduced load time, same goes with any files you access.

I actually recommend using your primary SSD for installing frequently used apps and the 500GB HDD for storage. If you are going to use the mSATA slot for a caching SSD, I wouldn't bother with anything larger than 32GB it's rare that you will cache much more than that any time soon. I am using 10GB of my 16GB cache and I also only use it to cache the 500GB HDD in the UltraBay.

Some people don't like the idea of caching, I think there is performance to be gained by using it on slow plater HDD drives but it comes down to how you use the files on the cached drive, if for example you rarely access the same files twice on a drive, then there is little performance gains to be had from caching, if you however constantly use the same files then I think it's worth it on a HDD.

Some believe it is better to just buy a bigger SSD rather than waste money on caching but that costs more $$$, least with mSATA caching you can get a large amount of storage using a traditional HDD which have a much cheaper per MB price and improved SSD performance - when used in a way where caching can make a difference.

In the end a 32GB mSATA drive won't cost you more than $60, so it's potentially a cheap way to bring extra performance to a standard HDD. Otherwise you could spend more and buy a 128GB or 256GB mSATA SSD and use it as a additional drive or put that money towards a 512GB SSD rather than a 256GB, comes down to how much you want to spend and how you use your files.

If you go down the caching road and you didn't get your laptop with a mSATA drive from factory you will probably need to install the ExpressCache software, just download it from Lenovo. You don't partition the mSATA drive being used for caching, you let the ExpressCache software take care of all that, it does not treat it as a regular partition.

Once you have installed the drive and software you will use the "eccmd" command from a elevated permission cmd prompt screen to get info on your cache.

First you want to exclude your primary SSD C:\ from caching so type:
eccmd -exclude c:

If you ever want to check how much of your cache you are using or if it's working, type:
eccmd -info

Hope this info helps.

 

The highlight indicates the read characteristics of almost-never-changed system and program files, in which case the 16GB mSATA SSD cache makes sense. After you run your system for a while, such system and program files end up sitting in the SSD cache, thus speeding up system booting and application lauching.

The situation is quite different when user-data files get accessed: they get updated all the time and cannot be left in the cache. Well, unless such a data file is an MP3 song, in which case I doubt if a cache is needed at all.

So, it boils down to speeding up loading OS and program files into RAM for execution. Now, if you can afford $70 for a 64GB SSD or $100 for 128GB SSD, use it as a regular drive for boot/OS/programs and forget about puny cache for your data HDD.

(Most PC manufacturers' mSATA "file cache" SSD offerings may make sense because such a cache is used in conjunction with a traditional boot/OS/programs/data HDD.)

 

I agree that the main benefits of a cache mSATA drive are realized when used with a traditional HDD configured as your primary OS/Programs drive. If it's only used on a secondary HDD which is there primarily for file storage then the performance gains are not as great but I still notices them.

 

Perhaps because your HDD is inherently too slow. I use a sizeable SSD in the main bay and a very large HDD in the UltraBay. I have about 30 documents (mostly long references in PDF) that I use often. I put them in a folder on the SSD. They are always accessed at top speed. That's my idea of caching.

 

i have been testing the ExpressCache software on my new T430s, and i can definitely notice an improvement in startup speed of frequently accessed programs and files. For example before using EC, my ThinkPad T430s would take around 30 secs to start up Photoshop, after using the PS for a couple of times, the startup time for the app dropped to around 10 secs. If i used my Samsung 830 SSD with my T430S, PS starts in around 7 secs. So i think caching does work if you constantly use the same programs during your normal routine.

You can get 16 gigs mSATA to 32 gigs mSATA from ebay very cheaply.

 

I am going to be ordering my W530 laptop today and am very excited about getting the system. Originally I was debating between it and a 14inch Alienware laptop, but at the moment the w530 is coming up cheaper for the same specs and I like that w530 is supposed to be able to withstand a lot of physical abuse as I want something that will last me several year.

Before I go ahead with the buy though there are a couple things I've been debating on all week that I was hoping someone here would be able to offer some solid advice on:

1) Currently I don't do a lot of media work but I am amature/intermediate photographer and want to move forward into that field more and hopefully get into do video editing and such in the next few years. So what I'm wondering is how much difference is there between the K1000m and the K2000m. I've been thinking I would go with the K2000m so that I have the best options for future use but I haven't found much that explains the differences between the two cards (at least in terms I understand) to know if its worth the extra money. Or would that be better spent upgrading the screen from the HD+ to the FHD? I have a decent external moniter and I feel like running the screen at the 1920x1080 resolution is going to make everything far too small for me...

2) Smart card reader. What is it? Should I bother with getting it? Price wise its no big deal to add it in but I don't even know what it is for. (The options are Express Card Slot & 4-in-1 Card Reader & Bezel vs Express Card Slot & 4-in-1 Card Reader & Smart Card Reader)

3) The 16GB mSATA cache: From what I've read going through this forum, it sounds like I probably want to go for it as I'm only going to be getting a regular HDD and wouldn't be able to afford an upgrade to as SDD anytime at all in the near future.

4) What actually is the language pack? If I've already selected my OS launguage as English, why do I have the option for the language pack to be English or French?


It's been a while since I've shopped for a laptop. I'm graduating university right now and currently using a really cheap laptop I was able to get when my main one died on me at a very inconvient time. Its been enough for basic school needs (word processing and internet). My mom just sold her rental property and has agreed to give me $2000 toward a new system so I've spent the last month looking at things and learning as much as I can because I want a really solid system that will last me a long time and be able to do all the photo and video work that I'm longing to get into doing.

So if anyone can offer advice on the few questions above, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

 

Thanks, guys--I've got a Crucial 32GB MSATA III coming from Newegg. Should be here tomorrow or Friday.

Hey, does anyone know what size the set screws are that hold the mini SSD in place?

 

Lenovo includes one screw in the WWAN/mSATA slot (which is underneath the keyboard). No need to buy.



The screw goes down one hole of the mSATA SSD board. The other hole fits snuggly into the plastic dome.

Now, the next thing is to set up the new mSATA SSD as a cache.

 

The quick answer to your first three questions is, yes the upgrades would probably be worth it.

Now in more detail:

1) The difference between the K1000M and K2000M is big, the K2000M is almost twice as fast as the K1000M or about 80% quicker if we want to be accurate. You can check out the rankings and results for each test here: Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - Notebookcheck.net Tech - The K2000M will allow you to use your laptop as a decent gaming system, you still won't be able to run the most demanding games at the highest settings but most modern games should be very playable between medium to high settings, vs the K1000M which will struggle with most modern games on anything past medium settings. If however you need to select between the K2000M or getting the FHD screen then I highly recommend you get the FHD screen for your needs.

You mentioned that your getting into video editing and photography, for both of these uses you are going to want high resolution and most importantly I large color gamut, the FHD display has both the better resolution and a 95% Adobe RGB color gamut which will be important for photo editing, just make sure you color calibrate your display when your laptop arrives, just use an external calibrator or if you don't have one you can apply my icm profile which I created for the FHD screen http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/695861-t-w530-fhd-color-profile.html.

Don't worry about the text or icons being too small on the FHD display, they are not and can be adjusted if you need to make them larger.

2) Make sure you get the Multi-Card Reader, it's not an expensive option and well worth it if your doing both photography and video editing. It will let you download the data from your cameras memory card directly into your laptop.

3) The 16GB mSATA with expresscache is well worth it your case. In your configuration you only have the 500GB HDD which is being used as your primary HDD. The mSATA cache option is cheap and the cache will make a big difference to your boot and shutdown times, reducing them on average by over 50%. Just look at lead_org's post above where his photoshop start time was reduced from 30 seconds to only 10sec using the mSATA cache.

The W530 is a great laptop, you won't be disappointed.

Edit: Also lookout for sales this Cyber Monday in the USA, it's a big discount sale and Lenovo normally take part so keep an eye out on the Lenovo USA site. That is assuming you are in the USA or have no problem using a forwarding service for shipping.

 

You meant the Multi-Card Reader for small memory cards? (Smart Card is for security check-in, having a chip just like those on bank cards and credit cards these days.)

 

I'm not sure if the K2000M support Adobe's Mercury engine if that matters to you..that'll speed up Photoshop and Premier if you have a graphics card that supports it (you need a desktop or one of those huge 17" laptops w/ a heavier graphics card in them).
And one other thing is photos look oversaturated on a high gamut display like the FHD but the extra screen real estate is useful if you do any software development work....in most cases they look great, but if you edit on them, the result will look good to you, but it'll be undersaturated on regular LCDs. But no matter what you get, calibrate your display before you do photo/video edits on it (some guy posted a while back whining the display is worse than Apple's then said he was too cheap to buy a calibration tool

And I'd definitely look into getting an SSD for storing your apps/OS. 128GB ones are down to $80 and it's a HUGE speed difference

p.s., and ditto multi-card reader...smartcards are security cards that most people won't use unless corporate makes you use it...

 

Looks like it does: GPU Accelerated Applications

 

Does the K2000M increase the weight over the K1000M? I'm probably getting a W530 soon as well and I was planning on sticking with the base GPU because I'm actually okay playing games at low settings and the K1000M seems to be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5650 in my current laptop. But twice as fast is quite a big difference, I'm just not sure I really need it but then if I'm going to buy a laptop once every few years I might as well get something that'll last me a while.

 

I was planning on getting the model with the built in calibrator because that seemed like a nice feature. Are most laptop displays typically undersaturated? (Just wondering because my roommate was printing photos for her wedding invitations a couple weeks ago and on they screen were great but in the prints the saturation was way too much.)

I was thinking about resolution but didn't think about the colour gamut (its not something I actually know a whole lot about). Getting both the high graphics card and higher screen is going to drive the price back out of my price range... (right now there is a blackfriday e-coupon on thats 20% off that is bringing the price down enough that I was able to consider upping the videocard in the first place...

Screen real estate (by that I assume you mean space on the screen) isn't so much of an issue because I connect to the external monitor for that. I don't know if I'd want to run the resolution much higher than what I am right now on what I've got (which only has a max resolution of 1366x768) because I already find this hard on my eyes a lot of the time. But the colour thing is something important to think about.

 

I'm not certain of course, but I don't believe there's that much difference in weight between the two cards.

 

That can be almost completely fixed by calibrating your screen. That's the whole point of calibrating all the screens you work on, so your work looks consistent across all your displays and prints the way you see it.

 

Just FYI, if you order through the Barnes and Noble portal you can get 25% off instead of only 20% which is pretty significant on something of this price range.

Edit: holy crap its actually 28% damn that's good. The educational portal was only 25%. I think I'm going to get the K2000M then because why not at this price.

 

No I'm in Canada not the US, so can't order through Barnes and Noble (Sadly. If I was looking at 28% I wouldn't have an issue at all!). I'm ordering direct from Lenovo.

Edit: Just discovered that there is a SPC (Student Price Card) website for Lenovo. Using the SPC portal on the Lenovo site bumped the sale price from 20% to 25%. Which made the discount about $300 more off. No longer had to debate things. Got all the upgrades I wanted at the price I wanted.

 

Oh that sucks. Well for anyone else on the fence the offer is there if you register under the Barnes and Noble portal, it just pushed me over the edge but I'm just waiting in case the W530 also comes up on a daily door buster deal (unlikely I think, but better to wait a few days and see) plus I'm also waiting for a few unrelated things before I put in my order. Although it seems like there is a 21 day price match so maybe there's no point in me waiting?

 

28% discount is fairly much as good as it gets. We get up to 30% in AUS but our starting prices are nowhere near as low as the USA prices so I would take the USA deal any day.

Regarding Ethereal_Fires response about not being able to get the USA deal due to being in Canada, that's not true. These days it's simple, place the order through the USA discount portal and use a forwarding service for the shipping, they will give you a US address that you can use for the order.

If they have geographical IP blocking then you simply use a USA based VPN service to place the order. Both options are very cheap and would be worth it of the price difference is large.

In regards to the display, the FHD larger gamut is very significant when it comes to photo work. If the text is too small for your eyes you can adjust all that in windows control panel, that won't be an issue.

 

True I could do that, but then all my warrenties and everything would be through the US and if I needed repairs at all I'd have to ship it back through the states which gets to be a big hassle and expensive. And there is more in shipping and duty charges.

 

While I like my w530 so far, I have a small gripe with its fan: it's always on !

Now, I've googled a bit around for the problem and it seems that this is a common "feature" of all W530 laptop (see e.g. here: W530 fan noise intolerable - Page 10 - Lenovo Community).

One possible fix to that issue is to instal TPF control that allows you to tweak the fan behavior. Unfortunately, the lowest level of fan speed that can be set seems to be 2700 rpm, which is fairly audible if working in a quiet environment.

So my question is whether anyone has some idea on how to set a lower fan rotation speed, or has otherwise information about this issue other than what is in the above mentioned thread on the lenovo forum ? According to the linked thread the issue has been escalated so there is hope for a BIOS update that would allow lower fan speeds at some stage, maybe.


I understand that this is supposed to be a workstation and needs adequate cooling, but why does Lenovo not implement a lower fan speed than 2700 rpm ? There are times when even a workstation is just used to write documents or check e-mails and at those times such aggressive fan speeds are not needed.

 

My fan is not that aggressive, it's on but only at low speeds and very quiet most of the time. Just use the Lenovo Power Manager software and in the settings you can select if you want priority on cooling or not. I can't remember the name of the exact setting but you will see it under your Lenovo power options (Not Windows). Play with some of them settings and it should make a big difference.

 

@Nibor2, Thinkpad Fan Control has fan settings that range from 0 (off) to 7 (high) in one-step increments and then two other settings: 64 for super high and 128 for revert to BIOS. You can run it in either BIOS mode (where it does nothing and just shows you the rotation speed that the BIOS is telling it to spin at), manual (where you set it to a certain level and it stays there), or smart. Smart follows a script that you can set or adjust via the TPFanControl.ini file. As an example, my settings look like this in the INI file:

Code:

MenuLabelSM1=Smart Mode 1/  Label for Icon Menu, must be terminated by '/'

Level=40 0		// Level=140 0
Level=55 1		// Level=150 1
Level=70 3              // Level=165 3
Level=80 7		// Level=175 7
Level=90 128		// Level=195 64

This means that the fan does not turn on until the CPU gets up to 55 degrees, it goes up to level 3 at 70 degrees, up to the highest standard level at 80 degrees, and reverts to BIOS control if it goes over 90 degrees. As it cools down, the fan speed lowers at 70 degrees, lowers again at 55 degrees, and turns off entirely at 40 degrees. These settings work well for me and make my computer typically silent when I'm not doing anything intensive with it. You can adjust the settings to whatever you prefer.

 

If the fan is engineered to be quiet at 2700 rpm, it isn't a problem. The X301 fans weren't really annoying until they got above 4000 rpm.

 

@djembe - Where is this Thinkpad Fancontrol and how do you access it? Also where is the script file located? I wouldn't mind trying your custom settings. Cheers.

 

Fancontrol is a freeware that you can download from the internet. TPfancontrol.

 

Will this work OK in the ultrabay?
Western Digital WD10JPVT Scorpio Blue 1 TB 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive
$89 at amazon
Amazon.com: Western Digital WD10JPVT Scorpio Blue 1 TB 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive: Electronics

 

Yes it will but for a very small amount extra you can get the Scorpio Black. These are 7200rpm performance focused HDDs and quicker than the blue. Not sure if they come in 1TB but I am sure they at least come in 750GB.

 

This is fine if you are going to use the drive for movies, music, photos, docs, etc.

7200 rpm drives will not provide any significant improvement over 5400 rpm drives if one is simply going to use the HD as data storage. Most of the time the 7200rpm drives may be a tad bit noisier as well.

If you plan on installing an OS (operating system) then you will be subject to generally slower access speed with a 5400 rpm versus a 7200 rpm.

 

Thanks Flickster and turquoisegirl,

Yeah, I'll just be using drive for picture and document storage. I work a lot in Lightroom 4.0. I'm still using my 320GB Lenovo drive for OS and programs.

Craig

 

It can be downloaded from the developer here (the download link is near the bottom). After installation, open the INI file I mentioned, scroll down to the smart settings, and adjust the temperature readings and fan speeds as you choose. There is a file with instructions in the installed folder in Program Files.

 

Thanks for your reply. Yes I've seen these settings and played a bit with them but I cannot get things better than when using TPFcontrol.
(i.e. I cannot get the fan speed lower than 2700rpm, unless it is completely off).
Ideally I would like to get the fan to spin at something intermediate between 0 and 2700rpm, so that the computer cools while at the same time remaining fairly silent. Anyway, this doesn't seem to be possible without some sort of BIOS update so there isn't much that can be done about this fan issue for now. Well, using TPFcontrol reduces the fan annoyance but doesn't remove it completely.

Thanks for these settings. I was also using a custom TPF profile that I made but maybe I was too conservative with temperatures (i.e. I didn't let the temperature increase as much as you do before asking the fan to kick-in). I will try your settings.

 

I guess this depends on personal sensitivity to fan noise, but in a quiet environment I find the W530's fan at 2700 rpm a bit distracting (without being completely intolerable either). But as said, that's really a matter of personal perception and others might find the fan noise a complete non-issue.

 

I work in a super quiet home office setting and I am sensitive to noise from fans. I was just pointing out that fans CAN be engineered to be quiet at 2700. I never claimed the W530 was.

If you want to get specific, measure the noise, not the fan speed.

 

Hi All,

Thought I would pass this along to anyone else that was having a problem with the W530 going to suspend while connected to the docking station.
I turn the physical key and "lock" the laptop into the dock if will go into suspend and will not wake up when I "unlock" the laptop and eject it.

Just want to post this in case someone else had the same problem and was searching for the answer.

Angelica

 

I bit the bullet and got myself a shiny new W530 (yay!) :thumbsup:

Loaded up on the full 32GB RAM (purchased after-market) and swapped out both the HDD and Optical drive for two chunky SSDs as I do a crap load of heavy virtual machine work so needed a seriously beefy machine (spec is in my signature). Next weekend in fact I'm doing a talk which requires 7 different virtual machines to run (with multiple GB of RAM on each machine).

In fact, my "normal" development virtual machine has recommended hardware of 24GB RAM ... so very happy to finally be able to run that with a decent spec!

So far so good .. this machine is damned quick, and despite what people have been saying I actually really like the keyboard (apart from the Ctrl & Fn keys being the wrong way around .. I swapped them in the BIOS .. but still! ?)

Battery life appears to be awesome .. I could even play Starcraft II at full res & settings on battery for a good 4 hours and still had about 50% left in the tank (which is damned impressive!).

 

Did you get the K2000M? I was looking into the W530 and was unsure if I should bother with it since all I play is SC2. The thing is I have a desktop so I don't really need my laptop to be powerful which is why I ended up deciding not to get a W530 after all but the cyber Monday sale is still on so it's kind of tempting.

Edit: I think the keyboard issue is for people who were used to the old thinkpad layout. For people coming from other brands the new layout is more familiar.

 

Looking at his Sig, he did get the K2000M and if you are planning on doing any decent gaming I would highly recommend that upgrade. The K2000M is almost twice as fast as the K1000M so it's not a small difference in performance when it comes to games.

 

Guys,

I'm considering to buy the W530 for this holiday. I'm planning to use this machine primarily for running/testing a large number of VM's and strictly not for gaming. I have a few questions. Pls help

1. I'm looking to go for an msata drive as my primary OS drive. Is this configuration supported and would you recommend this option or go with full blown SSD? I have plans to have the full blown SSD on the main drive for storing and accessing my VMs

2. Is there a big difference between default HD+ and the FHD screens? I may watch some movies occasionally on this. Does upgrading the screen make any huge difference and is it really worth the extra $200 (i'm not an artist nor going to do any video editing)?

3. I'm planning to install the Seagate momentus xt 750 on the ultrabay. Is the ultrabay a SATA3? Can someone recommend an ultrabay adapter?

4. I'm planning to upgrade memory to 32GB. What DIMMs do you recommend and how difficult is it to upgrade the DIMMs underneath the keyboard?

5. I'll be buying this in the US but will be taking it to India for about a year or so shortly. Is the default Depot/onsite warranty covered in India too?

 

1) Yes, the W530 does have a mSATA slot that you can use as the boot drive.
2) Sure does, but I'd call Lenovo and haggle over the price of the laptop with the FHD screen since honestly, $250 is a bit steep. The extra screen real estate is helpful for displaying large amounts of data at once (say, an Excel sheet, or two 100%-sized Word documents, or any two full-sized windows). You can fit more VMs at once on the display as well.
3) Yes, it's SATAIII. You can check eBay for inexpensive adapters, though I bought mine from NewModeUS since I refuse to do business with eBay/PayPal. Bit pricey at almost $50, but it functions beautifully and it's one of the few Ultrabay caddies I know of that have a full faceplate, instead of leaving a few-mm-thick gap at the top edge.
4) Any DIMM from a well-known memory brand (Curcial, Corsair, G.Skill, Mushkin, Kingston, Samsung, etc etc) will work. I tried fitting a DIMM in the other slot under the keyboard (first slot was occupied by the factory RAM) and I couldn't fit it right in my W520. Probably either my fault or the DIMM's fault, though.
5) Doubt it. When you order, I'd ask about their international warranty options if that's something you require.

 

Thank You.

 

@gorak
I agree and second all of privatejarhead's answers to your questions.

The extra real estate on the FHD will come in handy when running more than one VM, which is something I do. There is some great discounts going around this time of the year so look out for that. If you call them on the phone push them for a large discount, I got my W530 reduced from approx $3300 regular web price to $2100, so there is some big saving to be had if you get the right sales person and push them for a good deal.

Just make sure to get ram from a good provider, I recommend Corsair vengeance - lots of Lenovo owners seem to be using it without any issues or Curcial memory which is what i use. Getting to the ram slots under the keyboard is very easy and you don't have to disconnect the keyboard to change the ram, just slide it out the way. I removed the factory 4GB stick as I like to have matching size dimms.

I also got a caddy from NewModeUS, like privatejarhead mentioned, they cost a bit more than the ebay versions but you get a better quality product than any $15 caddy I have seen on ebay, that's not to say the $15 caddies won't work just fine. It just depends how much you care about the finer details and build quality. The NewModeUS caddies are built very well and fit perfect, they also have a blue LED activity light for the caddy HDD, something most other caddies don't have.

If I was you I wouldn't worry about getting a large mSATA drive, just spend that money towards buying a proper SSD like a Samsung 830 series or Intel 520 Series, both excellent performance drives or if you want the current top dog in SSD performance get a new Samsung 840 PRO series drive, they are destroying everything else out at the moment at a similar price point. Also the mSATA slot is only a 3Gbps SATA while the caddy and primary are 6Gbps.

I wouldn't worry about paying extra for a Seagate momentus xt 750, if your buying it for the extra speed of it's cache, just save your cash and use the standard 500GB HDD that comes with the laptop for the caddy, pop a SSD in the primary bay and if you want solid state cache to boost your caddy HDD performance (hence the original momentus xt), just add the $30 option for a 16GB mSATA cache drive and use that to speed up the performance of your caddy HDD. Just make sure to run the "eccmd -exclude c: " command from an elevated cmd prompt to exclude any SSD you install in the primary bay from being cached by the mSATA cache as most SSD's are quicker than mSATA drives. Also the momentus xt I believe only has 8GB of cache, this way you get 16GB's of solid state cache for your secondary storage drive and SSD performance on your primary drive.

Don't know how the international warranty works but I believe on-site support normally only applies in the country you purchased the unit in, unless there is some special international option. If there is an option for on-site support internationally I would go for it unless it's too $$$. Having on-site warranty support is well worth it.