t510 vs w510?

I'm replacing my T60 15.6 inch widescreen. I like the screen "real estate", I'm used to it, and am looking at the T510 and the W510.

I'm planning on getting the fastest, latest, etc so that my new laptop will keep me happy as long as possible. I'm willing to spend a bit more now.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of each? What features are must-haves?

The W weighs more, right? Is it just because it's more rugged? Better components?

 

The W510 has a workstation graphics card I believe.

 

4 memory slots, usb 3.0, screen calibrator.....

 

Also the W510 has the quad-core i7 CPU options while the T510 has 1 dual-core i7 or two dual-core i5 options. The quads will be faster if you're doing a lot of stuff that takes advantage of parallelism, though they will burn through your battery quicker if you're not plugged into AC.

 

W510 is definitely better than T510 in CPU and graphics. I haven't used T510 before so no +/- for them. But purely from the configurations, W510 is better for you also the price is higher.

 

If you're not too concern about battery life and heat, W510 is definitely more powerful than T510. Though, if I'd get a W510 as a laptop, I'd rather build a separate desktop with even better spec or lower cost at comparable performance.

 

You know it would actually help is if you told us what you plan to do with the laptop. Are you a casual use browsing the web, using Office, playing Flash-based games online, streaming HD video, etc? If so, then you really don't need the more powerful (and power-hungry) W510's quads or batter discrete graphics. If you're doing CAD work, rendering 3D animations, editing and encoding video, etc., then yes you will benefit. If you're a heavy gamer or want to play the latest GPU-intensive games, you might be better off with something else entirely like Alienware (or Sager, etc).

 

Exactly! I agree with Mutnat wholeheartedly. I came across this struggle when I made my purchase as well. I am happy that I've bought T510 instead of W510. This is the most suitable for my usage most of the time, which is mainly non-CPU/GPU intensively use rather than some occasional mathematical modeling that I'd like to do on my own station (instead of a big networked high performance computing facility). I even ponder if I could get by with integrated graphics and get a few more hours, but my current combination of hardware is serving me well.

It all depends on what you do. An overkill is most probably a waste.