w520 deals

Ive been looking for a computer for college last few months in order to determine what I want. I basically narrowed it down to the w520 with still the possibility malibal lotus p150 or p151. I saw the deals on thinkpads this last week and noticed I could get a pretty good deal but I want to wait closer to summer to buy one because maybe they will have some of the new hardware. I dont know or prices might go down. Are those sales through the barnes and noble discount quite often?? I see now they are for different model thinkpads.

 

The W520 is a great system, albeit on the heavy and large (wide, long, depending how you look at it) in the context of carrying it to school/work every day. Consider investing in a quality backpack if you decide to purchase a W520.

In terms of 15" and your personal computing needs, you may want to look at the T520. In any event, don't ignore the FHD option.

Lenovo offers discounts (sometimes stackable) throughout the year. The prices may go down, but not significantly. The next iteration based Ivy Bridge processors and "newer hardware" should be available in the summer. At that time, the early adopters tend to brave the prices and the first rounds of manufacturing.

 

what is the difference between the t520 and w520. I will be going into the engineering field in college and this will have to run any programs needed. I also want this last all 4 years of college so I might just stick to the w520 unless it really wont make a difference. Any idea on when the next sale might be on these two thinkpads? Or if there are any holidays that they might be cheaper?

I dont think the weight will bother me either. I would sacrifice some portability for better computing speeds.

 

The chassis for the two are identical, the differences are the W520 has more powerful, workstation GPUs, 4 SODIMM memory slots for quad core models, and USB 3.0.

 

I thought you had been doing research.

Mechanically, the T520 and W520 are identical. The W520 requires a bigger/heavier power adapter. If you don't carry the power adapter with you, the two models weigh practically the same.

The W520 offers higher-power GPU options, max 32GB RAM (4 slots x 8GB stick) and two USB 3.0 ports.

If you need high-end quad-core i7 CPU and more powerful GPU, go with the W520.

 

Thanks guys,

And I was! I just wanted to double check to make sure I wasnt missing anything.

 

When people say the W520 requires a larger/heavier power adapter, they mean larger/heavier. Be sure you understand what it means

Take a look at the comparison picture. Left: W520 power adapter, Middle: T520 power adapter.

http://www.wfu.edu/~yipcw/lenovo/2011/w520/images/w520-ac_adapter-170W_vs_90W_65W.jpg

The W520 is not the best portable computer if you want to take it with you everywhere, especially if you carry the power brick

 

Yea thats definitely not small but I will be wearing a back pack around campus so it shouldnt be too bad. Im used to a pretty heavy load. Hopefully wont have to carry the power brick around everywhere.

Also can you get a copy of windows from lenovo when you purchase from them?

 

By "a copy," you mean a DVD? No, not a DVD, but you'll have Windows 7 preinstalled on the primary drive, plus the COA code on the battery bay (you must remove the battery pack to see it). In addition, there'll be a partition on your primary drive dedicated to "system recovery."

One of the first things a ThinkPad user does after seeing Windows desktop for the first time is to create the recovery discs: 1 boot CD + 2 data DVDs (for Windows and Lenovo system tools). Have blank discs handy for this.

All of those things constitute your "copy" of Windows.

 

Ok thanks. One thing I read is that lenovos dont come with a lot of bloatware. Is that correct?

 

Yes, correct: no bloatware. Primarily the ThinkVantage tool suite on top of Windows. And you can selectively disable/uninstall the tools/utilities that you don't quite like.

 

Ok thanks for the help. I will be waiting for the next deal through the barnes and noble discount and will show you guys the quote here before I purchase to make sure everything looks ok. Maybe there will be some good deals around easter!

 

Yeah. Know what you want for your CTO (configured-to-order) and when you see a good deal in the near future, go for it. The W520 is a great workstation in laptop form.

 

Actually, it's starting to creep back in. I just received another T420 for configuration for someone else. The factory disk set is now 1 CD and 4 DVDs so it has expanded.

The factory disk set has products from Google, Corel, Symantec, Microsoft, Verisign, Skype, Evernote, etc. I was a little surprised it ballooned some.

One thing is for sure, it solidified my flatten and clean install approach after saving off the disks.

 

This is bad.

Right.

 

Soo when I make the recovery disks is there a way I can reinstall it without the bloatware or will it automatically get rid of the bloatware when I make this disks?

 

The disks are created so that you will get the first boot experience from the factory. This includes the valueware.

If you want something different, create your own custom base image and capture it with the tools on the market. If you have Windows deployment skills you can use MDT.

Or you can use Acronis True Image Home
Or Symantec Ghost

 

Never thought you were in Marketing!

 

LOL. I was just seeing if anyone was paying attention. I usually say crapware. I was pretty surprised at the T420 I got the other day. Wow.

 

I ordered a w520 recently, told them I was a college student and I got the following price:

4270CT CONFIGURED SYSTEM
$1,198.63 $1,198.63
0B06461 SBB INCOI7-2760QM2.40GHZ,6MB
45M3090 VBB GENUWIN7PROFES.64
0A68625 SBB GW7P64 E
75Y0162 SBB M W7 XP MD- E
0A68535 SBB 15.6FHD (1900 X 1080) LED
0A68893 SBB NVQ1000M GR
75Y0175 VBB COLORSENSOR
45M4572 VBB 4GBPC3-10600DDR3 1333SODMM
45M4839 SBB KEYBOARDUS ENGLISH
0A68526 VBB FINGERPRINT READER
0A68558 SBB 720P HD CAM INT MICR
0A69620 SBB I RAID-NOT EN
0A68552 SBB 320GB HDD7200RPM
0A68547 SBB DVD RC8XMXDLLRULTEHATA
0A68529 VBB ECS+4IN1CR
45M4816 SBB 9CELLLI-ION BATTERY
0A68904 SBB CPNAMLC+ 170W AC AD
0A68261 SBB BLUETOOTH 3.0
45M4804 SBB IN.CENT.ULTIMATE-N 6300
44C7950 SBB INT WRLSSWDAREANTWRK UPGR
0A68564 SBB LANG PCK US E

I was really surprised I got it for that much cheaper than the advertised price on their website. All I had to do was ask the chat rep. I already ordered 3x4gb sticks of ram and a 180gb corsair force GT ssd for it. Can't wait till it gets here!

 

That config, that price: Wow!

 

I couldn't believe the price. At first I thought I got scammed because the order status page was www.lenovoorders.com and I would imagine that a real company would of used a sub domain like orders.lenovo.com instead

..but after lots of forum reading I realized that it was real and I had just received the best deal ever!!!

even their shipping was way better than expected. I had a 3/11/12 estimated ship date. I placed the order on 2/20/12 and it shipped 2/24/12

 

Ill be telling them im a college student haha

 

Nice!! At that price, I would have bit the bullet now rather than wait another year for next TP purchase.

 

It's excellent to see how fast that shipped! I ordered mine on the 22nd, so I'm optimistic that it'll ship sooner than they said (March 1st). We'll see.

 

I would expect yours to ship out by Wednesday at the latest

how much did you pay? and how do you plan on running 10gb of ram?

I bought 3 additional 4gb sticks from best buy (cost me $22 after discounts) so that way i can have all 4 sodimms filled for a total of 16gb

the thing that i'm looking forward most to installing is my corsair force GT ssd.

My UPS tracking just got updated too, says its going to be here thursday 3/1

so thats not bad at all IMO order 2/20 arrives 3/1, A LOT better than what I was expecting, I was hoping they would ship it out by their estimated date after all the horror stories i read online, very surprised at the progress so far.

 

That would be great!

I got mine for $1440 with the Intel SSD and a four year warranty with accidental damage protection (I'm rather clumsy and I'd like it to last me through college). I ordered it with 4GB of RAM, but I have another 6GB here waiting to put in (1x2GB + 1x4GB). I realistically can't imagine while I'll need so much (the 2GB in the Dell really is unfortunate, but back when both RAM slots worked and I had 4GB, that was plenty). Might as well use it though IMO.

 

it must be really nice to get the SSD from the factory with everything already installed on it.

I'm hoping I dont have a hard time getting it set up when my laptop gets here

my research showed that the corsair GT is one of the best, if not the best ssd on the market right now so i'm really looking forward to seeing how it performs.

 

Well, you can create the recovery discs, then install the SSD, and then use the recovery disks to put the factory setup on the SSD. Sure, there's a bit of extra work involved, but then you can get whatever SSD you want, and installing a disk drive in the W520 is phenomenally easy.

 

Yes, I recommend the SSD installation. The recovery discs that I created myself did not work, but Lenovo sent me some at no cost.

I would recommend ordering the W520 with the RAID option, with two mechanical disk drives. Then replace one or both of them with SSDs for screaming performance. With just one, you can get up around 500MB/s read transfer speed according to the ATTO disk benchmark. That's what I did. With two SSDs in RAID, I have read that you can get 900MB/s, but I cannot get that because I didn't order the RAID option. Next time I will, and at these attractive prices I think I will order another W520 or W530 soon. Great job, Lenovo. SATA-III, RAID and great multi-monitor graphics options are a great combination in a reasonably priced laptop computer. Sure made the decision easy, there's not a lot of competition for the W520 right now, that I can see.

Yes, installing a SATA-III 2.5" SSD is easy, as is the installation of a smaller mSATA drive (although the interface to the mSATA is not SATA-III so the performance will not be quite as good).

 

Thank for this informatiom. I ordered mine yesterday. I'll call lenovo to change it to raid.

Where can I read about this?

 

Chukwe- they aren't going to let you make a change to your order, you would have to cancel the first order and then place a new one

my .02 on raid in a notebook:

If you run a raid0, and 1 of your drives die, then you lose all your data on every drive across the raid. Too risky for me. If you run a raid1, then you arent getting any additional storage, its just a mirror. and to the best of my knowledge every other type of raid configuration requires 3 drives.

on top of that, if you order a raid configuration from lenovo your laptop won't ship with an optical drive.

 

The first part is a non-issue if you keep regular backups (which you should be doing even if you don't use raid! ).

The second part may or may not be an issue. Most people I know don't use an optical drive anymore. You can always buy a cheap USB optical drive as well.

The issue with the raid configuration is: Your only chance to get it is when you buy the laptop. You cannot upgrade to it later. You can upgrade anything else though. So if there is even a fraction of a chance you will use raid in the lifetime of the laptop, best to order it now.

 

ya i totally agree with you there. Its weird that they don't just ship then all out raid enabled, because what if you wanted to raid your main HDD bay and the msata and keep the optical drive. You cant do that when you order.

 

Thanks Guys,

I'll cancel my order then and order a new one. But my question is, is the raid 0 what it?

Apart from losing optical drive which I hardly used on my 4 year old T500, is there any other thing I'll miss?

 

Raid 0 - Stripes data across 2 drives for increased performance. Instead of writing it all to 1 drive, half the data goes to drive 1 and half to drive 2 simultaneously. If 1 drive dies, all is lost. If you go with SSDs, I'd recommend this.

Raid 1 - Mirrors data across 2 drives for increased reliability. Each drive has an exact duplicate of the other. If 1 drive dies, the computer keeps running and when you replace the drive the raid rebuilds itself. If both drives die before the one is replaced, all is lost. If you go with HDDs in a laptop, I'd recommend this. HDDs are shock sensitive and even with all the added protections, even a small drop of your laptop has a chance to damage the drive. This offers only physical protection as any software damage (virus, corrupt files, etc) will be mirrored across both drives.

Regardless of which route you go, ALWAYS keep a regular backup of your data. Acronis makes a decent personal backup system for Windows and external 1-3TB drives are very affordable.

 

Can you explain why does W520 need a hardware change for RAID and non-RAID? HDD caddy is a plastic accessory. RAID on Intel chipsets is a software setting. What is so special in this RAID setting that actually make Lenovo stock 2 versions of each motherboard combinations? It must cost them a fortune, and I don't see the point why is it needed.

 

there must be a hardware difference..

if there wasn't then people would be able to raid a computer that they didn't buy with raid from lenovo, but they can't do that, so there is clearly a bigger difference than meets the eye.

 

It's a firmware difference from what I remember. Something not upgradeable though. The actual controller chip is the same.

 

I don't understand it then. Lenovo stocks 2 different versions from all the motherboards, because of options like Quadro 1000 vs 2000, TPM and RAID. It must cost them an awful lof of money to keep two versions of the RAID, so I would think it's not just a FW difference. If they are using some hardware RAID chip instead of the Intel then I would understand, but if it's just Intel then it's a stupid decision.

 

I believe the information on it is buried in the W520 owner's thread. It's been a long time since I participated in that thread though, this was back when I bought my personal W520 last May.

 

It was my impression the SATA controller just needed a bit flipped to turn on the RAID capabilties already present. I think several people have commented they wonder why Lenovo just doesn't ship ALL the boards with the capability. I wonder the same thing.