Any idea when the W540 will be released?

Thought it may be time to upgrade my W510 but I am in no rush. I know the W530 is fairly new, but was hoping there might be a new model around CES?

Any indication of when the next model will launch?

Thanks!

 

The timing will probably be in line with Intel's next platform. I'd expect there to be more than half a year until that happens.

 

This is just a rumor, but the W540 may never be released.

According to lead_org,

"Jin Li (lead_org) says:
October 19, 2012 at 12:22 pm
I don’t have the product map for 2013, but according to some sources, Lenovo will be moving away from T, X, W series naming system and towards name like ThinkPad Twist, ThinkPad Helix and other more catchier naming convention.

So i guess maybe it is closer to things like Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, Macbook, etc to better target the consumer market.

But one could expect some major changes to Lenovo product design over the next 2 years."

Food for thought. Consider the new Thinkpad Helix - it's not called the Thinkpad "Edge" Helix, just the Thinkpad Helix. If I'm not mistaken, that's the first non-Edge Thinkpad that does not have a W/T/X in its name. I wouldn't be surprised if this rumor is true and Lenovo went ahead with a new naming system.

In the next few years, I think Lenovo will eventually make the entire Thinkpad line look more like the X1 Carbon, Helix, and T430u. A couple of things I expect to be consistent with the new, sleeker product design:
1. Chiclet keyboard + glass trackpad
2. Non-user replaceable battery (or at least more difficult to remove)
3. Loss of UltraBay
4. Loss of dock connector (maybe even slice batteries too)
5. Loss of optical drive (maybe)

This is all just speculation, and it all depends on how much Lenovo is willing to make Thinkpads more "consumer friendly." Considering the new keyboard, I think they're going in this direction.

 

Aha, what about L-Series? They have neither the T/W/X name in them.

I highly doubt that these things will happen. Lenovo has still many customers in big businesses. They couldn´t compete with HP and Dell if they would do this. They are not stupid. They won´t let the big costumers simply go.

The newer Thin-and-light machines are only an Expansion of the ThinkPad line and they can not replace the T/W/X. Maybe the name and some outer details will change, but the core won´t change.

I also think they will not stop making Workstations.

 

It would be a serious mistake to stop making a portable workstation. That would push a lot of people in my company to HP. Maybe Dell, but most likely HP. The Dell Precision M4700 Mobile workstation isn't exactly small and light.

 

I relished my W510 for years but wanted to go lighter as I move away from the heavy lifting in my group. (pun intended) Should I replace it, I would certainly look to Lenovo as a first choice. I too hope that line continues...

 

With the removal of the monstrous W7xx, there is little reason to maintain the "W" nomenclature and the concept of "workstation." From a manufacturing perspective, a W530, say, is a variant of the T530, just like a T430 i7 QM with NVIDIA and T430 i5 with HD 4000 are variants of the T430.

If the two configuration pages for T530 and W530 were merged, showing configuration options from low end to high end, there would not be any confusion (beyond the present confusion ) in placing an order. I could buy a lightlly loaded T530 for typical office work while you could buy a fully loaded T530 for software development, virtualization, simulation, video transcoding, fighter jet design, whatever.

----------------------

By the way, I came across some interesting statistics. A graphic designer tracked the screen resolutions of his visitors' computers and compiled the numbers over the last 100,000 visits.

Ranked #1 is 1280 x 800. Ranked #2 is 1440 x 900. Ranked #8 is 1920 x 1080. Ranked last is 1600 x 900.

The minority of users want all sorts of great stuff, but an aspect of reality shows a different picture.

 

Workstations like the W series come with certified graphics cards and drivers as well as twice the DIMM slots. While there may be many similarities, these distinctions warrant continued separation in my opinion.

 

Fast forward 2-3 years, the idea of 4 DIMM slots is quaint. (The OP started this with W540 in mind.)

As distinctive as the "i" designation? Well, let's call the distinguished thing T560w, then.

 

Maybe... but maybe not! We can agree to disagree at this point, I suppose...

 

I also heard that w500 series have better cooling mechanism, so the difference between W500 and T500 is probably in the engineering as well as in the specifics.

 

W and T series even share hardware maintenance manual Only options are different: different graphics cards and color sensor. As to DIMM slots, can get T-series with 4 slots if CPU is upgraded to quadcore.

So it's purely marking decision whether Lenovo will merge W series into T and make more options available for the latter, or keep letters the way they are now.

 

Marketing tricks get people irrationally excited. W550 is no different from T550w, or just T550.

 

I didn't realize they did that... Early in the T/W530 product cycle I tried to configure like that to no avail... They must have changed it later in the product life cycle. Marketing is like magic though, all we have to do is observe Apple! I get your points, all I'm saying is that as long as a model exists with the certified drivers for solid works, CAD, and etc. marketing and branding should follow suit. If a time comes where all video cards come with those drivers and both T and W can be configured equally at the top of the configurations then merging would be fine by me... Even so, those that look for the distinction of a workstation will probably shop elsewhere.

 

Distinction as in a letter "W"?

 

Well, whatever happens, I think I would be satisfied with the current chassis and a CPU+GPU refresh for the W540.

I have a feeling chassis changes are coming, and the first things that would get dropped in the name of slimness will be stuff like the UltraBay. I do hope I'm wrong though.

 

I would imagine the Ultrabay will get a trim job before it is dropped. They could change it from the 12.7mm back to 9.5mm. As I recall, the 12.7 was to support fat blu-ray drives but I doubt many people are really using them.

 

I remember when "W" workstations were designated by "p" at the end of the T model number

e.g. T42p, T61p

 

You might go ahead and get a W530. I have a W520 with the I7 quad core and better graphics and monitor and it is a great machine. I can't read the keys anymore, I have used it so much. I may go to a W530 if needed as I am within months of it being 2 years old and that is about all I use a machine before I hand it down.

 

Any new rumors on the w540?

 

Anyone have an idea?

 

No rumors as far as I have seen. It's still likely 4-6 months out, so don't hold your breath.

 

The only rumor about W series I have read is, that there won´t be a W540. The rumor says tat it will be replaced by a W with a 16" screen (2560x1440). But still, only a rumor.

 

That would be cool if they could manage to do that in a chassis no wider than the current W530, slightly less deep, and certainly lighter and thinner. I know physics and cooling come into play, but I could dig a 16" especially if the rest of the machine was squeezed.

Oh, and I need that to start shipping this quarter.

 

Probably it's a typo but look what I found:

Lenovo ThinkPad T440 - 14.1"" Notebook - Core 2 Duo I7- okluge.de

It's very interesting because the fact that it comes with i7 dual core makes me think it can be real, any idea?

PD: obviously it's not availabe and the pictures probably don't match the original.

 

Its a typo. According to this shop, it would come with an i7-620M, which is an old Arrandale CPU from 2010. This isn´t the T440.

 

"i7-620M" and "1440 x 900" point to T410. (The pictures bear close resemblance to T410.)

 

Any update on this subject lads? We are almost at the mid way through the year... would of thought an announcement had happen by now.

 

I'd wait until Apple announces and starts shipping first Haswell-based laptops. Then wait a few months for some leaked PDFs from Lenovo, with real, available for purchase, hardware in 3-6 months.

 

LOL. It's so sad that this is the typical cycle and probably true. Apple starts shipping on June 10. That puts Lenovo around October.

 

Apple uses the Non-vPro CPUs for their notebook-line (so, non-pro CPUs), Lenovo uses vPro for nearly all ThinkPads, and these CPUs will come later. Release is September/October.

 

W540 will be released on October 29th, 2013

 

how long does it take from release date to my front door. I'm going to sell my laptops and get this but don't want to it too soon before the w540 arrives

 

It's always hard to tell when ordering a custom machine direct from Lenovo. Usually 2-3 weeks, but it could be longer if there's a parts bottleneck or shorter if your machine is relatively vanilla.

 

Well, that obviously didn't happen. This is like the worst launch in laptop history. Why announce a product if it takes months to put it on the shelf. Marketing 101 fail, waist the launch buzz, tick everyone off, miss Christmas.

 

People in Europe can order the W 540 now from a German web store:
They offer delivery within 7 to 14 days to anywhere in Europe including Switzerland:
Here is the link to the store:
Lenovo ThinkPad W540 / 20BG001BGE / 20BG001B

There is a tab with some technical details further down the page.
At least now you know about the specs since they seem to be universal.

I think I'm going to order it with the Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB hard drive and 32 GB RAM