Any leaked info on W540?

Even Google doesn't have much on the topic.

Does anyone have any info on the upcoming W540?

I'm aware that CPU performance won't be much of an upgrade. But I'm hoping the GPU side gets substantial

upgrade as I'm looking at one mostly for portable gaming use.

(I have Alienware machines but they are cumbersome to carry around...)


Maybe some Chinese users who can read Chinese websites can share leaked info/speculation on W540?

Thanks in advance...

 

According to nVidia, K2000M is still the most powerful mobile graphics for 15" workstations.

W/o Haswell W540 would be just a W530 without proper trackpoint buttons.

 

Has it been confirmed that the proper trackpoint buttons will be disappearing across the board? I'm desperately hoping they'll be preserved on the larger models.

 

There is nothing confirmed about the ThinkPads with Haswell. So nobody will know.

But I think Lenovo will use the new design on all ThinkPads.

 

I heard the W540 will look like the Retina MacBook Pro and will weigh just over three pounds.

 

your joking, right?

 

Thor forgot to mention that the W540 will sport double Retina resolution.

 

I was totally joking. The forum has be devoid of conflict lately so I thought I would bat a hornets nest.

Anyone really believe Lenovo has the chops to develop a portable workstation that is thin, light, powerful, sports a industry leading screen, upgradable, and has a competitive price?

Let the debate begin...

grin

 

I'd buy a T540 s, that's for sure.

 

My W530 is twice as thick as the 15" Retina MacBook Pro. It weighs nearly twice as much, too.

I would really like to see Lenovo improve that for the W and T series machines.

 

Well, they have already started to improve this aspect with the T431s (in comparison with the T430s) or the new Edges (E531: 26mm thick, E530: 29-35mm), so I have no doubt that the other new ThinkPads will be also thinner and lighter than prior generations. Maybe not as thin as an Ultrabook, but maybe 26mm will be the new mark for the normal T440/T540 (and a bit lighter). Lenovo has to find the right balance between thinness and lightness and durability ThinkPads are known for.

A T540s is rumored, as well as a 16" W to replace the W530. But still, these things are highly speculative, until there will be some leaks to confirm them.

 

nope cant have super thin and light in a good workstation at this point, too much heat and power requirement for long hours of heavy use and the durability to last. Laws of physics and materials science still apply

 

I think it can be done. There are some pretty innovative designs on the market today. Dropping the optical drive and going dual fan helps.

It doesn't have to be super thin and light. Just something thinner and lighter than the current W series ThinkPads. There is definitely room for improvement there.

 

Well, there is room, but why to improve these parameters? Workstations from other vendors don't even have Optimus, and thus struggle getting to even 4-5 hours on 90Wh battery. But it's a workstation after all, not a thin-and-light laptop.

Why does it matter how much a 15-16" workstation weights, especially if we talking +/- 1-2 pounds? Why does it matter what is the height of the workstation when closed, if it's less than, say, 2"? Either way, it still needs a backpack for transportation. And it's relatively big and heavy either way. Either way, using it on a plane table in economy is not going to be easy (although possible, 16:9 screen helps). 1920x1080x140ppi is a reasonable resolution for a workstation, and is usable at 100% (and sometimes it is quite important to get pixel-perfect display, without scaling etc).

Dropping optical drive = immediately reducing amount of available storage (today W530 can be stuffed with more than 2TB of SSDs for about $1.5K, and when running VMs with snapshots etc - it's not too much at all). Having 4 DIMMs and 32GB of RAM (and hopefully 64GB for the next iteration) is also essential for a workstation, but it takes up quite a bit of space if user replaceable. Replaceable battery will always eat more space than a custom internal one. Etc.

I wish Lenovo just does not make W-series another thin-and-light laptop. 1920x1200 screen and/or IPS would be great though, but unlikely. Leaving Trackpoint alone, and adding a touch option would be great. But otherwise, it should be a great machine if they keep all the good things as they are, upgrade CPU/GPU/chipset and not make any "improvements" sacrificing usability/upgradeability/connectivity for a half a pound and 5mm of dimensions. For those who need light and small there is Helix.

 

Yea, well, the T430s will also support the same amount of storage and it is much thinner.

I too need 32GB of RAM but I don't think that is driving the thickness.

And I am not convinced you must have a fat case to cool the GPU and CPU.

As to your question on why I would like to see the girth and weight cut, try traveling with two.

 

There surely is like Thor says. The W500 used to be thinner as well. Even the old T40's used to be thinner than current ThinkPads.

 

I do, rarely though, travel with both W520 and W530 in the bag, and I'd say that shaving a half-inch from that burger, or reducing the total weight by a pound (which is less than 10%), isn't going to help much, if at all.

T430s etc. are a bit different segment IMO. For a workstation, I'd rather see upgrades in replaceable video, AMD video card option, more connectors (getting powered eSATA back would be nice), several DisplayPort/Thunderbolt (in addition to the existing ports), better cooling etc. etc. If getting it requires an extra pound of weight (to add to the existing 8+ pounds backpack with laptop, some papers etc.), or 1/4 of an inch when closed (same dimensions for all practical purposes), while keeping the price in check, I'd say 'go for it'.

What I would certainly not like to see, is a screen higher than 150ppi on this. If only because Windows can't have different scaling on different monitors when docked, and using more than 150ppi screen at 100% wouldn't be easy. Brighter, to 400 nits+, would be awesome though.

Anyway, if the rumors about 16" W-series, in a different body from T series, are true, Lenovo are going in the right direction, as far as my use patters are concerned

 

so still no info on W540? I almost pulled the trigger two days ago but decided not to. then I was gonna purchase today then the price went up.

decisions decisions...

I'm really hoping W540 be a minor "innards" upgrde only with perhaps a little bump on the GPU side...

(if they got rid of Trackpoint buttons like they did on the other newer ones, i'm gonna be really mad...)

 

Haswell is "a bump" on the CPU and integrated GPU side, but I doubt if there will be any bump on the GPU side within the W540.

On the other hand, "further refinements" on the trackpad may make things a bit worse. First the keyboard, now the trackpad.

If the price is attractive, getting a W530 may be a good idea.

 

yes i agree, although i'm a bit hesitant to drop the top dollar for something that came out almost a year ago...

and since Nvidia released 750M with a bit of performance bump, I'm hoping maybe W540 come with K2100M or something

i know that's a lot of maybes haha...

 

Not that the products have gotten stale, sitting on the shelves for almost a year. (Very interesting psychology.)

 

I think the Lenovo Thinkpad W540 will come with Nvidia Quadro K1100m or K2100m.
What I really want to see in the W540 is a smaller power supply. I don't care is the laptop is really big, but I would like the power supply to be closer to the size of the power supply on my old T42.