Current Lenovo gen, personal buy reference

Hello, I want to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad but it seem I don't find what I want in my Country. I'm going to give my perspective about lenovo products and if you can give your opinions as well so maybe I can make better choice.

First what I'm looking for should have this options:
-integrated+discrete graphic card
-VT-d proccesor/motherboard
-retroilluminated keyboard (backlit keyboard)
-thinkpad trackpoint, central button
-removable battery
-hdd and wireless indicators (until I saw lenovo products I did not realiaze that there are some laptops without this indicators)
-dvd/battery/hdd ultrabay

This is what I think from current/last gen Lenovo products:

Essentials:

B580/590: no wireless indicator, no discrete graphics, no thinkpad trackpoint, no backlit keyboard
G480/G580/G585/G780: no discrete graphics, no thinkpad trackpoint, no backlit keyboard


Ideapads:

Y400/Y500: no wireless or hdd indicator (Irony mode ON: very usefull the touchpad indicator), no thinpad trackpoint
Y480/Y580: no wireless or hdd indicator (Irony mode ON: very usefull the touchpad indicator), no thinpad trackpoint. And for the Y580, anything over 5.5 pounds it's not "portable"
Yoga 13: very nice product but, no wireless or hdd indicator, no removable battery, no discrete graphics, no thinkpad trackpoint, no backlit keyboard
Yoga 11: same as Yoga 13 but in addition it uses Windows RT (will not work with all my programs)
U310/U410/U510: no wireless or hdd indicator, no thinpad trackpoint, no removable battery
S206/S300: no wireless or hdd indicator, no thinpad trackpoint, no removable battery, no backlit keyboard
Z380/Z480/Z580: no wireless or hdd indicator, no thinpad trackpoint, no backlit keyboard
Z400/Z500: no wireless or hdd indicator, no thinpad trackpoint, no removable battery


Thinkpads:

Not sure 100% but for most thinkpad models they lack what in my opinion it's a nice feature in Ideapads, the "Turns on/off the backlight of the LCD screen." key combination. Anyway:

W520/W530: very nice product, but too heavy, anything over 5.5 pounds it's not "portable", maybe it should come with the 6 cells battery to be a little more lighter.
T430u: ultraportable but no wireless or hdd indicator, no removable battery, no backlit keyboard, no ultrabay
T430/T530: very nice products and it has all I want but unfortunately I cant get it with the options I want on my country, Spain.
L430/L530: pretty much same as T430/T530 but lacks of "Serial Ultrabay Enhanced bay eject latch", and against what product info says you can't set up with discrete graphic nor backlit keyboard
T430s: In my opinion the best product that suit my needs. Same as the T430 but lighter, but unfortunately I cant get it with the options I want on my country, Spain.
x131e: Still don't know why this is not an edge product.
x230/x230t: very nice product, it's a pitty you forget to add discrete graphic and dvd/battery/hdd ultrabay
x1 carbon/x1 carbon touch: very nice product but you forget an important feature, removable battery. What sense does it have to make an ultraportable laptop if I need to be not far from a power plug? Also you forget to add discrete graphic and dvd ultrabay/battery/hdd.
Twist/s230u: as the x230t, I like the rotate feature but this lacks of removable battery, discrete graphic, backlit keyboard and dvd/battery/hdd ultrabay
Edge 430/530/535: nice afordable producst but no wireless or hdd indicator and backlit keyboard.


Future gen:
Lynx: very nice product, as a convertible tablet it lacks of removable battery, no wireless or hdd indicator, no dvd/battery/hdd ultrabay, no discrete graphic, no backlit keyboard.
Helix: very nice product, but in my opinion it should be better to have the i7 on the keyboard dock and maybe an Atom in the tablet? Anyway, this lacks of removable battery, no wireless or hdd indicator, no dvd/battery/hdd ultrabay, no discrete graphic, no SD card reader and no backlight keyboard.


I'm writing this to make me easier to choice between the few topseller products that are sold on my Country, if I miss something or I make some misstake please correct me. Also if there are new products, just tell me and I will edit this post..

Just a few considerations before finish:

I still don't get why they remove wireless or hdd indicators, it's not a expensive feature and for IT administrator can give some usefull information.

Also this goes to all Lenovo's, there is a need to improve displays, with a few exceptions, most displays are glossy (hate to distract myself looking at a display like if I'm looking to a mirror), most displays are TN or low quality IPS and most of them has the PWM in them (I have lost a lot of eye precission because of this **bleep**).

And just to finish I don't know why you can call "portable" something that you can't exchange batteries. My 25Kg PC it's also portable then.

PD: hope this helps some one as it's helping me to decide.

 

I become utterly confused reading your post. Have you decided yet?

I'm a T5/W5/FHD kind of guy. I don't give a **bleep** about the other Lenovo products.

 

It's much simpler, IMO.

1) If you need work done on laptop in "laptop" mode, and 'work done' involves running more than a text editor and a browser, or you need a GPU, W/T5xx + FHD is as good as Lenovo laptops get. 5.5 pounds, 4.5 pounds, 6.5 pounds - in a backpack it's all the same. Get W-series if you need more than 16GB RAM, or need a good GPU.

2) As a portable typewriter all other models do just fine, choose based on screen size needed. GPU there is unnecessary; if you really need more than Intel HD graphics - see 1).

 

Maybe it will make some more sense if I tell you that I posted this on lenovo forums but it got deleted :/


And no, have'nt decided yet.

 

It would make more sense for you to go to the What Notebook Should I Buy? - A Laptop Buyers Guide forum and fill out the form. This provides more structure for the requirements and you'll get better feedback.

 

Agreed with Thors.Hammer on filling out the sticky in WNBSIB. I'll look out for it.

 

I used to care a lot about removable batteries. But now, I'm not so sure anymore, especially with Thinkpads' charge threshold feature. Will you be buying multiple batteries? If not, why do you need to exchange batteries? If you need to replace the battery because it's dead, you can do so by opening up the laptop and replacing it once every 2+ years.

The WNSIB form is useful because it starts with your usage pattern and allows people to recommend laptops that fit that. You may realize that you don't actually require all that you initially thought.

 

No, it's still mostly a wallofconfusingtext, but what userid did you use over in Lenovo's forum? I don't see it in the archive, and there's no obvious reason for it to have been deleted.

 

FN+F3 also switches off the LCD backlight on ThinkPads.

I recommend the T430, its got everything you want and need. Since you can't buy the config you want in your country I suggest ordering it from surrounding countries. Here in Germany you can have any configuration you want, since we're all EU shipping shouldn't be such a big problem.

If you want a spanish keyboard or whatever you guys use over there you can easily swap it by removing 2 screws. You can get any keyboard on ebay.

 

I will really don't care but my last year I was carring a car and bike batteries to don't stop working because out of energy power. Can you imagine walk in a mountain with a car battery? I really hope you never have to do it xDD

the userid is "Undecided" the post was this one:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T5...enovo-gen-personal-buy-reference/td-p/1020981

That is basically my idea, I'm just waiting for the WMC 2013, if no new laptops appear there I will buy the T430 or T430s from other country and swap the keyboard.

 

rather than thinking what you will buy, try thinking about what you will need, and what you use it for.
Try using elimination:
Thinkpad? (die ideapads)
Minimum screen size(comfort)? (while considering big screen=heavier, less battery life)
minimum 4 hours (fair) of usable Battery life? (die S and Y series)
a chunky 8+ hours (all day) of usable Battery life? (Only X230(t), L4/530, T4/530, and W530 survive)... sadly the the T430s didn't make it
Lighter than average? (U, X, T430s, T430u and the convertibles remain)
Minimum perormance? (die S series)
Average performance? (die all ultrabooks)
Maximum perforance? (Only Z, W)


Now look at your remaining options, they should be very similar choices. Just select them dependig on their price vs quality/features.
When I went through this, I was initially considering T5/430(s), E4/530, L4/530, X230
X230 didn't have the comfortable screen size
T430s and E4/530 didn't have the all day battery life
T530 and L530 were too heavy
Out of T430 and L430, I picked the higher quality one.

For me, even a chunky T430 is considered portable because I just need the maximum battery life from it, it will spend most of its time on a desk (I don't drag around power bricks with me.)

The 2013 thinkpads are coming in June, if you can wait a little longer...
If seems like the indicator lights are important to you. For me, the wireless indicator is whether google pops up when I open the browser, and I have no clue what the hdd indicator is for.

 

Just a little correction, T430s can last all day if you add the 3 cells battery to the caddy. Right now that is my choice, I'm just waiting for MWC 2013 maybe there we will see new products or tendencies.

And about the indicators I will give you two examples. For the wireless indicator, image you are moving a full HD 8 GB movie from your pc to the laptop, this proccess will take some time, so instead looking at the screen you can just grav a newspapper start reading and from time to time look at that light, if it's still blinking the movie are on his way, no need to move cursor or get close to laptop to see what's going on.

Now for hdd, imagine you have a ssd, so no noise at all from hdd, and no hdd led indicator. Now in this scenario, you are at your very new windows 7, or 8 or whatever you use; and the systems hangs, if you have a hdd light indicator you can confirm or discard a hdd problem. Windows also like the pagefile, and with slow hdd, it can look like the system hangs on, with this light you can easily discard problems or if you have a trojan to quickly detect it. Also this can be very usefull in the upper scenario were you are moving big files from other computer or even from a USB stick (without led lights).

 

I'm a bit more concerned about the trend that lenovo and other mfg are headed towards and that is to omit the HDD light. What's up with that? My parent x120e doesnt have an HDD and it drives me up the wall. I mean the laptop is already slower to begin with so why not include an HDD LED that cost 2cents to produce?

 

Good question, I would really like to know why they remove it on first place and for what porpouse, I'm sure it's not win another 2 cents, or at least I hope that's not the main reason. Also I hope it's not because the light distract some genious lenovo laptop designer, because that will be funny, imagine they remove it for that porpouse (something that can override with a bios setup, enable/disable hdd light) but they add glossy displays to laptops.

I'm really afraid of thinking on this matter.

 

Probably 2 reasons for that change:
1.- SSDs are more frequently adopted in today's laptops, so waiting on the HDD is becoming less of an issue.
2.- Continued "consumerization" and commoditization of computers, simplifying them to what most users demand... and I'd venture to guess that most users don't care (or might not even know about) the HDD activity light.

Sad to see it go, although I don't miss it too much on my X120e. I do miss the T500's WiFi activity light though...

 

Just a note about virtualization: The i5-3210M processor option (the cheapest) does not have VT-d. The next one up i5-3320M has all the virtualization features.

I think its better to order a unit now, especially if its a T430 or T430s. Lenovo has been working out the bugs for 9+ months on these models, and (unlike with the 220/420 models) been pretty successful at it. If you wait and get a newer model there will be more potential for problems with relatively little gain. Aside from the X230s, the models coming up in March don't look so great to me.

 

Strictly speaking, though, VT-d is not an absolute requirement for virtualization. (And virtualization is not a requirement for all users.)

 

The purpose of the HDD LED is to keep users aware of harddisk activity as well as inform users whether their pc has frozed or not. We all know how stable Microsoft's history has been and to keep people sitting around 30min awaiting for something to load only to find out their PC has froze.

 

User can be informed about whether they PC has frozen or not by moving mouse cursor, not by looking at hard disk indicator.

Frankly, HDD is a rather pointless indicator with internal SSDs, as they are always writing and garbage collecting, even if not requested by OS, so the indicator shows only part of the activity. And it is distracting (blinking = something important), it's brightness isn't adjustable, it does not inform user about anything, and it's simply unnecessary - people who use their laptops with lids closed, or use desktops located under the table/in a cage/remote etc. manage just fine. Same about WiFi.

CapsLock indicator, however, was useful and it's hard to find a "normal" keyboard without it. But it's long gone, together with sometimes necessary Numlock (which Lenovo didn't manage to implement properly, as Dell did), so dropping the remaining useless stuff is at least logical.