T520 - Buy it now or wait for T530

[tfmcshan]

Hi All,

Like many of you, I am awaiting the arrival of the Ivy Bridge processors to show up in the T series.

I currently have a T500 and want to upgrade. Fortunately, I still get an IBM employee discount and can buy a T520 with an i5 - 2520 processor and NVIDIA card for about $800.

The questions is two fold. Do you think the price for a T530 will be at or equal to the current price for a T520? Second, do you think its worth the wait just to get the Ivy Bridge processor? I am not a gamer but do like fast processor.
Most of my work is online (teaching), spreadsheets and viewing/sorting lots of family photos.

Thanks in advance for your collective wisdom!

Tom

T500 - Win 7
X200 - XP
G40 - XP
E600 - Win 2K

[ZaZ]

I wouldn't think Ivy Bridge is going to be much faster than your T500 for spreadsheets and photos. Perhaps another option would be to upgrade to a SSD on your T500. That is more likely to yield a more noticeable performance increase than a new CPU and it's much less expensive than a new laptop.

[tfmcshan]

ZaZ,

Thanks for your input. I gave some thought to an SSD instead of a new Thinkpad. An SSD would no doubt speed up my T500 and maximize my current investment.

Truthfully, I don't want to fall to far out of the technology curve by keeping my current machine much longer. It's out of warranty, so I worry about high cost repairs.

If the T530 prices are too high, upgrading my T500 with an SSD is probably the best way to go.

Thanks,
Tom

[ThinkRob]

Truthfully, I don't want to fall to far out of the technology curve by keeping my current machine much longer. It's out of warranty, so I worry about high cost repairs.

I wouldn't worry too much. The T500's got a pretty good track record as far as reliability's concerned, and with the exception of the LCD and the planar, all of the parts are quite cheap to replace (and, more importantly, easy to replace on your own.)

Obviously it's your call, but unless I had a machine where I had reason to believe that the planar or the LCD were on their way out I'd keep it until it was no longer useful.

[bapatterson]

A T530 is unlikely to be more than ~10% faster than a T520.

What the T530 will give you is longer battery life and better graphics performance. In addition, you'll get a USB 3.0 port or two.

What is unclear is what type of keyboard the T530 will have. It might be a chiclet keyboard or it may be the existing keyboard. We should know shortly.

Based on history, the T530s will likely be offered with few discounts at first. Within 4-8 weeks, however, the prices should be right around where they are for a T520.

I'd wait to see exactly how the T530s are configured and then make your decision.

[ZaZ]

It's definitely going to be the chiclet keyboard.

I bought my X220i for $750 the first day. A few times it dropped below that price, but $750 for the first day ended up being a pretty good price.

[ThinkRob]

What is unclear is what type of keyboard the T530 will have. It might be a chiclet keyboard or it may be the existing keyboard. We should know shortly

We know now. Backlit island keyboard.

[tfmcshan]

We know now. Backlit island keyboard.[/quote]

How did you find out? Does this mean the end of the "good old days" with the current T500 series keyboard?

Thanks to everyone for your help!

Tom

[ajkula66]

How did you find out? Does this mean the end of the "good old days" with the current T500 series keyboard?

Thanks to everyone for your help!

Tom

Pictures are all over the web.

Coventional keyboard will be gone from the *30 generation altogether.

A very sad day for many of us...

[Kaze22]

Get the T530 only if you don't care for the chiclet keyboard and other changes.
I think you also loose the Thinklight, and latches.

As far as speed goes, it will be more than 10% faster for sure.

[Ibthink]

I think you also loose the Thinklight, and latches.

No, latches will stay, you can see it on the W530-picture: http://www.lenovo.com/images/products/n ... s/W530.png And you can also achieve a Backlight-keyboard, which is nice too.

[mjacot]

T530 will be faster with the Ivy Bridge. i5 are estimated around 2.8ghz speed. Essentially, everything is shifting up a tad - new i3 performance will be what current i5 is (2.5ghz) and so forth for the i7.

Keyboard will be chicklet and 1 DIMM of ram will be 8GB @1600MHz - so it will max to 16GB

Faster processor + double the memory = no brainer

[tfmcshan]

This is all great information and I am thankful for everyone who posted.

From what I see, the T520 will be a big improvment over my T500 (Core 2 Duo P8600 Processor at 2.4 Mhz). I maxed out the memory for Win 7 32 bit Professional so it sees about 3.4 Gig.

I really would like a USB 3.0 but not at the sacrifice of having the chicklet keyboard. Sounds like I should spring for the T520 with an i5-2540 Processor, NVIDIA graphics and Intel Wireless.

At least I can fix a T520 for a few years into the future before we all have to bite the bullet.

Its a shame Lenovo is doing this. HP and several others offer laptops with an abundance of features at a lower price point. If we lose the keyboard, Lenovo may lose my business ;(

[ajkula66]

Faster processor + double the memory = no brainer

Maybe for you, but for some of us dinosaurs the equation goes like this:

6 row chiclet keyboard = no brainer = no sale

[FragrantHead]

Truthfully, I don't want to fall to far out of the technology curve by keeping my current machine much longer. It's out of warranty, so I worry about high cost repairs.

I think the question should be whether you worry about downtime, e.g. if you had the on-site warranty. For what it's worth, I'm still using a 9-year old T30 daily, so perhaps that tells you something about the longevity these machines can have. I did have one non-trivial repair, the fan failed and I swapped it out myself for one I got on eBay. Other repairs were a new memory chip and DVD drive, e.g. trivial. I have a T410s on standby, but the T30 refuses to die and I prefer the 4:3 screen and older keyboard. I use older software, XP, Oracle 8, Office 97. Perfomance-wise that makes it a wash with a new machine in many ways, other than the fact the T30 doesn't have SATA and hence no SSD, a problem you don't have.

As others have said, battery life can be fairly amazing on SandyBridge and USB3, well, you could probably get an ExpressCard for that. I do concur about SSDs though, a must have upgrade as far as I'm concerned.

[Kaze22]

For like 20-30 bucks you can get a NEC USB 3 card. Don't let that be your deciding factor.

[bapatterson]

As far as speed goes, it will be more than 10% faster for sure.

Nope.

[tfmcshan]

Kaze22 wrote:
As far as speed goes, it will be more than 10% faster for sure.


Nope.


Do you think the difference between the two (T520/T530) will be more or less than the 10% discussed?

[wolfman]

Clock for clock the speed difference would be less than 10% - Ivy Bridge isn't a new processor architecture - it's a die shrink. The big improvements are in power consumption and graphics performance (and number of graphics execution units) as mentioned above.

[ThinkRob]

Clock for clock the speed difference would be less than 10% - Ivy Bridge isn't a new processor architecture - it's a die shrink. The big improvements are in power consumption and graphics performance (and number of graphics execution units) as mentioned above.

Pretty much. I guess for some workloads it might be worth it -- if you're the sort where every last cycle counts -- but then again, if that's the case why are you using a laptop instead of a proper workstation?

So as usual, the rule of laptop purchases holds true: hold off on buying one as long as you possibly can, and then buy the older generation at a heavy discount if you can.