Lenovo Thinkpad 15" Full-HD i7 Workstation

If you spend this much to surf the web and read email, you must be one of those guys at Best Buy trying to sell some blue hair more then they need to get the job done. $hame on you. :wink:

2 things:

  1. max RAM is 32GB not 16GB

  2. this model took some heat for its atrocious touch pad, especially the missing physical track point buttons. Thatā€™s why Lenovo has quickly released a predecessor, the W541, which brings back those buttons, while other specs stay nearly identical. Many current W540 owners hope they can exchange their palm rest with the W541ā€™s.

Edit: the woot! listing unfortunately doesnā€™t state if this machine comes with 4x4GB or 2x8GB RAM modules. The latter option is $120 more.

Really? 4bangers is the standard but people keep going to V6ā€™s and even V8ā€™s. Love those dudeā€™s in the CAT diesels that will NEVER pull a thing but need that F350 to troll around town.

I think his comments is right on. Donā€™t put a 256gb SSD in a machine like this. Itā€™s stupid and guarantees the user will be upgrading a few months down the road. Be nice if you could put 2 drives in it(someone said you can but it doesnā€™t stat here on woot) or dropped the SSD for a 1tb hybrid. Having BOTH types of drives in laptops and tower(s), hybrids are not much slower then your standard mid or lowrange SSD. I donā€™t think itā€™s unreasonable to want to upgrade to 32. Someone said it is upgrade to 32 but does this model allow it? When I was a student, my laptop would only go to 8gb. I use to TRY and run 3 or 4 virtual machines in class and it was way to slow. At home on my 16gb tower (upgradable to 32) I could run 6 with no degradation. This machine is nice but itā€™s like buying a new early 2013 car for 2015. Heck, you can buy mid years MSI gaming rigs with better stats for this price.

The graphics card in this thing is pretty reasonable:

However, it only has 1GB of memory where nVidia specced 2. This will hurt performance. Iā€™m really not sure who that video card is made for. People say itā€™s for CAD type work, but that tends to be memory hungry. It will play games alright at medium settings, but thatā€™s not the purpose of this laptop. About the most you can say about it is ā€œat least it is not Intel graphicsā€.

The 1920x1080 display is a nice touch too.

Lenovo has been using some really really shitty touchpads though, so if you buy it youā€™ll probably want to get a mouse to go with it.

It would be even smarter to buy this machine with minimal RAM (8GB) and the 500GB HDD, and then upgrade these two components yourself. Thatā€™s because Lenovo charges outrageous premiums for memory and storage upgrades.

BTW, this machine can take two 9.5mm SATA drives plus an M2 mSATA card. => 3 drives total. The CPU is a quad core, thus this model has 4 SODIMM slots and supports 32GB RAM (4x8GB).

I thought Woot was supposed to have discounted prices? Lenovo is selling basically same computer for less.

Cā€™mon Woot aka Amazon! Your price is way too high for an older model (defined by older graphics card) paving stone of a laptop.

[MOD: Not the same. We have a better CPU, more memory, and an SSD instead of HD.]

If we come across a deal for one, Iā€™m sure we would. Talked to the buyer and there just havenā€™t been deals. Most computer manufacturers only offer Linux on a special order item.

For what itā€™s worth, Linux support on Thinkpads is generally excellent, at least back to 2006 when I got my first laptop. Any idea if itā€™d be possible to purchase a service plan on these from Lenovo?

These are nice systems that come standard with full HD screens for a decent price, with lots of configuration options

If youā€™re going to blow $1300, this is a better choice for $120 less:

Acer Aspire V15 Nitro Black Edition VN7-591G-74SK 15.6-Inch Full HD Laptop

Just purchased this model from the Lenovo site during their sale a couple weeks ago.

For ~$1200 I got the following specs:

Intel Core i7-4700MQ
8gb RAM (2 dimms, 4 total slots)
3K screen (2880X1620)
NVIDIA Quadro K110M (2gb) Graphics
1 TB HDD
16GB SDD Micro drive

This deal isnt too bad IMO. It has an upgraded processor and SSD and 16GB of memory.

The graphics card is confusing, I think the K110M in this machine is 2GB not 1 GB??

Our team agrees with you and weā€™re upping the specs to 2GB for the graphics card.

Thank you!

Agreed. Same configuration on shop.lenovo.com came out to $1844.10 for me, so this deal seems to present a ~30% discount.

I run linux full time on my W530. Ubuntu-based gnome and xfce. The only issue is w/ the nvidia cardā€¦ if you turn off optimus in the bios and set acpi=off in grub, youā€™ll get flawless nvidia drivers & multi-monitor supportā€¦ at the expense of battery life.

This issue will exist for any intel + nvidia laptops, however, as itā€™s an issue with X11 not recognizing Optimus-switched devices correctly. You can turn the nvidia card off completely, as well, but then you only get VGA output, canā€™t use the others :frowning:

Overall, amazing laptop for Linux. Wifi, bluetooth, webcam, media keysā€¦ everything works out-of-the-box w/ ubuntu.

Dang, Iā€™m actually in the market for a new workstation but I wouldā€™ve preferred this to have the color sensor option included. Itā€™s the one feature that no one else really offers.

Iā€™m considering the Lenovo W541, which I donā€™t think this is? Also considering the W550s

> This price is way out of bounds here for essentially a web surfing email reading PC.

Youā€™re a complete and total nincompoop.

If you donā€™t know that Thinkpads offer probably the best out of the box linux support in the industry, youā€™re not a real Linux fan :stuck_out_tongue:

(typed from my linux thinkpad that, like every other thinkpad iā€™ve ever owned, installed without a hitch)

Something seems wrong with that touchpad. I seem to remember Thinkpads having three buttons above them?

And that keyboard, why does it look all chiclety?

Is it possible to receive an RMA for a Thinkpad lacking these essential Thinkpad components?