Correct. Lenovo never installed Superfish on any ThinkPad laptops. It was installed only on their consumer grade laptops; the ThinkPads remain their business-class models that have generally only a very minimal install in terms of software.
This is a fantastic price for a great durable machine IF you plan to use an external mouse. I needed the durability and power the Thinkpad’s have and researched it for two months. I finally settled on a one-year-old W530 rather than put myself through the pain that all the other Thinkpad fan-boys like myself went through. The touch-pad mouse was the deal-killer for me.
I once dropped a Thinkpad out of my knapsack on to a linoleum floor, maybe 3 or 4 feet. It landed on a corner so hard the DVD bay popped out. I lost the spinning hard drive but otherwise the machine survived intact.
I too can attest to the durability of these computers. I have a Thinkpad T61 I’ve been using ~8 hours a day since mid-2008 and it’s still in better shape than a lot of other laptops <3 years old. A few months ago I got a W530 to use for a temporary purpose and replace my T61 when that purpose is finished. It seems to be just as well built. I’ve never seen another laptop more durable than Thinkpad T and W series machines.
Pretty sure the “supports up to 16GB” in the description is wrong. I have a W530 with 28gb of ram in it (I thought the max is 32gb). The W530 at least has four ram slots (two on the bottom and two under the keyboard). I have been using the W530 with a docking station as a desktop replacement. It works amazingly and the ability to take your desktop with you is just awesome
I believe the Model is the 20BG0014US using Lenovos PSREF. It matches all the specs listed except it says it has a fingerprint reader which Woot says this model does not.
I have the w530 for work and I have 32 in it. Also I replaces the cd tray with another 256 and then I added one of these as well and I am contemplating this to get me up even further
I love the dock too it makes it one hell of a machine for running VMs and such, the only thing is it really is not much of a laptop at all thanks to my 100 min total battery life with the extension…
I have a both W530 and W540 at work. In my opinion the 530 is hands down a better machine. It feels more rugged, the processor in my 530 seems to do visualization better even though the specs show it being slightly slower. (whenever I trouble shoot a problem I try to do it in a VM so I don’t mess with my host system too much.) I have had nothing but issues with the 540s we have. Had issues with them being super slow at times and updating the unused fingerprint reader drivers seem to fix that. have also had multiple issues with trackpad and wireless.
Really after you get it up and stable they are pretty good machines but, the 530 was easier to get into production and has been much more stable. so just because the 540 is the next generation doesn’t mean it is better by any means.
I have one of these. Performance-wise, it is a reasonable machine, but it represents the nadir of Lenovo ergonomics and a triumph of form over function. There’s a reason it’s a bargain. Wait for next year’s model.
The trackpad is terrible. There are no mouse buttons, so to generate a click, you must press the whole trackpad, which responds more like a foot pedal than a mouse. I find it unusable without a separate mouse. If youre adventurous, there’s a $68 replacement part available on eBay that adds the mouse buttons back.
The off-center keyboard is difficult to use because, well, it’s off center. Not so bad at a desk, but makes using this laptop painful in an actual lap.
There are very few indicator lights or switches. For example, is it charging? Used to be there were LEDs for that sort of thing, but now you have to boot the system and look at the system tray to find out.
You’re OK if you stick with the machine as-is, but upgrading the hard disk (or installing Linux) is a crapshoot. Thanks to an unholy combination of Intel’s bad security architecture, Microsoft’s intersection of greed and good intentions, and Lenovo’s defective BIOS implementation, it is easy to render the motherboard permanently unusable by installing a blank disk. They will replace it under warranty, but it is mind-boggling that a computer can be rendered unusable (as in, can’t even boot from CD/DVD/USB, not even after reinstalling the original hard disk) because it is exposed to a blank hard drive.
I have a W530 for work as well and it’s a beast. I’ve never had an issue with it. A few of my coworkers that started after me, have W540s. I haven’t heard of any problems with them though.
I’ve had a T61 for my personal laptop since '06 and it’s been great. Very durable.
Regarding the blank disc, I can share one thing I learned from a much older ThinkPad (R32). Particularly, they generally don’t want to do anything with only a blank disc. The solution to this - even if you want to start with a blank disc to install one or more operating systems to - is to partition the disc (even arbitrarily) on another system first and then insert it and begin. This worked every time for me. You could even partition it using a SATA->USB adapter before hand and that would be fine as well; the partition size(s) did not have to match anything or be of any particular type. You could then wipe them out with your first OS install and make them the size you want.
This was only tricky in light of the fact that internal HDs pretty well never ship partitioned (as well they ought to).
![[Preview 1]](http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/084ac17a-a8f8-4b2b-b5d1-c024eb857b95.jpg){kind=link}
![[Preview 2]](http://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/ba43ca5d-57d8-4000-9762-e45f3fffcdc2.jpg){kind=link}
