Lenovo W530 W521 W710

[arretium]

I haven't heard a lick of news on the release date of the next generation lenovo W series.  Has anyone else?

Processor -

I'm assuming we'll get the ivy bridge with second generation Intel processors.2760, 2860, etc.

Video - W530 or W521

Unless they go to the 580M, there just isn't that much available from Nvidia that can fit inside a 15" Laptop.   They might be able to get the Quadro 3000m in the laptop, but you can forget about the Quadro 5010m...it's just too big.

My hunch is we'll see the Quadro 3000m, but there's a chance they could try to put in the AMD FirePro M8900.  That would be pretty interesting as the performance is relatively comparable to the Quadro 5010m.  

Video - Lenovo W710 or W730

We never saw a Lenovo W720.  I had a W701 and can testify to the video card issues others had with it.  Obviously this sized laptop could easily feature a Quadro 5010m or FirePro M8900.  I'd like to see them offer the 580m or 6990m, but that's more of a gamer orientated setup so unlikely.

Don't know if we'll see the return of a second monitor (Dual display).

Hard Drives

W530

Expect more of the same.  Probably 256 MB SSD.  Hopefully they will offer the Intel 520 SSD line which is getting rave reviews.

W720/W730

We could see two hard drive bays here.  Either a raid setup or SSD primary with a 7200 rpm drive as a data drive.  Or two 500 GB SSD drives in RAID configuration for those of unlimited budgets.

Expect the usual Lenovo enhancements.  Ruggedness, 2 MP camera, color adjustment, trackpoint.

I'm guessing we're a month off until they release the lineup refresh...sometime in early April.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

no W7xx series in the near future. 

[hazart]

Can you elaborate on the video card issue of your W701?

[arretium]

You mean for the W701? 

If it didn't have it's video card issues, the laptop was awesome.  I had a decked out W701 with an SSD drive and 500 GB data drive.  The only thing I didn't have was the two screens.  I had a Quadro 3800m card.   I had serious reliabilities issues with my video card that resulted in several trips back to Lenovo for repair.  I don't want to be critical of Lenovo's ultimate resolution, but the card itself (Nvidia Quadro 3800m) was a piece of crap...with repeated failures despite more than one card.  I look it as a design issue with the Quadro 3800m itself.  This might have been resolved in the subseuqent 5010m or the 4000m. 

I want to be careful not to criticize lenovo.  They took real good care of me and I am a happy customer.  We have about 10 lenovo laptops at our office and we will buy again...hence why I am interested in the W530....

[arretium]

You mean for the W701? 

If it didn't have it's video card issues, the laptop was awesome.  I had a decked out W701 with an SSD drive and 500 GB data drive.  The only thing I didn't have was the two screens.  I had a Quadro 3800m card.   I had serious reliabilities issues with my video card that resulted in several trips back to Lenovo for repair.  I don't want to be critical of Lenovo's ultimate resolution, but the card itself (Nvidia Quadro 3800m) was a piece of crap...with repeated failures despite more than one card.  I look it as a design issue with the Quadro 3800m itself.  This might have been resolved in the subseuqent 5010m or the 4000m. 

I want to be careful not to criticize lenovo.  They took real good care of me and I am a happy customer.  We have about 10 lenovo laptops at our office and we will buy again...hence why I am interested in the W530....

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

I have the video card issue with mine W701ds. It was video card driver related.

[hazart]

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lead_org wrote:
I have the video card issue with mine W701ds. It was video card driver related.

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Have you managed to solve the problem?

[hazart]

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arretium wrote:

You mean for the W701? 

If it didn't have it's video card issues, the laptop was awesome.  I had a decked out W701 with an SSD drive and 500 GB data drive.  The only thing I didn't have was the two screens.  I had a Quadro 3800m card.   I had serious reliabilities issues with my video card that resulted in several trips back to Lenovo for repair.  I don't want to be critical of Lenovo's ultimate resolution, but the card itself (Nvidia Quadro 3800m) was a piece of crap...with repeated failures despite more than one card.  I look it as a design issue with the Quadro 3800m itself.  This might have been resolved in the subseuqent 5010m or the 4000m. 

I want to be careful not to criticize lenovo.  They took real good care of me and I am a happy customer.  We have about 10 lenovo laptops at our office and we will buy again...hence why I am interested in the W530....

---

Thank you, as I also have a problem with the Quadro FX 3800M in my W701 and I'm contacting Lenovo for support.

[virtualdragon]

I thought I'd throw my two cents in about the W701. 

For about 10 months I had an awful time with my graphics card (the NVIDIA Quadro 3800M).  My W701 runs Windows 7/64 and is connected to a 1920x1200 external monitor which I use along with the native display.  At very frequent, but random intervals, my computer would either reboot without warning or give me a BSOD.  I checked all the adminstrative error logs, ran tons of diagnostics and tried every suggestion I read or could think of.  I even crippled the graphics card's PowerMizer feature, but nothing worked.  I also tried a number of NVIDIA drivers than were more recent that what Lenovo had released on their website (Lenovo's driver was VERY problematic). 

Some of NVIDIA drivers worked, but some wouldn't even allow my ThinkPad to boot up.  I didn't even try to send my computer back to Lenovo, since I knew I really didn't have a problem with the hardware (oh I know what you're thinking.....if only Lenovo had used discrete ATI graphics in the first place, then I would never had any problems...well, there is certainly something to that, but I digress).   The point is that I kept trying...

Around December, I decided to try the latest NVIDIA driver and was in for a surprise...my ThinkPad not only booted up fine, it ran superbly and I have not had a forced reboot or BSOD since.  Two days ago, I installed the latest NVDIA video driver with similar good results. 

YMMV, but I'd suggest you give it a try.  The lastest driver can be found here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-295.73-whql-driver.html

Good luck!

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

There was a old version of the driver that worked, but i don't have the W701 in front of me. But what virtualdragon may work, since i found that it is the driver that is causing the issue.