Work laptop - thought I wanted Lenovo W540, turns out they're lame. Alternatives?

[evilspoons]

So, a bunch of coworkers have Lenovo W530s. They're really nice. I wanted one as well, but I waited for the new model to come out. That was the W540. Turns out that was a terrible idea. Apparely the W540 kind of stinks.

Pros:
-super awesome high resolution semi-matte screen (I like this a lot)
-weighs less than most of its competition (apparently, I don't know what the competition really is)
-giant 99 WHr battery

Cons:
-touchpad is now terrible
-two M.2 slots (woohoo!) but only 42 mm (grrrrr, all SSDs are 80 mm right now)
-the SATA ports have this stupid proprietary mounting frame to hold your drives they won't sell you so upgrading drives yourself is out of the question
-the keyboard now has a numpad (which I will never, ever use) crammed in on a 15.6" laptop so the keyboard I do use is shoved off to the side (the W530 did not have a numpad...)
-not compatible with the accessories we already have at work for the W530s

Anyone else gone through this have any suggestions for alternatives?

My situation is like this:

- do programming, but I don't need THAT much horsepower. The quad-core i7-4700MQ is fine, most of my .NET projects compile in seconds on a Core 2 Duo. I need USB and Ethernet ports for connecting to equipment in dirty factories. Lightness helps, but the machine should be able to put up with a bit of abuse too (ultrabooks are out of the question). At a minimum I need 3 USB ports, an Ethernet port, and a touchpad that doesn't go squirrely on me.

Suggestions? Thanks!

 

[snoylekim]

Look at Hp Z-books .. the full 1920 x 1080 is IPS and very calibrate-able , I7-4700 and up for CPU options , various pro graphics options from barebones thru the quadro M5100 ..
The upgrade bay is very accessible, and the 17 inch has an extra 2.5 bay that allows upgrading w/o replacing the optical drive .
outfitted 2 of them and still using one ..nice machines ..

 

[HOSED]

Since it will be exposed to dust and dirt have you considered a "semi" toughbook? http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-CF-5...c+toughbook+52
Price is high I know but maybe it can be expensed??

 

[crashtech]

W530s can still be obtained new.

 

[takeru]

dell M3800
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m3800-workstation/pd

 

[evilspoons]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

Addressing everyone in order:
snoylekim: I consider 1920x1080 a bare minimum for a 15.6" display (my 5" phone is that resolution...), not a "good" resolution. IPS is nice, but colour calibration is 100% pointless at my job. They seem on the heavy side (compared to W530/W540) but otherwise I will have to take a closer look at them. They could be the answer.

HOSED : I thought the same thing when I bought my first laptop here in 2008, but my Dell Latitude D830 has survived 5.5 years without a hiccup. It's not THAT bad, and my boss looked at me funny when I suggested a Toughbook in '08. I doubt that would be any different now, lol.

crashtech: Where (seriously, not being a jerk)? I live in Canada, I've only seen one store that even sells Lenovo at all. My source for Lenovo has always been their Canadian site.

takeru: that is my #1 candidate right now. Thanks for pointing it out. Lack of ethernet is a bit odd but apparently they include a USB ethernet adapter so whatever.

 

[crashtech]

crashtech: Where (seriously, not being a jerk)? I live in Canada, I've only seen one store that even sells Lenovo at all. My source for Lenovo has always been their Canadian site.

There are tons of W530's on the ebay Canada site, but after checking, the sellers are mostly in the US. I don't know what the ramifications of that would be for you. Also most of them are pretty decked out and carry a corresponding price premium.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Lenovo-Think...9?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item48699c5529&_uhb=1

Now that I am looking at them, I want one...

 

[vbuggy]

What's wrong with the W540?

(Yes I read the cons but I don't see what the issues are compared to getting anything else bar perhaps a Zbook)

 

[holden j caufield]

have not read up much on the w540 but with all the changes I don't even consider it a thinkpad anymore.

 

[vbuggy]

have not read up much on the w540 but with all the changes I don't even consider it a thinkpad anymore.

Maybe it's no longer a laptop for devs who don't actually know anything about hardware who think they're god's gift to computers.

The Mombook is there for that now.

 

[holden j caufield]

I've got a basically brand new w530 if you are interested, it has the onsite and accidental protection until mid 2016 ish.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/7934298@N02/sets/72157646039042612/


IMO the w520 keyboard better if you are an old school IBM guy. A bunch of the IT guys here all use the w510, w520, w530 and they are wonderful machines, almost everyone here has it loaded to 16 or 32gb of ram. I run 3 hard drives with them, even have a virtualized esx server with nested virtual machines inside that sometimes is used to demo to clients.

Actually have a w520 at home running a bare metal hypervisor, passed through the sata controller to a virtualized freenas server running on the native sata controller. It runs very fast and 7-10 vms running + a virtualized UTM. A w520 keyboard on a w530 with a w540 screen would be nearly perfect.

There are some 3200 x ???? 15" laptops coming out or that are out.

 

[bgt]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/laptops/384724/asus-n550jv
Really fine laptop. Just deliverd the 17"model to a custommer. With SSD....blazing fast and a nice screen .

 

[evilspoons]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/laptops/384724/asus-n550jv
Really fine laptop. Just deliverd the 17"model to a custommer. With SSD....blazing fast and a nice screen .

I actually have two of those. They annoy the @#$% out of me. Came shipped with Windows 8.0. Windows updated to 8.1 and then all the drivers stopped working. One example: the Asus touchpad drivers "pretend" they are a touchscreen when you are doing swipe gestures, which makes the onscreen keyboard button appear and also confuses programs that are touchscreen aware. There are no new drivers on their site for Windows 8.1 for the touchpad. If you do the two-finger swipe to go from the top of the start screen to the bottom, the touchpad driver clicks once in the center of the screen when the gesture is complete, which starts whatever program is in the dead center of the screen.

As you can imagine, this is HIDEOUSLY ANNOYING. I ended up looking up the hardware ID of the Elan-tech touchpad and installing drivers from a Samsung laptop with the same touchpad. The fn+F9 enable/disable touchpad keyboard shortcut doesn't work any more, but Samsung's driver for 'disable touchpad when usb pointing device is detected' DOES work, so whatever.

Rinse and repeat like six times for other hardware devices in the system. Not acceptable for a work system.

 

[crashtech]

So you haven't found anything you feel is right for you yet?

 

[evilspoons]

I've been really busy with other stuff so I just haven't dedicated any time to it (I've hardly touched a laptop of mine in weeks), but I think one of the HP laptops or the Dell M3800 is going to be my choice. I'll let you all know what I settle on, haha.

 

[crashtech]

Too bad you can't get ahold of one of those new old stock W530 models.

 

[holden j caufield]

I've never seen a huge company put out a fleet of asus and I've worked along side a few. I still prefer Lenovo as IBM some how still does the warranty work and logistics. They are every where. I have employees traveling and if it's a hardware issue or they crack their screen and are 3k miles away at a hotel or another country. IBM is there next day at their hotel to fix it. For the traveling guys we always order next day on site accidental warranties and it's well worth it. The IBM repair guys also are top notch and usually can have the machine taken apart and together in a few minutes.

I usually prefer lenovo for mission critical stuff, mostly because the IBM logistics and infrastructure, it's the only one I carry when I travel world wide. I'll be getting a Toshiba Z50 for home though... if the gf says it's ok. Probably have 5 computers in each room here and at my parent's place.

 

[alkemyst]

Why are you looking to update a work laptop?

For work I really prefer a Macbook running Parallels with Windows 7 (may go 8.1 soon) and Mac OSX in converged mode.

I am a road warrior though and my Macbook has the dents and scratches to prove it. If I was going to get a desktop type laptop Lenovo would be in the running though.

 

[evilspoons]

Why are you looking to update a work laptop?

I'm not paying for it. I'm the "IT guy" at work and can therefore tell my boss what to buy for me, as long as he says the price is OK. I really don't want to be using my Windows XP Dell D830 any more

Also, did you even read my original post? Lenovo is a no-go because the current models are huge downgrades from the previous model years. Macs won't work because I do Windows software development and work with legacy hardware like PLCs with RS232 serial ports and so on, and adding OS X and virtualization is just another pointless layer of complexity. Plus... even retina Macbook Pros are worse off for ports than some of the other PCs I'm considering in this thread!