Help me spend some money on a laptop

[Raz316]

Hi all,

I am absolutely useless at spending money on myself, it took me a good 9 months to justify buying a new keyboard for my Desktop PC, sad right?

Anyway, I'm self employed and work with multiple clients at multiple sites so need a portable yet powerful enough laptop for development.

I've decided on wanting a Thinkpad, I've got an old X60s (which I still use) and I love it. I believe the Lenovo Thinkpads aren't built quite as well as when IBM made them, but from what I also understand they are still very well built laptops. I would like a Thinkpad because of the keyboard and the trackpoint (and the fact it's not too shiny and fancy looking).

I would like for it to be quite powerful and have a reasonable resolution as I do not intend on upgrading it for like a squillion years yet I would like it to be quite light. This has lead my to want an X1 Carbon in one form or another.

1) i5 8GB 180GB SSD 14 in - 2560 x 1440 - £1558
Intel Core i5 4200U - 1.6 GHz
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenov...UK/version.asp

2) i7 8GB 256GB SSD 14 in - 2560 x 1440 No - £1594
Intel Core i7 4550U - 1.5 GHz
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenov...UK/version.asp

3) i5 8GB 180GB SSD 14 in - 1600 x 900 - £1191
Intel Core i5 4200U - 1.6 GHz
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenov...UK/version.asp

I included 3) as a "budget" (and I really do use the term budget lightly), for comparison but I think it's between 1) and 2)

Instinctively I would say option 2) is better value than 1) is there something I am missing?

Thanks as always in advance
-Chris

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

How about a Panasonic Toughbook:

http://sg.panasonictoughbook.asia/co...%20res%202.pdf

They are semi-ruggedised and AFAIK hold their value well.

There is slightly older model which has got good reviews:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...nt-CF-AX3.html
http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/11/panasonic-ax3/

It is very hard to get though.

[Raz316]

No thanks Mr Cat. I would like a Thinkpad, this I have fully decided on.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Fair enough,but if I was doing much travelling with a laptop and it was important for work I would be looking at something with some degree of ruggedisation,especially with the kind of budget you have. Both the LX-CF3 and LX-AX3 have been tested for 76CM drops and 100KG loads to the lids. The Toughbooks have a very long heritage with a number of the range being used by militaries around the world. TBF,to the X1 it does look well built,and Lenovo has "shown" off its durability but funnily enough there is mention of milspec tests they don't go into much detail officially.

[Biscuit]

I would be tempted to go for the more traditional style Thinkpad models like the T440s. Don't be put off by the lower resolution of 1080p, at 14" on windows this will be perfectly usable and 'future proof'.

http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops...40s/index.html

The main reason for this is my experience with the Thinkpad Yoga and the OneLink dock was very disappointing, i returned it for a full refund as it just flat out didn't work properly. The build quality also had a bit to be desired with some inconsistencies in the joins between panels. I know this is different to the X1 carbon, but they have a similar kind of, 'fad' approach IMO. The T440s will be closer to what you experienced with the X60, has some pretty good options for configuring it and you can get a more traditional style dock.

Its still a very portable and lightweight machine, so don't get caught up by the, 'ultra slim' fluff for the X1

[Raz316]

Cheers Biscuit,

I've spent quite a while looking at T440 models as well and probably wrongly assumed it was much heavier. I've just checked the specs and it's apparently only 100g heavier than my X60s, so that's not too bad.

The larger resolution of 2560 x 1440 was compelling, but I guess compared to my X60s with it's 1024x768 resolution, 1920x1080 is a considerable step up still.

Are you able to recommend between these two? Again I am making the assumption that an i7 with a lower clock is not necessarily slow than a higher clocked i5?

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenov...UK/version.asp

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenov...UK/version.asp

I hadn't specified before, but I definitely want SSD for the primary drive. Not too fussed about storage space as I tend to keep client data on an encrypted USB drive anyway.

[Raz316]

Fair enough,but if I was doing much travelling with a laptop and it was important for work I would be looking at something with some degree of ruggedisation,especially with the kind of budget you have. Both the LX-CF3 and LX-AX3 have been tested for 76CM drops and 100KG loads to the lids. The Toughbooks have a very long heritage with a number of the range being used by militaries around the world. TBF,to the X1 it does look well built,and Lenovo has "shown" off its durability but funnily enough there is mention of milspec tests they don't go into much detail officially.

Fair points and I appreciate your input, when it comes to me actually using the laptop, it's just going to be sat at a desk, so while it will be portable, I won't be using it "on the go" so to speak.

[kompukare]

The X60s was actually a Lenovo product - it's just that for the first few years they were allowed to still label them IBM.

Remember though that the X1 Carbon is more an ultrabook version of the classic Thinkpads and is not as serviceable with soldered RAM. You know on deal sites (HUKD etc.) people often call Thinkpads ugly and bulky; well bulky is a necessary for all three (four if you count Toughbooks) business class lines (Lenovo's Thinkpads, HP's Elitebooks, and Dell's Latitude E series) as a laptop which can be serviced is going to bulkier precisely because robust keyboard connectors, for instance, or trapdoors (Elitebooks) don't fit into crazy ultra-thin laptops. This is why the likes of the Macbook and Macbook Air make such poor business laptops. Now, you may never want to service your laptop so this may be a mute point.

Oh, and don't ignore the Elitebooks either: unlike the T440 the Elitebook 840 G1 still has two SoDIMM slots (huge difference for the 3D performance of the Intel Haswell graphics) and the trapdoor is nice. Since the 840 also dropped the optical like the T440, the weight has gone down coming in a bit below the T440

The best part of the X1 is that it's meant to use a good quality panel for the display with both the
2560x1440 IPS and the 1600x900 TN display getting good reviews. The smaller 12" models (Thinkpad X240, Elitebook 820 G1, and Dell Latitude E7240) usually come with an IPS option, whereas AFAIK the 14" versions tend to only have TN options.

Thinkpads tend to have more of a enthusiasts community behind them with an excellent Wiki:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X1_Carbon_2nd
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T440
http://thinkwiki.de/X1_Carbon
http://thinkwiki.de/T440
AFAIK, those are run by the same people but the German version tend to have more details.

The other resource is Notebookcheck.net who seem to review almost every new laptop and do so using the same criteria. So you can use those to compare display quality, fan noise, construction quality and so on:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-....111817.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-....114855.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-....114717.0.html

[Biscuit]

Cheers Biscuit,

I've spent quite a while looking at T440 models as well and probably wrongly assumed it was much heavier. I've just checked the specs and it's apparently only 100g heavier than my X60s, so that's not too bad.

The larger resolution of 2560 x 1440 was compelling, but I guess compared to my X60s with it's 1024x768 resolution, 1920x1080 is a considerable step up still.

Windows still isn't really set up for high resolution, small screen size scaling. Some items don't scale at all and are difficult to read, others scale but look horrible. This becomes doubly troublesome if you are in a multiscreen environment where you have, for example, one 1080p 24" display and one 12" 1440p display, its very difficult to get the balance right between the displays and you have to either put up with huge text on the 24" display or tiny text on the 12" display.
The other option is to just run the 1440p screen at a lower resolution and let it scale itself, obviously not ideal but thats the best solution i have found to windows crappy scaling.

1080p at 14" should be a bit easier to manage.

Are you able to recommend between these two? Again I am making the assumption that an i7 with a lower clock is not necessarily slow than a higher clocked i5?

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenov...UK/version.asp

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenov...UK/version.asp

I hadn't specified before, but I definitely want SSD for the primary drive. Not too fussed about storage space as I tend to keep client data on an encrypted USB drive anyway.

Here is intel ARC for the i5:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75459/
and the i7:
http://ark.intel.com/products/76616/

It seems the i7 is actually higher clocked, its just they have stated the Turbo speed for the i5 and the stock speed for the i7. Both chips are dual core with Hyperthreading.

Not much to choose between them, the main things missing from the i5 that might be of interest are visualization features (VT-d removed, VT-x is still there) and a bit less smart cache.