Lenovo ThinkPad E530.

the keen edge

So after generously receiving some great technical advice from posters on my last thread I'd decided against repairing my old laptop in favour of buying new.

I had a cursory look around Argos, Curry's et al today and was a bit disappointed to see what ~€400 would buy. The build quality of what was on offer seemed poor enough; I'm a student so my new machine must be robust enough to last a good number of years. Reading various threads I had a look at a couple Asus laptops, one model was missing a keyboard button, hardy a positive selling feature!

Anyway I spent the last few hours researching Lenova Thinkpad E530 and I really like what I see, it ticks a lot of boxes for me. A practical, no nonsense piece of kit.

Firstly, how do you guys rate the ThinkPad E530

And secondly, any critique of dabs.ie?
They offer the win 8 pro model or the win 7 pro model for ~€200 less thanLenova themselves can offer the same machine!
The only difference I can see is dabs.ie's machine has the Core i3 2328M; Lenova's the 3110M version.

I'm I missing something here?

EDIT: I searched dabs uk site where they offer this laptop with the 3110M CPU. It is a few extra Euro over the 2328M CPU but still dabs price is €522 vs. Lenovas €647

the keen edge

Just purchased this machine from dabs.ie
€532 delivered to Ireland.

As far as my research goes, IMHO all in all, its the most durable, reliable laptop with the most powerful chip and greatest RAM/HDD capacity my budget will buy; if not the most prettiest!

Anyways I'll report back on the laptop and my dabs.ie buying experience upon delivery for all those interested.

the keen edge

Well this thread seems to be turning into a blog, nonetheless it may serve as a buying guide.

Anyway yesterday morning I received an email from dabs.ie cancelling my order. It seems they wont delivery to Parcel Motels. Delivery to a parcel motel wasn't essential for me; and if if asked for a different address I would of happily furnished them with my home address; instead I received an abrupt one liner We don't delivery to Parcel Motel, goodbye.

I wasn't that upset, subsequent to placing my order with dabs.ie I had seen the same laptop on laptopsdirect for €15 less, so I thought I buy there.

Anyway, I thought that I'd do a little more research before purchasing. laptopsdirect don't seem to have the greatest of customer reviews, whether or not this negative reputation is warranted is unclear; although I see again this morning another deriding thread has been started on this forum.
Regardless I decided against doing business with them.

So I began again trawling through retail outlet reviews and their associated price lists.
I found Elara.ie to have very positive reviews with a high number of repeat customers, and they're Irish to boot.
They weren't as cheap as UK seller, however only ~€15 more expensive and my email inquiries were promptly responded to, so in the end I decided to give them the twist.

Stay tuned, potential buyers, for further updates!

GarIT

The processor in that is quite poor. Its extremely energy efficient, sacrificing power. Most of the laptops you'll get in Argos for €400 are better. But the model with the better processor is a massive improvement and really good value for money. You should remember that the processor is the most important part of the laptop and the other parts like ram contribute very little to performance.

the keen edge

GarIT wrote: »

The processor in that is quite poor. Its extremely energy efficient, sacrificing power. Most of the laptops you'll get in Argos for €400 are better. But the model with the better processor is a massive improvement and really good value for money. You should remember that the processor is the most important part of the laptop and the other parts like ram contribute very little to performance.

I would of appreciated the damning critique before I purchased!

I'll hold my hand up and say that I know sweet FA about computors, however I can't see any machine with a 3110M chip for less than €560 on argos, are you saying that the 3110M chip isn't much good?
As far as I could figure it is the best chip I could of hoped to buy for that kinda money, what would be better?

Regardless durability and reliability are two of my main requirement, I think that thinkpad ticks both these boxes, you have me bothered about the chip thought.

EDIT: I may have mis-read your post. Just for clarity I bought the machine with the 3110M chip.

GarIT

I replied to your first post without checking which one you bought. The i3 2328M is what I meant was terrible. Sorry if I scared you :P. To be fair the name of the processor means nothing, I can show you Pentium processors that are better than some i7 processors.

My reference to Argos was that most Pentium processors in Argos are more powerful than the i3 2328. The only way you can ever compare processors for general use is a site called cpubenchmark.net, there are other sites that compare gaming performance but that's different.

EDIT: I only just checked there and the i3 2328m isn't as bad as I thought, but the i3 3110m is between a 15% and 20% performance upgrade. I had confused the i3 2328m with the 2367m which is used a fair bit in laptops and catches people out.

the keen edge

GarIT wrote: »

I replied to your first post without checking which one you bought. The i3 2328M is what I meant was terrible. Sorry if I scared you :P. To be fair the name of the processor means nothing, I can show you Pentium processors that are better than some i7 processors.

My reference to Argos was that most Pentium processors in Argos are more powerful than the i3 2328. The only way you can ever compare processors for general use is a site called cpubenchmark.net, there are other sites that compare gaming performance but that's different.

EDIT: I only just checked there and the i3 2328m isn't as bad as I thought, but the i3 3110m is between a 15% and 20% performance upgrade. I had confused the i3 2328m with the 2367m which is used a fair bit in laptops and catches people out.

Yeah that cpubenchmark.net is very handy as a comparison tool for prospective buyers(even novice buyers), it helped cut through all the sales talk sh!te I was listening to from the Big bricks and mortar shops!

I'm now convinced the best way for anyone to buy the right machine for their own needs is to spend a bit of time online researching and stay away from the big shopping center retailers.