Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

[biff2bart]

I've been lurking here for a while, reading this entire thread, and only now have I found a question that hasn't been answered in this 193-page monster.

To answer a question that was asked a while back: I ordered my W520 on April 10, it shipped on the 18th and I got it on the 26th. Seems like the key to getting fast service is living in Canada. My machine definately wasn't a "stock" config either.

However - living in Canada is now presenting me with a problem. I'm trying to get my hands on a docking station and they don't seem to exist here. The Canadian web site shows no docking station available for the W520, and the US site prevents me from checking out with my address. Canadian phone reps are no better, they don't see a docking station option for the W520 either.

Any Canadians out there with docking stations, or who know where I can get one?

Another thing... the W520 has been great so far with one exception. The touchpad's multi-touch features are absolutely useless. Moving the cursor around and clicking with one finger is perfect - but scrolling and zooming are laggy and terrible and just generally don't work well at all. I did update to the latest drivers for the trackpoint/touchpad, no difference. Anyone else experience this?

I don't know if this will help you out, but I had a similar situation with my ultrabay adapter. I was leery about ordering one of the ones on fleabay, so I decided to get the official Lenovo ultrabay adapter - even with its higher pricing and the "Hideous Gap" in it! Anyway, it was available for $59 USD on the Lenovo US site, but was no where to be seen on the Canadian site. And - of course I couldn't order it from the US site and ship it to Canada.

Anyway, I started up Lenovo Chat - iirc through the Canadian site - and the rep was able to order it for me. It cost a few dollars more but hey - it's shipping now and on its way here. You might be able to do the same with the docking station as well. Please let me know - I'm considering purchasing the docking station too.

[hrana]

I have a W520 with NVIDIA Quadro 2000M set to Optimus Mode. It has been working well but today I had a strange experience. I was hosting a WebEx meeting and the participants could not see my desktop. They only saw a black box where they would expect to see my shared screen. It appears the system is using the NVIDIA to drive WebEx. When I disable the discrete card in bios it works fine.

Any clues?

Thaks!

Louis

It would be a really good idea to open a support ticket with both Lenovo and nVidia about this issue because WebEx is a fairly commonplace business application. By the way, what happens when you force WebEx to use the on-board graphics card through the nVidia control panel options page (rather than disabling discrete graphics through the BIOS)? That may well be the temporary work around we need until Lenovo and/or nVidia sort this issue out.

[kirayamato26]

I've been lurking here for a while, reading this entire thread, and only now have I found a question that hasn't been answered in this 193-page monster.

To answer a question that was asked a while back: I ordered my W520 on April 10, it shipped on the 18th and I got it on the 26th. Seems like the key to getting fast service is living in Canada. My machine definately wasn't a "stock" config either.

However - living in Canada is now presenting me with a problem. I'm trying to get my hands on a docking station and they don't seem to exist here. The Canadian web site shows no docking station available for the W520, and the US site prevents me from checking out with my address. Canadian phone reps are no better, they don't see a docking station option for the W520 either.

Any Canadians out there with docking stations, or who know where I can get one?

Another thing... the W520 has been great so far with one exception. The touchpad's multi-touch features are absolutely useless. Moving the cursor around and clicking with one finger is perfect - but scrolling and zooming are laggy and terrible and just generally don't work well at all. I did update to the latest drivers for the trackpoint/touchpad, no difference. Anyone else experience this?

Sorry, don't know about the docking station, but I would suggest playing around with your settings for the touchpad. I found it to be slow at first, too, but after playing around with the settings and disabling a couple of things under "Smart Check" as there are things in there which are for blocking accidental touches, which seem to be too sensitive.

By the way, how do I find out which manufacturer made my monitor? Also, it seems that my W520 performs fine on AC without the battery in.

[infinus]

I've found Optimus mode to be inconvenient at times. It screws up the way some apps detect your graphics card. I've also had problems with it not always running with the card I want. At first it was all working great but it seems to be hit or miss for me now. I've resorted to switching it in the BIOS depending on what I need.

[thinkstone]

Mine arrived about 90 minutes ago. I upgraded to 16 GB with the 4x 4G Patriot RAM I bought from Newegg...seems to be working fine.

I had bought the 433810U docking station earlier, when I was thinking of getting a T520. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the W520 because the power plug is different. So I'll be selling that and looking for a 433830U....but they're so much more expensive compared to the $89.99+tax price I paid for the 433810U from the Lenovo Outlet.

You could just get a 135 W AC adapter, which will work fine with the docking station and the W520. I got one of these off ebay (433820U) and it works fine with my W520.

[shashu]

I keep seeing posts about the Ultrabay adaptor gap.

I bought one of these Ultrabay SATA 2nd Hdd Lenovo ThinkPad W700 W510 12.7mm | eBay

No gap!





Hope this helps some of you. Why waste money on the Lenovo part?

[r786]

However - living in Canada is now presenting me with a problem. I'm trying to get my hands on a docking station and they don't seem to exist here. The Canadian web site shows no docking station available for the W520, and the US site prevents me from checking out with my address. Canadian phone reps are no better, they don't see a docking station option for the W520 either.

Any Canadians out there with docking stations, or who know where I can get one?

I just ordered one from http://www.pc-canada.com/item.asp?item=433830U ... CA$199.99 is about US$210, which is better than I've seen anywhere else and definitely cheaper than ordering directly from Lenovo.

[Mech0z]

I keep seeing posts about the Ultrabay adaptor gap.

I bought one of these Ultrabay SATA 2nd Hdd Lenovo ThinkPad W700 W510 12.7mm | eBay

No gap!


Hope this helps some of you. Why waste money on the Lenovo part?

Nice, just bought a bay adapter III yesterday (Used) but I use it in my current dockingstation and I dont think that can take a 12.7mm so guess its not totally waste (Until I get my W520 in a ½-2 month time)

[drunckenmonkee]

Why waste money on the Lenovo part?

Glad you found an aftermarket ultra bay adapter that fits perfectly. The only different that I can really notice between your aftermarket adapter and the Lenovo one which came with RAID enabled w520s is that the Lenovo one comes with foam padding which run along the outer edges on top of the ultrabay adapter which may help with shock absorption. But I'm not sure how much this would help since there isn't foam padding on the bottom.

[mrpeaches]

However - living in Canada is now presenting me with a problem. I'm trying to get my hands on a docking station and they don't seem to exist here. The Canadian web site shows no docking station available for the W520, and the US site prevents me from checking out with my address. Canadian phone reps are no better, they don't see a docking station option for the W520 either.

Any Canadians out there with docking stations, or who know where I can get one?

The w520 docking station is just your standard III series docking station I believe. If nothing else worked you could just purchase a series III docking station from somewhere along with a 170w adapter and I would think that it should work. Anyone know for certain?