Which Thinkpad to look for? T vs W

gjt86

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I am considering pulling the trigger on a thinkpad, but have never owned one before. Currently, I am looking for something no more than 500 to get the job done (considering the laptop I currently use weighs 7 lbs and has 2gb of ram on a dual core).
My question is though, for photoshop, web development and vmware - which series would be the best bang for buck here?
I've looked over the w520, t410/420 and t520 series, but am starting to get lost. Is a newer i5 better than an older i7 (2720)? Any advice what to do or look for here?
If needed, I can post a few of the ones Ive been looking at if that is of any additional help.
 

JQB45

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The "W" series tend to be high performance workstation replacement laptops. Where the "T" is more of a high end office laptop. The "W" will be heavier and larger for a given screen size. For VM's you will want an i7 due to the fact that they have hyper threading and tend to have higher clock speeds then the i5 series. The same is true for photo shop. I have used the "T" series for .NET web development and was not disappointed.

It wouldn't hurt if you were to post some links to the products you are considering
 

gjt86

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Yeah, tell me about it. At this point, I think any laptop would do. I'm using an older ASUS (2012 maybe?) R530U with 2gb ram - and multitasking, much less photoshop, is pretty much horrifying.

I've never really delved into laptops though because of the not so much need for portability (changing now, obviously) and the reason that they are usually no good after 3-4 years. So on that note, I really like the thinkpads, heard great things about them, and just need something that can handle what my workstation usually does (although it doesn't have to be 'exactly' on par).
 

JQB45

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I brought my sister an ASUS laptop 2 years ago and she still loves it. (I'm a little jealous... because its better then my 4 year old laptop). She is hard on laptops but hers still works like new.
 

JQB45

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Thats a sweet laptop, no doubt still a very fast computer. Its likely to be rather heavy and require a laptop bag large enough to hold a 17.3" laptop. The Dell M4800 I used at my last job was 15" but would only fit in a backpack designed to carry 17.3" laptops. It was also over 6 pounds.
 

gjt86

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I'd like to use it for a bit of gaming, but while travelling I won't have much time for it to be honest. The weight isn't an issue as the current laptop I am using is a little over 7lbs. My main concern is VM's, multitasking, visual studio and photoshop for web development / design.