Thinkpad T560

[moderategamer]

I'm looking to get a laptop to force myself to be more productive, I've only ever owned one laptop of my very own and was previously not to keen on them as generally they are pretty shit. However by some chance or luck I picked up a cheap thinkpad whilst at uni and fell in love with it even though it was a really underpowered core duo jobby with a terrible 4:3 aspect ratio it seriously helped my productivity. I think this was down to its closer to desktop style keyboard and the fact it was a tank. So naturaly I'm drawn to Thinkpad laptops and have picked the best one for my budget the T650 which I'm sure by now you've gathered after reading the title I'll list the specs below but would like to get your oppinion on it especially if you own one or have used one. I'll be using it for a range of things such as coding, 3ds max, Zbrush, Flash and photoshop I'm aware it's not the perfect specs to be doing such work but I don't mind waiting slightly longer for things to render and such as If it really bothered me I could just use my desktop as a render factory over the network.

 

Processor

Intel Core i5-6200U Processor (3MB Cache, up to 2.80GHz)

Operating System

Windows 10 Pro 64/ maybe 7 if I fancy paying a bit extra as I hate 10

Display Panel

15.6" FHD IPS (1920x1080),No Touch,WWAN

Graphics

NVIDIA GeForce 940MX 2GB

Memory

12GB PC3-12800 DDR3L 1600MHz ( 2 SODIMM )

Hard Drive

500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm, 2.5", SATA3

Wireless

Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC(2x2) 8260, Bluetooth Version 4.1 No vPro

Warranty

Think 3 Year On-site

Pointing Device

UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad) with Fingerprint Reader

Front Battery

ThinkPad Battery 3 cell Li-Polymer (44Whr) Front

Rear Battery

6 Cell Li-Ion Battery 47WH Cylindrical Rear

[ARikozuM]

Looks good. The only program that may, unlikely, give you trouble is 3DS Max. The others do very well even on dual-cores.

[moderategamer]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Looks good. The only program that may, unlikely, give you trouble is 3DS Max. The others do very well even on dual-cores.

Thanks appreciate the reply yeah i've used 3ds on some pretty horrific machines before and although the experiance isn't great you can still technically get work done so I'm sure this will do the job.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, moderategamer said:

Thanks appreciate the reply yeah i've used 3ds on some pretty horrific machines before and although the experiance isn't great you can still technically get work done so I'm sure this will do the job.

You'll benefit greatly from the GPU acceleration once you enable it.

[moderategamer]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

You'll benefit greatly from the GPU acceleration once you enable it.

Got to love that GPU acceleration. I was going to get it without a GPU as I thought it would be much cheaper but it actually wasn't a whole lot more can't remember how much axactly but it was insignificant when you factor the performance increase in programs that benefit from Graphics acceleration.

[Pendragon]

I have one. It's amazing. It's my "on-the-go" daily driver. However, it's hella underpowered for me, so I have a pretty niche use case of it. I bring it around for presentations or light wordloads mainly for the amazing battery life. When I need to move around inside a company and require power I do this: I either just bring around my Zbook15 and deal with the weight and bring my charger, but if I have time, I remote in internally using a direct SSH. I set up my Zbook15 in the "war room" and link up my T560 to my Zbook. So basically my T560 becomes my Zbook15 over the connection and I can throw the heavy workloads I need to manage onto my Zbook while using my T560. But it's hella underpowered. 

[moderategamer]

1 hour ago, Pendragon said:

I have one. It's amazing. It's my "on-the-go" daily driver. However, it's hella underpowered for me, so I have a pretty niche use case of it. I bring it around for presentations or light wordloads mainly for the amazing battery life. When I need to move around inside a company and require power I do this: I either just bring around my Zbook15 and deal with the weight and bring my charger, but if I have time, I remote in internally using a direct SSH. I set up my Zbook15 in the "war room" and link up my T560 to my Zbook. So basically my T560 becomes my Zbook15 over the connection and I can throw the heavy workloads I need to manage onto my Zbook while using my T560. But it's hella underpowered. 

Nice thanks for the reply what processor do you have in yours I wasn't sure if I should pay a bit more for the i7?

[Pendragon]

34 minutes ago, moderategamer said:

Nice thanks for the reply what processor do you have in yours I wasn't sure if I should pay a bit more for the i7?

Makes no difference really between the i5 ulv and i7 ulv. both are duo cores. mine an i7 and turbos a bit higher and has a bit more cache but in real life usages basically no difference. I didn't have to pay for mine, company's. Specs are in my sig. 

[ARikozuM]

44 minutes ago, moderategamer said:

Nice thanks for the reply what processor do you have in yours I wasn't sure if I should pay a bit more for the i7?

I have a dual core. Like I said, an SSD will do much more for your experience than a quad core since portability and speed are the main factors.

[moderategamer]

5 hours ago, Pendragon said:

Makes no difference really between the i5 ulv and i7 ulv. both are duo cores. mine an i7 and turbos a bit higher and has a bit more cache but in real life usages basically no difference. I didn't have to pay for mine, company's. Specs are in my sig. 

nice well I wont bother getting the i7 then if there's not a reasonable difference between them I know very little about mobile processors as I never really used laptops pretty much always been a desktop user.

5 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

I have a dual core. Like I said, an SSD will do much more for your experience than a quad core since portability and speed are the main factors.

yeah I will most likely get an SSD drive but I'm not paying the price they want for it so I'll most likely wait a bit till the 500Gb or 1 TB drives come down in price and just switch it myself.

[ARikozuM]

1 hour ago, moderategamer said:

yeah I will most likely get an SSD drive but I'm not paying the price they want for it so I'll most likely wait a bit till the 500Gb or 1 TB drives come down in price and just switch it myself.

That's what I did. I bought the 160GB base model and filled the space with a 100GB SSD (large for the time).