Lenovo ThinkPad W530

My W530 is 13-ish years old and it's still my daily driver. It doesn't travel anymore (now wired into my desk) but still works great running Win 10. I code on this thing all day and so far have only had to replace a fan and give it an SSD upgrade.

A ThinkPad W530 I bought in 2013 is still my primary laptop. It's maxed out as well, a 2.7 GHz quad-core, 32 GB of RAM, and a pair of Samsung SSDs in a RAID1. A couple of MBPs have came and went during this time, I've kept going back to the W530. You got a great deal, though, I originally paid around $2300 for mine!

I'll second the recommendation for the Thinkpad W530, with one additional suggestion: go for one of the "pre-configured" ones, skimp on RAM and HDD, and upgrade it yourself. I purchased mine right about two years ago (brand new from a seller on Amazon in order to avoid delivery delays when purchasing direct) and went for one with only 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB SATA HDD. I paid (separately and, again, via Amazon) $300 for 32 GB of RAM and $385 for a 480 GB SSD (and spent 20 minutes installing them) but this was much, much cheaper than purchasing the W530 with those upgrades pre-installed. I ended up giving away the "original" 4 GB RAM to a friend who could use it and (since I very rarely need or use the optical drive) I usually keep the original 500 GB SATA HDD in the secondary bay in order to keep a fresh, up-to-date backup of my data for when the SSD inevitably fails without warning. The NVIDIA Optimus graphics system is apparently a PITA for some people but since I don't use a dock or external monitor it's really not been an issue for me. I believe I have my BIOS set to the "Discrete Graphics" setting (to use the NVIDIA card) and Ubuntu has no problems with it (I previously ran Arch Linux on the W530 with the Intel card and also had no issues). The W530 isn't nearly as light as many other laptops (about six pounds, if memory serves) but, then again, it's considered a "Mobile Workstation" -- and with the quad-core i7 @ 2.70 GHz, 32 GB RAM, the 480 GB SSD and 500 GB SATA spinn

I have had my W530 for a few months and it is the best laptop experience I have ever had. The power brick is a beast, the only downside. I use the NVidia card in dedicated mode (Optimus disabled) and would recommend the T530 for someone wanting to use integrated Intel graphics. I use it as a desktop replacement, with a Samsung 830 (which is rock solid) in the main drive slot and the original 320GB 7200RPM drive in a media bay HDD adapter. I haven't upgraded from 16GB to 32GB yet, but I like having the option!

This is exactly my experience - I have a Lenovo W530 from 2013, it has an i7, 32gb RAM and SSDs (RAID0 for performance, backups are off-device) - and it is STILL lightning fast. However - EVERY single trick I have tried... the above command, LTSC, Enterprise edition, etc, results in a situation where after installation a few days (or hours) and some updates get installed, and... blue-screen-of-death on every boot. Gave up, installed Linux - still working through some issues (GPU driver compatibility), but overall it is a much better experience...

I have gone through quite a few over the years. The oldest I still have are a W530 and X230 Tablet. The former I just reinstalled with Gentoo for one of my kids. Still very usable. The keyboard and trackpoint is very enjoyable, better than later ones. My latest are an AMD X13 gen 4 and a ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II for the other devices with inferior keyboards ;)

I have owned Thinkpads since IBM days, testing the waters occasionally outside of the brand. My proposition is also a bit easier since I will only ever use Linux or FreeBSD (and never Windows or Mac). I stand by the W530, the P50, and most recently, the P52. I felt so strongly about my initial impression of the P52 that I bought one for myself to use for all of my personal work. Perhaps it's just a thing with the X1 Carbon? That being said, my personally-owned P52 is the first Thinkpad I've ever had that required me to re-paste the chips. For the benefit of readers, Thinkpads have a not insignificant chance (~5-10%?) you'll need to re-paste the thermal paste on the CPU and/or GPU, and this is the first one I've ever had that needed the re-paste. I have always re-pasted the chips perhaps the last ten years or so -- doing this while changing out the components (usually RAM and disk) with top-of-the-line components I buy separately because they're oftentimes hundreds of dollars cheaper if you install them yourself -- but didn't need to re-paste until this one, which would immediately throttle out under any kind of load. One more complaint: I wanted a P52 with a 4K display, but Lenovo refuses to sell a configuration with a 4K display that does not have that awful, terrible, shitty fingerprint-magnet glossy TOUCH screen. There is no way in hell I would use that glossy screen or a touch screen of any kind on my daily driver, so I was forced to stick with a "regular" HD displa

I have a W530 for work and it works very well with Linux Mint 17. There was a bit of trickiness with the dual graphics cards and getting it to work right on the dock to output to quad monitors, but if you're not using multiple monitors via a dock, I highly recommend the W530. Even with that little bit of work it's been an excellent performer.

I'm running Arch Linux on the same machine (quad-core, 32 GB RAM, 480 GB SSD + 500 GB SATA) and it flies. It does have the Optimus graphics stuff but I haven't bothered with it. (I'd been using MBPs exclusively for several years when I bought the W530 (in May 2013), hadn't touched my MBP in over a year and finally got rid of it a few months ago.)

I use a Lenevo W530 at work. It's great, it has a mobile i7 quad core processor, discrete graphics card with 2GB VRAM, 16GB DDR3, etc. It's a very powerful machine, and does not weigh much.

Love my ThinkPad W530. It's not in your price range though. I'd see if one of the ThinkPads is in your range, and look the model number up, so you can see what experiences others have had with that model. I know on my W530, everything works. But it's $$$$$$.

Yeah I would like to know as well. This is why I won't buy another thinkpad after T430 if they don't restore the top buttons for the trackpoint. Right now I have a T420 (which has the famous overheating issue) and a W530 and I'm quite happy. However this may change in the next couple of years. As far as Mac goes, I use a Macbook at work and I absolutely hate it. Mostly as I have my nice Linux environments setup and cannot understand why Apple can't conform to the standard CTRL SUPER ALT keyboard. Though this is just my opinion.

I feel like I have to chime in whenever the newer Lenovo keyboards get mentioned: I've owned a T61 for over 6 years now and I bit the bullet and bought a W530 when it came out this year despite the complaints about the missing top row of keys and the chiclet-style keyboard. It's been almost 6 months now and, honestly, these days when I got back to do stuff on my T61 it's a world of difference. The W530's key presses are much more substantial and have a better feel; the quality of the keys seem much better; and the seemingly awkward placement of they keys (excluding the Print Screen key) seem highly justified to me now. And more importantly, the chiclet-style keys are grew on me almost immediately. I've used the MBA and other chiclet-style keys and the main difference to note is that the Lenovo keys are slightly concave. This, to me, makes the keys feel less chiclet-y and more normal, though they do have the visually noticeable spaces between each key. Compared to the MBA, the MBA's flat keys just don't feel right and I feel make typing less accurate.