I recently made this purchase via the official Lenovo store due to my old laptop's battery giving out and have had nothing but grief throughout the entire process.

First of all, I was deciding between this and the M6400, but decided to go with Lenovo due to talking to a sales agent and getting assurance that it would ship before would. What he failed to mention was the delay that would be caused by customs, and the fact that it also ended up shipping 2 days after the stipulated date that he assured me of. 48 hours is a long time when you have deadlines every day in the actual working world.

But that's just overeager sales people, right? So secondly, when I finally checked my order status, I was shocked to discover that the configuration I had listed no RAID whatsoever. I had to look up the product manual to discover that there were some W530 models that actually did not have the RAID mboards in them, and after going back and forth between Lenovo sales/tech phone support (thanks for redirecting me everywhere and not actually answering my question, by the way Lenovo), I ended up getting a solid answer from the user forums: that there ARE no RAID models available at the moment, and not for a few months at least.

I'd like to point out that at NO POINT in the ordering process was this mentioned, anywhere. And on the main product page, it mentions that it supports RAID. If not for the fact that I needed it urgently and had no time to go through the process of cancelling the order and going with a instead, I would never have gone through with this purchase.

So anyway, I finally get the laptop, set about stripping out all the existing software and going with a fresh install of Win 7. And then I get BSODs whenever the AC is unplugged, which took me yet another 4 hours to diagnose before I discovered that the BIOS wasn't updated. After flashing it, now the ExpressCard slot no longer works (thankfully that's not a critical problem, since it just means I lose one USB port). The customer support tech I contacted had the gall to tell me that I had too much RAM that was causing the problem!

Additionally, if you do end up choosing to go with a W530, do yourself a favour, and get the full HD screen (I got the 1600x900 because I hate having screens with anything higher than 90DPI). The lower-end screens have absolutely b ad colour gamut and viewing angles (completely out of whack white point and blue gamma). It's worth mentioning that this is the first ever screen I have actually had to use a colour calibrator to correct gamma, instead of eyeballing it like I usually do. It's that b ad. And I've calibrated Phillips screens before.

Build quality, despite what most people think, is actually not-so-good. The keyboard panel sags, the general material used (with the exception of the screen housing, which is actually quite well-built) is crappy plastic all over and the new keyboard rubber dome feel is not as crisp as other manufacturers' (Acer/Asus actually has better feel)

Also, the lack of a numpad. I knew I was already going to miss it, but it boggles the mind as to why Lenovo chose this new layout, presumably to fit in larger drivers for the speakers, which are massive. Unfortunately, I think it's a poor compromise (who the hell mixes on laptop speakers anyway?) since the speakers don't sound that good at higher levels, and have b ad response through the mid-range of tones. I always use an external sound card and monitors for my audio, anyway, so it's not a huge issue for me. No Caps Lock/Num Lock indicators, however, which means you have to rely on a OSD display, which takes up RAM and CPU, along with GPU draws to screen. So, pretty annoying.

So...the good points. The general aesthetic is actually alright, the matte finish is welcome, and the arrangement of ports (with the exception of zero USB ports on the right side) is alright. The RAM slot positioning and HDD slots are well thought-out, making upgrades accessible and less frustrating (but to be fair, almost every manufacturer has caught onto this these days)

In summary, however, with all these problems of reliability, fraudulent sales, and absolutely useless tech support, there is no way I could recommend this to anyone, or any Lenovo product for that matter, considering this is the way a professional product is being marketed and supported. I am terribly disappointed that in a already small market for workstations, Lenovo has chosen to blatantly disregard its offering, I suspect, in favour of its probably more profitable consumer lines.

Just remember: we're the ones making the actual entertainment media for those products.