I have owned Thinkpad T410 before buying this laptop which is similar laptop, with a screen size of 14 inch. Firstly, I would like to mention the pros. Compared to the T410, T530 has a much better screen quality, which improves further if you opt for the Full HD screen. Like all Thinkpad T series laptop, this laptop is build to endure. The speakers are not completely useless with higher volumes.The cons-
They screwed up the keyboard. Even though Lenovo has posted in many blogs about the intensive research they performed while coming up with this keyboard, it just isn't as good as the previous generations. I am continuously putting my left pinkie on the caps lock and this does not occur frequently with me. Anyways, I would not like to go into the details of the layout, which I think has also worsened from earlier. The graphic card is not that strong, but fine for CAD applications and some RTS games(for example, LOL). The optical drive does not fit as tightly as it should. Applying a bit of pressure on it makes it bend on one side too.
Overall, I am pleased with this laptop. I was aware of the Graphic card before hand so it was not a problem. Even though the keyboard is worse than before, it is much better than the competition with little flex, and I am sure any person who is not a thinkpad diehard will accustom to this keyboard quickly. If you are unsure, just buy this laptop, because its thinkpad.
What I like: it's a Thinkpad! It's built like a tank, with some of the most burly hinges you'll see on a laptop, a magnesium-alloy structure, and an accelerometer that turns off the hard drive before the laptop hits anything if you drop it. This laptop replaced a T61 which had extremely quiet speakers; this T530 can get pretty loud! The display is bright and has excellent viewing angles (unlike the T61). I got the backlit keyboard which is a really nice option. My T61 had the audio ports in the front, which I always thought was a stupid place for them, so it's nice to see that this laptop has them on the side. I personally can't stand to use a touch pad, which is a big reason to get a Thinkpad since it has the wonderful Trackpoint stick. I'm paranoid about backups so I love that, like with my T61, I can put a second hard drive (in a caddy) in this machine for automatic backups. You can also put a second battery in there, I believe.
What I don't like: big surprise, the keyboard layout. I miss the Back and Forward buttons (for web browsing) next to the arrow keys that the keyboard on my T61 had. The layout of the Page Up and Page Down buttons and the Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys is pretty bad. Also, there is no gap between groups of function keys, so I have to look at them every time I want to hit the right one, since I can't find them by feel. The "chiclet/island-style" keys aren't as bad as I expected, actually, though I do prefer the old style. Another annoying thing is that the volume up/down buttons are nearly flat and it's hard to tell them apart without looking at them. A minor irritation is that the LED for the wireless doesn't blink with the data stream, it just stays on regardless of what is going on.
One really weird thing is the smell: the air being blown out by the fan smells like neoprene (think Band-Aids). I have a pretty lousy olfactory sense but I notice the smell quite readily. Someone who was in the room when I fired up the laptop for the first time commented on the smell, and she was many feet away. I personally don't mind it (I'm weird and like some chemical smells, like gasoline) but I could see it being a significant irritation if it doesn't go away. Maybe mine smells more strongly than others, I dunno, but I've had it for a week now of near-continuous operation and the smell is still there.
As far as performance, that's pretty relative so I can't comment on it without being inaccurate. This machine is faster than my old one of course, but that's to be expected. I'm about to upgrade it to 8 gigs of memory and I'm going to leave an 8 gig card in the SD reader to do the Readyboost thing, so that should help. It isn't slow but it doesn't just amaze me either. My approach to laptops is to buy really good ones (=Thinkpads) and then upgrade them over time. I'll eventually max out the memory and processor on this machine, which will give me quite a few years of service.
Something that a number of people don't seem to understand about Thinkpads, that's worth making explicit here: Thinkpads are designed for business use, not "consumer"-grade multimedia or gaming. You don't get fancy buttons all over the place for controlling the CD player and such, the case is a nice, boring, squared-off black, and the display won't just blow your rods and cones out of your head. What you do get is one of the most reliable, solidly-build laptops available that will never let you down. If you're a gamer, get a different laptop. If you're a business owner like me or just want something extremely dependable, get a Thinkpad. My T61 is about five years old and if it wasn't a Thinkpad it wouldn't have lived that long, especially considering how I haven't been really super gentle to it. Thinkpads are relatively ugly and boring but they do what they're designed to do better than almost anything else out there.
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Our 9 1/2 year old T60 had some problems after going on heavy wash board gravel roads. We have owned 8 IBM Think pads over the past 20 years. A ??, an A21m, T40, T40, T60, T61, Z60, and now a T530. Pros: speakers you can hear. Easy set up with window 7 Professional. All our previous programs except a 20 year old program, work fine. Big 1 terra byte harddrive. Fast boot time, fast hard drive considering its size, plenty of USB ports, SD card port, easy to set up and change display. We like the fast start time after opening the lid. Just a few seconds and the Thinkpad is up and running. We like the sturdiness of thinkpads. The slow flashing green "On" button is a nice feature, when in sleep mode. We bought a keyboard skin to protect thinkpad and put tape over the speakers. Our thinkpad is in a SUV in 25 to 115 degree heat. We and our customer depend heavily on our ThinkPad to always stay working. We bought the 4 year onsite warranty, plus breakage warranty. We doubt we will need warranty, since if Lenovo thinks they can warranty this laptop for 4 years with breakage it must be pretty tough. We like the speaker controls, too.Cons: Keyboard delete key is hard to find, compared to all the other thinkpads we have owned. We realize it was easier to package a square keyboard platform, but the old jutted keyboard, where the delete, and escape keys are extended out from the function keys is a better design, as the T60. The T60 we like for business work, since most of our display work involve paper sized printed pages. The wide screen used for movies is of little use to us. But it seems that most manufactures think that we will watch movies on our laptops. We do use youtube for learning, but do not watch movies at all on these business machines.
All in all we love this new Lenovo T530 better than any of our previous thinkpads. A little wide, but all in all, we needed a new machine to
run all of our old software, which this Thinkpad does easily. Plus it runs new software on the 64 bit which is a lot faster.
We found the T40 did not last long, but was light weight. We did not like the electronic smell of the Z60 and sold it right away. We gave the T61 to our son-in-law, and we do not like the display.
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