W530 for Photojourn​alism Student

Question

Hello,
In the past week, I have done extensive research regarding the Lenovo Thinkpad laptops. I've always been a Mac user, coming from a 2010 MacBook Pro 15in, I am looking for an upgrade. Particularly, my eyes have been set on two models: The W530 and the T430 series.
Help me decide on what the best decision is. I've already searched the forums pretty heavily, and have found some answers... but would like your opinions for my personal senario.
I'm a photojournalism student, sophomore, who covers all sports, motorsports, I also shoot weddings and do some commercial shooting as well. This requires me to have my laptop on me daily. I need to separate my trade offs here.
My needs, in order:
-Photoshop, and all other Adobe program capabilities
-Light FTP/Website updating and work
-Portability/Weight (class and assignment traveling)
-ExpressCard CF reader, for on location FTP photo uploading and image recording.
-Light Gaming (BF2, BF3, Skyrim, Diablo 3) - nothing ultrasettings.. I can live with low/medium settings.
-Everyday tasks (email, word, ect)
Is the W530 really going to make a huge difference in weight compared to the T430? Will it be worth it to lug around the extra pounds for the graphics and processing advantages? If I went with the W530, I will pay for the 1920x1080 screen, but do most editing on my IPS NEC 23in Display anyways... so I could live with the 1600x900 screen offered by the 430. Also, will the 5400m meet my needs for photoshop and light gaming? Will the quadcore be that much of an advantage as well? Help, please.
Also, I will be upgrading ram my self to the 16gb Corsair Vengence Kit, and reducing weight by using mSATA SSD and removing the hard drive and disk drive as well.
Thoughts, ideas? Please help, I plan on purchasing tonight or tomorrow.
Best,
Colin
Photo portfolio:
www.colinperschbacher.com

Answer 1

Always difficult decisions to make. Out of interest, why have you decided to move from a Macbook Pro to a Windows-based laptop ? In terms of your needs, either the T430 or the W530 will meet them. The T-series machine will be 80% of the weight of the W-series, and neither one is necessarily a light-weight, however, a 15" Macbook Pro is probably closer to the weight of the W530. Did you haul around the Macbook Pro before ? Are you looking specificially for something lighter ? If so, the T430 will be about 1 lb lighter. 
If you are doing most of your editing on an IPS colour calibrated monitor, then the screen resolution on the laptop will be slightly less significant. The matte high gamut FHD screen's on the Thinkpads is really nice if you are primarily relying upon the laptop's screen, but you seem to have a pro external monitor you will be doing your editing and colour corrections on, thus the 1600x900 screen might be fine in the field for quick and dirty. On the other hand, if you have $200 to spare.....
I think that you will find that a large amount of RAM and a fast hard drive for scratch work will have more impact in Photoshop than the processor, but that's just my opinion. On the other hand, if you are using DxO, Lightroom, etc. for a lot of batch RAW to JPEG conversion, then the quad might cut down on conversion and rendering time. Quad cores are great for video editiing, or if you have batch or multiple processes occuring, but may not as impactful for photo by photo editing as the RAM, HDD/SSD and steady clock rate. Quad cores are harder on battery life and produce more heat if any of that matters. Among the dual cores, there will not be much performance difference between the i5-3360M and the i7-3520M, especially not for $140. 
The NVS 5400M is only 2% slower than the Quadro K1000M by some benchmarks. I have not seen any comparisons with the K2000M, however some rough calculations based upon specifications might suggest a 10%-15% increase in raw performance over the NVS 5400M, but this is linear and may not be accurate to applicaiton-based benchmarks. This also comes at a cost to battery drain and heat.
In order to step from a T430 with the i5-3360M, NVS 5400M and the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 to the W530 with the i7-3630QM, Quadro K2000M and the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 is about $400 difference and an extra 1.2 lbs. You will have to look at your workflow and decide if $400 is worth a 10%-15% increase in raw processing power (not sure how it translates into you photo tasks) and the extra 1 lb of weight (or the same weight as the Macbook Pro you had).