Request for Lenovo experiences

[Robilar]

I've been setting aside funds for a laptop replacement (the one I'm typing on now I obtained when I got out of highschool, and when I had no idea how to make this thing run any games besides Oregon Trail, which it does splendidly), and have finally set aside enough to where I feel comfortable stretching a bit and finally grasping a hold of one, but... which to choose? I've narrowed it down to either a pre-built Lenovo with specs I hope will be powerful enough to keep running things well for another four years, and a Toshiba model which has been upgraded to the same specifications as the Lenovo in question (which shall be linked momentarily), but the Toshiba build doesn't feel right; like I'm missing something.

What my question essentially boils down to, is that I've never encountered a Lenovo laptop of any form in my tinkering and family tech support, or even in my college education, so I have no experience with the brand at all. Anyone out there with any kind of tech experience who can validate whether or not this company makes solid products, or if I'd be buying something that'll detonate in a few months?

The Lenovo in question:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834312439

The Toshiba I'm using as a comparison, which when upgraded with the same processor, RAM, back-lit keyboard, and HDD comes to about the same price:
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cde ... 870-BT3G22

CNET has done a review on the Lenovo (The Toshiba is mostly a baseline still, since I trust their Satellite models to be fairly solid for their price point) and it came out as positive as one could hope for in a laptop review; however, they rather ragged on the lack of a touchscreen, which *may* be an issue with Windows 8.

[Mason11987]

Lenovo is great. My company gives them out and they are the second largest PC supplier in the world. They actually purchased IBMs PC business.

They're reliable and good.

Regarding the specific models I wouldn't be concerned on the lack of a touchscreen, I'm running win8 on my brand new laptop without a touch screen. I don't use the metro display though (Download ClassicStart, you will not regret it!) so it doesn't really matter.

The satellite has a 630M video card, the lenovo has dual 650Ms. You didn't mention upgrading the videocard on the toshiba. All else equal I'd take the lenovo for that reason.

Edit - The lenovo apparently has no disk drive (unless I'm missing something). I wouldn't pay $1k for a laptop without a disc drive. I think you can do better. Keep looking.

[Sarudak]

By no disk drive do you mean no cd/dvd bay or no floppy disk drive?

[Robilar]

It has a modular bay which can switch out for a cooling system, secondary HDD, secondary GPU (which comes in this model), or an optical drive. The lack of an optical drive is absolutely no loss to me, as I haven't had use for one in many months, and my desktop has a proper burner if I have need of that, which is rarely.

[Sarudak]

Hm. No optical drive is a little odd... In any case I don't like either of those laptops. For $1000 they are overly heavy on memory and graphic processing but they both have 5400 rpm hard disks. You're going to end up severely bottlenecked by your disk I/O. Even a 7000 RPM would be a big step up but frankly I can't imagine buying a modern computer that wasn't using an SSD it's like choosing to use dial-up internet...

[Shengji]

Edit - The lenovo apparently has no disk drive (unless I'm missing something). I wouldn't pay $1k for a laptop without a disc drive. I think you can do better. Keep looking.

I remember the days where people used to tell me they wouldn't pay £1000 for a computer without a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive!

[Robilar]

I can't imagine buying a modern computer that wasn't using an SSD it's like choosing to use dial-up internet...

I have to admit to being a small part ignorant on the RPM of the HDD, mostly due to the fact that I've never actually run into it as being my bottleneck (It's always CPU or GPU), but I'm still not entirely sold on SSD yet. Solid State tends to be more reliable, but in my experience it can be just as slow as our typical HDDs. I find that in all likelyhood, if my Drive becomes a hassle, I can always upgrade that myself later on, as I'm not averse to replacing standard laptop components; just replacing defective parts can be an enormous pain in the rump (Like a friend of mine whom threw her laptop at the wall, shattering the screen and most of the bezel, and god knows what to the internal components, but that's another story entirely....).

A few searches on Newegg reveals I can likely get a 7200 RPM for under $100 if it's too much of a bottleneck, and a 10k for a not-too-terrible amount if it's really hindering me, but the ease of HDD replacement means I'm mostly concerned about things that I can't upgrade later, which is the MOBO, GPU, CPU, case, and battery.

Edit: Though I do thank you all for your input, especially on Lenovo themselves. I can trust them to some degree, but I don't yet know them. At least I won't be impulse buying for another few days, which means I'm closer to my next check before I buy it. =p

[Sarudak]

I don't know what you mean about SSDs and HDDs being the same speed. For me it's night and day. A SSD makes everything so much snappier and more responsive. Loading times are practically non-existant. I really need to get a bigger SSD for my desktop. I've been procrastinating only because it means reinstalling windows and all my software...

[Mason11987]

I don't know what you mean about SSDs and HDDs being the same speed. For me it's night and day. A SSD makes everything so much snappier and more responsive. Loading times are practically non-existant. I really need to get a bigger SSD for my desktop. I've been procrastinating only because it means reinstalling windows and all my software...

Agreed, the SSD I got in my laptop is my favorite part. Civ5 comes up in a couple seconds, as opposed to the previous 20-30. I love it.

[Eriottosan]

I would highly recommend Lenovo, despite the fact I can't use my laptop at all any more.

To be fair, the laptop in question has been brilliant. I've had it for about 4 years, and it was great till January last year when it (possibly due to a virus) started doing random graphics crashes &c (resulting in BSoD). This fixed itself in the March of the same year, but for the past 6 months I've had increasingly problematic keyboard problems due to a design flaw which means the ribbon is under where you naturally lay your hand, and there's a bit of metal which rubs through to the cable over time. Basically,it presses buttons randomly. So I'm on an external mouse and keyboard as it's currently so bad that I can't touch it. It also has done the graphics crashes twice since January, but that's twice so no biggie. The battery is nearly completely useless when it's not plugged into the wall, but it only gave 2 hours when new anyway, so not surprising after 4 years of not-great maintenance. It also runs a bit slow now, and freezes for up to 20 seconds if it gets stressed, but yeah.

The laptop could probably be put into pretty good nick with a bit of a clean up, opening it up and sorting out the keyboard issue, and buying a new battery. Some or all I might do if I get enough money to buy a PC, which is my main priority computer wise.

So basically, 4 years of having the laptop, and with a bit of maintenance, could probably keep using it for a bit longer.

IIRC, Lenovo is basically IBM's computer branch, bought over by a Chinese company. So it's good quality stuff at almost unbeatable prices.

So yeah, as far as how Lenovo goes, I've been pretty impressed with it. Definitely the best laptop I've had in terms of how long it's lasted.

[Robilar]

After a bit of conversation with the wife, and some mulling (I've been debating this particular model for a week now), I've put in my order with Newegg for the Lenovo. I'll watch the HDD, but I just can't give up that much space to get a SSD right now, but we'll see in the future. =p

Thanks for the input guys (and girls, if applicable), I'm incredibly excited to be getting a non-budget computer for the first time in, well, ever.

Edit: Actually, since I failed to address it with the SSD- I've not looked at them for about a year or so now, so they've likely evolved a fair amount since I last did, as they're fairly new(ish) tech. The read-write speeds were in the range of about a 7200 drive when I looked at them before, so they were mostly good for those of us whom are clumsy, and that's not really needed for me (I need raw storage power!).

[Joshua37w]

I also would heartily recommend Lenovo. I do not own that model but I just bought a Thinkpad x230 a couple of months ago and the machine has been fantastic. I also just upgraded its hard drive to a Samsung 840 ssd and that was defiantly money well spent. I have not had any contact with Lenovo customer service but personally I consider it a good thing that I have not needed to contact them.

Good luck with your search.

[Rugaard]

but for the past 6 months I've had increasingly problematic keyboard problems due to a design flaw which means the ribbon is under where you naturally lay your hand, and there's a bit of metal which rubs through to the cable over time. Basically,it presses buttons randomly.

you can easily fix that by placing a piece of non static plastic that you usually get with your mother boards and such and taping it over that bit of metal

[Eriottosan]

you can easily fix that by placing a piece of non static plastic that you usually get with your mother boards and such and taping it over that bit of metal

Thanks. I know, I just have bad experiences when it comes to that sort of thing, and considering how important it is that I have a computer with word processing at the minute (uni work), I've been putting off opening the damn thing up until I've managed to fund and buy a PC.

[Benanov]

I personally run screaming from Toshiba. Lenovo is okay - I liked them back when the machines were IBM branded more :)

No optical drive? Honestly I wouldn't consider this the end of the world. The only time it's an issue is with Commerical DRM-protected movies and games, and for the most part a USB or eSata optical drive will do just fine.

SSDs are night and day because the read time is much faster than a spinning platter. If you get an SSD, do know that they like to fail very unexpectedly, and make backups to an external drive. (Preferrably at least two. See this scheme for ideas.)

[Robilar]

SSDs are night and day because the read time is much faster than a spinning platter. If you get an SSD, do know that they like to fail very unexpectedly, and make backups to an external drive. (Preferrably at least two. See this scheme for ideas.)

Aye, I know my way around backups. I have an NAS system on my desktop which runs two 2TB standard 3.5 HDDs in it which are set up for a hardware RAID1, as well as a pair of separate 750gig external HDDs which each contain half my backup, and are located at two separate remote locations currently. I bring those two externals home, one a week, and let it run overnight backing up from the NAS anything that has changed. I never keep anything on my personal computers (Laptop, Desktop, and Notebook) that I can't grab from the NAS should any of them decide to brick on me, as I've already had one computer brick on me with important data. As for the SSD, I suppose I was looking at the *write* times for them, which were fairly similar when I last looked into them (again, which was kind of a passing interest in them, and I still have yet to own one).

To the earlier point:

I personally run screaming from Toshiba. Lenovo is okay - I liked them back when the machines were IBM branded more :)

From my personal experience, every Toshiba laptop I've run into has been a pretty solid machine, even when run by those whom tend to kill their computers in a matter of a few months (see my grandma, whom has given me two laptops due to breaking them).

I must admit, I'm a little stunned at how much the HDD being a HDD sparked in this scenario. I'm so ingrained into my HDDs (and adore them so...) that it never really was a question in my mind to go with a HDD over a SSD until they iron out the capacity issues with Solid State (I know they go up to nearly the same capacities, but my 1TB HDD in this machine is $500 more in SS form.)