What do you think of Lenovo computers?

[Tolken]

I'm thinking about purchasing the W500, because I've always been a fan of ThinkPads. However ever since Lenovo bought the IBM PC branch, I have never bought one. Are they still made with the same high quality that IMB was producing?

[Mitcho1989]

i think theyre pretty damn good

well i hope they are. the job i do, with the second rollout of notebooks for 9th grade students across the state, they are now thinkpads. previously (the first rollout), they were just a normal lenovo netbook

every grade 9 student in the state gets one of these, and its in the tens of thousands range, so for the government to go with thinkpads for it, i guess theyre alright lol

[deathshadow]

Quality-wise they've slipped a wee bit, but that was mostly true of just the early lenovo's.

That said, the W500 series are actually a bit of a rip-off. The FireGL 5700 video jacks the price without what could really be considered a significant improvement in speed over say... the nv GT240m in the ideapad Y series. You look at the "Y550 with enhanced discrete graphics" and you put a P8700 CPU in it and a 500 gig drive, and you're still about ten bucks cheaper than the base model W500. You want a bit more and was looking at spending around $1400 (a middle of the road W500's price) have a look at the "Y550p 324162U" pre-built, which comes with a 3.06ghz Quad Core i7 820QM... though admittedly you get a lot less display on the ideapad's.

But with that less display it seems the Ideapad's also seem better built to me, having that same nice hardshell acrylic you find on netbook tops. They just feel more sturdy to me - and in a laptop sturdy should be one of your big deciding factors.

To be brutally honest though, Lenovo's are a bit overpriced for what you get because of their name and reputation, which over the past few years has dropped as companies like ASUS have entered the fray, and as HP has integrated compaq's durability into their product lines.

I mean, if I was looking for a 17" laptop in the $1100-$1400 price range, I'd probably be looking at on the low end a HP D7 series
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6834157003

and on the high end the Asus G72Gx-X1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6834220669

Might only be 2ghz, but it's quad core with a GT260M video and a 640 gig 7200rpm drive.

Of course, I'm now in the market for a laptop for myself (though I can't actually afford it until next month - my old HP NC8000 is giving up the ghost) which is why I'm eying something a WEE bit further down the price scale.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6834220641

Since I don't need the power of a desktop - I just want enough CPU/GPU to decode HD video. Anything 'extra' a >$1K laptop would give me is what I have a desktop machine for.

[Rye]

I'm not overly convinced - it's not just the price but the specs too for what you get you could do a whole lot better. It looks nice (Deathshadow that first one looks nice).

[w3bmaster]

Well there are good
But i personally prefer HP or Toshiba