Posted: 6/27/2010 4:23:04 PM EDT
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Alright im looking to a light an portable laptop and I'm really leaning towards the 14" Lenovo, but with current coupon codes I can get the better spec'd 15.6" cheaper.
All have standard 5400rpm 500GB harddrives, bluetooth. All also have a 1366x768 resolution I'm wondering which of these would be the best performing in games, and normal tasks. All are the same price. IdeaPad Y460 Laptop - 063346U 14" -Intel i5 520M, ATI 5650 1GB, 4GB DDR3 1066 
IdeaPad Y560 Laptop - 06462BU 15.6" -Intel i7 720QM, ATI 5730 1GB, 4GB DDR3 1333 
Lenovo G460 Laptop - 06772XU 14" -Intel i5 520M, Nvidia 310M 512MB, 4GB DDR3 1066 
IdeaPad Z560 Laptop - 09143BU 15.6" -Intel i5 540M, Nvidia 310M 512MB, 4GB DDR3 1066 
Also I was wondering if the Y560 with the i7 would be that much of a performance gain, especially for get a much larger laptop. As I'm looking to go small and portable. I can get it for the same price as all the others. The i7 is only at 1.2Ghz, while the i5's are double the speed. |
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ATI 6730 1GB
is where you'll see the improvements in 3D games. All will work for everyday tasked, web, email, word processing,... With laptops small and portable is the opposite of gaming machines. You can't have both. Small, portable = longer battery life, great for web, email, displaying video (not editing video) Gaming = large and you better plug it in. It might get hot too. during gaming If you're not going to be playing 3D games, pick your favorite one. |
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This will be for college next year. Im somewhat of a computer nerd. I like high performance! But I have a desktop that can do about everything. Its graphics card, 8800GT, is a litle outdated but I can play crysis on high at 1440x900.
The power consumption of the graphics cards do not bother me since the lenovos have settings to completly turn them off. I am really interested to see what kind of performance gains can be achieved by the slower clocked i7. Also how much better is the 6730, a few FPS faster in games or tens of FPS extra in games. If the laptop is powerful enough, I may not even need to take my desktop. Quoted:
ATI 6730 1GB is where you'll see the improvements in 3D games. Also its a 5730, typo on my part! I just found the specs of the GPU's, it appears that the 5650 is the best choice as both have the EXACT same specs, but the 5650 has a much lower power consumption since the speeds and clocks can vary. |
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Do NOT buy an Ideapad.
This is anecdotal evidence, but the Y series ideapad i purchased was a piece of shit. The wireless card died after 1 month of ownership. I had to call three times for Lenovo to mail me a box to send it in. Each time I capped I waited a week or two for the box that never came. Just don't buy one. This is one of Many reasons why the lenovo sucked. I'm sure if you were looking at a thinkpad, you'll probably be gettig a better product. It seems their ideapad line was treated like an afterthought. The screens are shit and the feel like a lead brick. You're better off buying an HP or Sony. |
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Quoted:
If you plan to actually travel with it, go for one of the smaller two machines. 15.6" laptops are really freaking big. Yeah, i'll be running around Penn State's campus so smaller is better for me. Now that someone is saying lenovo sucks, My brother's HP has had a shitload of problems. What the hell is left (i will not get a dell) |
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FIRST question when buying a laptop should be "how often will I need it to run off the battery?" If you answered "never" then you can ignore that matter. If you answered "probably quite a lot" then that should become your first selection criteria.
There is a wide variety of run-times for laptops; the better ones will run 4X as long on a charge as the lesser ones. CPU, screen size and videocard don't mean $&*% if the battery is dead and you've got nowhere to plug it in. ~ |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
If you plan to actually travel with it, go for one of the smaller two machines. 15.6" laptops are really freaking big. Yeah, i'll be running around Penn State's campus so smaller is better for me. Now that someone is saying lenovo sucks, My brother's HP has had a shitload of problems. What the hell is left (i will not get a dell) LOTS of stuff today is cheap crap that breaks a lot. I wouldn't take one incident of a single bad Lenovo machine too seriously. Also, most companies seem to have crap "customer service" today, so I'm not sure the brand makes any real difference in that. One brand you should definitely avoid is Acer, but maybe you already knew that. Not sure why you're refusing to consider Dell. The Latitude line are pretty damned good. They rarely broke, in my experience with dozens of Latitudes over 4 years where I used to work. That included some used by heavy travelers. If you get an extended warranty, get it from SquareTrade. Their regular prices are a better deal than any manufacturer or store offers for an extended warranty. Also, SquareTrade frequently have 20-30% or more discounts, for an even sweeter deal. I used one SquareTrade Warranty already. A refund of original purchase price sure beats a $149 paperweight (Acer netbook piece of crap). |
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Quoted:
FIRST question when buying a laptop should be "how often will I need it to run off the battery?" If you answered "never" then you can ignore that matter. If you answered "probably quite a lot" then that should become your first selection criteria. There is a wide variety of run-times for laptops; the better ones will run 4X as long on a charge as the lesser ones. CPU, screen size and videocard don't mean $&*% if the battery is dead and you've got nowhere to plug it in. ~ That was one of the first things I considered. These laptops that i have listed all have "switchable" graphics, which means there is a kill switch for the graphics cards, so you can turn the GPU off completly when you need battery power. Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
If you plan to actually travel with it, go for one of the smaller two machines. 15.6" laptops are really freaking big. Yeah, i'll be running around Penn State's campus so smaller is better for me. Now that someone is saying lenovo sucks, My brother's HP has had a shitload of problems. What the hell is left (i will not get a dell) LOTS of stuff today is cheap crap that breaks a lot. I wouldn't take one incident of a single bad Lenovo machine too seriously. Also, most companies seem to have crap "customer service" today, so I'm not sure the brand makes any real difference in that. One brand you should definitely avoid is Acer, but maybe you already knew that. Not sure why you're refusing to consider Dell. The Latitude line are pretty damned good. They rarely broke, in my experience with dozens of Latitudes over 4 years where I used to work. That included some used by heavy travelers. If you get an extended warranty, get it from SquareTrade. Their regular prices are a better deal than any manufacturer or store offers for an extended warranty. Also, SquareTrade frequently have 20-30% or more discounts, for an even sweeter deal. I used one SquareTrade Warranty already. A refund of original purchase price sure beats a $149 paperweight (Acer netbook piece of crap). If im going to be getting a Lenovo it will be right from them. There are coupon codes everywhere. Infact the i7 above is actually $1299 but after a $350 coupon its the same price as the others. |