Lenovo IdeaPad Y570-Best Laptop I've owned so far!

[berryracer]

I changed 3 laptops in the past month

1) Asus G73Sw Horror Story, please read this, very interesting and scary! Never buying an ASUS in my life anymore! They say they are amongst the most reliable laptops...yeah right

2) After getting my money back for that Asus Notebook, I bought a Toshiba Satellite L750 with an Intel i7 2670QM @ 2.20 GHz./ nVIDIA GT525 M 2 GB but this notebook's cooling was horrible! On Idle, the CPU temp was 67-70 C and while watching a movie it would reach up to 90C! Imagine if I would play a game! Mind you, I am always at home and the Air Con is on @ 24C temperature. So I refunded that laptop as well...

3) Finally, I went back to the mall, and the Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 was just released and the price was good with good features. Went home and opened it, I was more than pleased with the build quality, the keyboard, the screen, and the performance! This is one quality product well built with good battery life and specs

4) I then saw another Model of the IdeaPad Y570 which has an SSD as well + a 750 GB HDD so I refunded my current one and got the Y570 with the SSD built in. Then I removed the built in 750 GB HDD and put in my Kingston KC100 120 GB SATA-III SSD as the built in SSD is SATA-II. Then I installed Windows 7 Pro x64 on the Kingston KC100 SSD and I am very happy with the results!!

I am a new happy Lenovo user now

Benchmarks:

Windows Experience Index:

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/1885/lenovoy570wei.png

3DMark:

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/201...03dmark011.png

ATT DiskBench:

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7...kbenchmark.png

[Raza0007]

All the specs and the price is good for this model except for the display resolution of 1366x768 and the wireless network card "Intel 1000 BGN". Since you can not customize these, so this would kill the deal for me, as well as for most other buyers I am guessing.

[berryracer]

Originally Posted by Raza0007

All the specs and the price is good for this model except for the display resolution of 1366x768 and the wireless network card "Intel 1000 BGN". Since you can not customize these, so this would kill the deal for me, as well as for most other buyers I am guessing.

Regarding the display...I know....but I looked at other Notebooks and none had this CPU + Graphics Chipset + SSD + HDD so I was stuck with this choice

About the wiFi card...I am not sure what the problem is but I haven't had any issues with it....

[linuxforall]

In general ASUS and Toshiba as well as SONY have the best most reliable machines out there, of course that don't mean that once in a while a lemon will pass through. Lenovo actually is better than Dell, HP and Acer but their construction in past have been shoddy, the hinge area issue is yet to solve, had to return my Y550P couple of times to fix the hinge issue.

[Robin A.]

Originally Posted by Raza0007

All the specs and the price is good for this model except for the display resolution of 1366x768...

What´s the problem with this resolution?

[berryracer]

Originally Posted by Robin A.

What´s the problem with this resolution?

Not a problem, but he would've been more pleased if it offered a higher resolution such as 1600x900

Personally Im fine with it

try this place next time i had one built there and its a screamer zoom...... zoom. http://www.powernotebooks.com/ this is what i have and added ssd to it http://www.powernotebooks.com/PowerP...-sys-4657.html

[Raza0007]

Originally Posted by berryracer

Regarding the display...I know....but I looked at other Notebooks and none had this CPU + Graphics Chipset + SSD + HDD so I was stuck with this choice

About the wiFi card...I am not sure what the problem is but I haven't had any issues with it....

It is not a problem. If you are satisfied with its performance, then it is okay. I just mentioned it as both the display resolution and the wireless card are the base models. I personally would prefer at least a 900p for the display resolution and at least an Intel 6230 wireless card.

Originally Posted by Robin A.

What´s the problem with this resolution?

There is no problem, but for a home entertainment computer with a 15.6 inch screen size, I would prefer at least a 900p resolution. If you were buying a computer for business, then 768p is quite adequate, in fact for a business I would prefer a 768p resolution on a 15.6 inch screen.

However, Lenovo markets this particular series for home users.

[roger_m]

Originally Posted by berryracer

1) Asus G73Sw Horror Story, please read this, very interesting and scary! Never buying an ASUS in my life anymore! They say they are amongst the most reliable laptops...yeah right

Once again, ASUS is one of the most reliable brands of notebooks. You shouldn't write of a brand due to an experience with a single notebook.

However, the quality of an IdeaPad should be decent too, I would highly doubt it will be better than ASUS. I would say that Levono's ThinkPads are comparable to ASUS for quality.

[berryracer]

Originally Posted by roger_m

Once again, ASUS is one of the most reliable brands of notebooks. You shouldn't write of a brand due to an experience with a single notebook.

However, the quality of an IdeaPad should be decent too, I would highly doubt it will be better than ASUS. I would say that Levono's ThinkPads are comparable to ASUS for quality.

Thats what I read online too...surprisingly after my experience, I read that ASUS laptops have some of the highest quality

guess I got a bad lemon

[Noob]

For me (Although i have never owned any of these brands) the best bang for the buck (Spec wise) laptop brands are, ASUS and SAGER.

[roger_m]

One area where Lenovo really stands out above other notebook manufacturers is that they provide driver, BIOS and Lenovo software updates for non current models.

It is typical for notebook manufacturer to provide updates for about 6 months after a computer is released. After this they no longer update the downloads section on their website for that model - even though typically there will still be updated drivers being released, as well as updates to the brand specific software included with the notebook - e.g. power management software. They abandon old machines in favour of new models.

Lenovo is different in that regard. For example I'm soon going to be a second hand Thinkpad from eBay. The model was released around 4 and a half years ago. Despite its age, Lenovo still provide updates for it - e.g. there are several driver and software updates released this year for download on their website, and even a BIOS update released this month.

This computer was released with Vista as the OS, however Lenovo provide driver and software downloads also for XP, 2000 and even Windows 7. While there are a lot of pre Windows 7 computers which are quite capable of running Windows 7, however in general computer manufacturers do not provide any download for Windows 7.

Another good thing about Lenovo, is they provide software to download and install the latest software and driver updates. You can even use it do download some of the Lenovo specific software after doing a clean install of Windows. In contrast to ASUS (who do make excellent laptops) I've only once seen the included live update software actually find any updates to download!

[Noob]

Didn't know Lenovo had such a great support with their drivers.

[Adric]

Originally Posted by Noob

Didn't know Lenovo had such a great support with their drivers.

This support structure is something that Lenovo inherited from IBM. A website move away from the IBM urls was made around the end of May 2011.

Al

[berryracer]

Originally Posted by roger_m

One area where Lenovo really stands out above other notebook manufacturers is that they provide driver, BIOS and Lenovo software updates for non current models.

It is typical for notebook manufacturer to provide updates for about 6 months after a computer is released. After this they no longer update the downloads section on their website for that model - even though typically there will still be updated drivers being released, as well as updates to the brand specific software included with the notebook - e.g. power management software. They abandon old machines in favour of new models.

Lenovo is different in that regard. For example I'm soon going to be a second hand Thinkpad from eBay. The model was released around 4 and a half years ago. Despite its age, Lenovo still provide updates for it - e.g. there are several driver and software updates released this year for download on their website, and even a BIOS update released this month.

This computer was released with Vista as the OS, however Lenovo provide driver and software downloads also for XP, 2000 and even Windows 7. While there are a lot of pre Windows 7 computers which are quite capable of running Windows 7, however in general computer manufacturers do not provide any download for Windows 7.

Another good thing about Lenovo, is they provide software to download and install the latest software and driver updates. You can even use it do download some of the Lenovo specific software after doing a clean install of Windows. In contrast to ASUS (who do make excellent laptops) I've only once seen the included live update software actually find any updates to download!

Wow! I am very happy to hear this


some brands like LG dont even offer driver downloads on their site PERIOD!

Id never buy an LG or Acer or Samsung in my life

[roger_m]

Originally Posted by berryracer

Wow! I am very happy to hear this


some brands like LG dont even offer driver downloads on their site PERIOD!

Id never buy an LG or Acer or Samsung in my life

Here is a link for LG drivers http://www.lg.com/au/support/common/...roduct-profile

This is the Australian link, but I'm sure there would be a link available too if you visited the lg.com website from the US.

Acer is definitely a "cheap and nasty" brand, and not one I'd own. I have heard that their high end products are good, but I can't confirm this.

I have no experience with LG laptops so can't comment their but my Samsung netbook despite my best efforts, runs really slowly, and from what I've read online Samsung is perhaps a brand best avoided until they have more experience in building laptops. Once they sort some issues out I'm sure they'll be one of the leading brands.

[prius04]

Originally Posted by roger_m

...Samsung is perhaps a brand best avoided until they have more experience in building laptops....

What do they build? Seriously.

I was under the impression that 5 ODMs (Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec, Pegatron) account for over 90% of all laptops manufactured.

Further, only another 5 firms (LG, Samsung, AUO, CMO, CPT) manufacture virtually all of the LCD displays.

Who actually "builds" what?

[roger_m]

Originally Posted by prius04

What do they build? Seriously.

I was under the impression that 5 ODMs (Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec, Pegatron) account for over 90% of all laptops manufactured.

Further, only another 5 firms (LG, Samsung, AUO, CMO, CPT) manufacture virtually all of the LCD displays.

Who actually "builds" what?

You are right. I should have said designing, not building laptops.

[iravgupta]

Lenovo ThinkPad T series.

[berryracer]

Originally Posted by prius04

What do they build? Seriously.

I was under the impression that 5 ODMs (Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec, Pegatron) account for over 90% of all laptops manufactured.

Further, only another 5 firms (LG, Samsung, AUO, CMO, CPT) manufacture virtually all of the LCD displays.

Who actually "builds" what?

Samsung laptops are crap, had a netbook that was the worst computer I ever used

I bought a friend a Samsung Laser Printer / Scanner / Fax that doesn't work well in Windows 7 after a few restarts and the support sucks!

Samsung can only do good TVs, period!

Oh, and their phones suck even more! all of them

[Noob]

I have never used a Samsung laptop, but their appliances and cellphones are great in my experience.

[Robin A.]

Originally Posted by berryracer

Oh, and their phones suck even more! all of them

It seems that most people disagree. Samsung sold 93.5 m phones in the first quarter.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/81f0af02-9.../feed//product.

[AlexC]

Every recent laptop i worked with, regardless the brand, have cooling problems by design... and that frequently will result in a ruined graphic card after about 2-3 years of use (except if a any cleaning/thermal paste application is made meanwhile). What would be nice to see is a laptop with a system that makes easy to everyone to remove the dust from the cooler, without the need to open the laptop.

Other problem in most laptops i see, IMO, is the lack of protection of the HD's against vibration and hits that are usual in the everyday use of a laptop. Is rare for me to see a HD conditioned (inside the laptop) with rubber or sponge protections...

[roger_m]

Originally Posted by AlexC

Every recent laptop i worked with, regardless the brand, have cooling problems by design... and that frequently will result in a ruined graphic card after about 2-3 years of use (except if a any cleaning/thermal paste application is made meanwhile). What would be nice to see is a laptop with a system that makes easy to everyone to remove the dust from the cooler, without the need to open the laptop.

On some brands like ASUS and Compal and others, the fan can be easily accessed just by removing a few screws of a panel underneath the laptop. However usually on the big brand names e.g. Toshiba to name one brand, the only way to gain access to the fan is through a complicated removal procedure which includes removing the keyboard.

I recently bought a used Samsung netbook, and it overheating badly. Due to no easy access ti the fan, I cleaned it using a can of compressed air - which helped, but I would certainty prefer easy access to the fan. I clean dust from the fan on my Comapl laptop which I use daily, every few months.

Originally Posted by AlexC

Other problem in most laptops i see, IMO, is the lack of protection of the HD's against vibration and hits that are usual in the everyday use of a laptop. Is rare for me to see a HD conditioned (inside the laptop) with rubber or sponge protections...

Most Thinkpads (maybe even all?) have protection against vibration:

Originally Posted by http://www.superwarehouse.com/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X61_7675/767593U/p/1505134

Unique data protection and reliability features on ThinkPad X Series help safeguard your valuable data. The Active Protection System utilizes an integrated, airbag-like user-configurable motion sensor to continuously monitor your ThinkPad notebook and temporarily stop the hard drive to help prevent some hard drive crashes when a fall or similar event is detected. In addition, the ThinkPad Hard Drive Shock Absorber uses rubber rails and metal plates to provide extra impact protection.

[Noob]

Just the other day i was trying to get some drivers for a Vaio laptop (2 Days ago) for some weird reason Intel's download section was down . . . Tried manufacturer website, no driver for newer OS'es . . . Ended up downloading them at Softpedia!
What a handy website