MArooned: BUL*

Thursday, May 26, 2011

BUL*

*Back-Up Laptop...

I mentioned a while back about our primary laptop, a Toshiba Satellite, giving up the ghost last month. We pressed our HP laptop, which had been our secondary, "The kids are using the main laptop" or "let's take this on vacation" laptop, into service as the main (only) laptop (we still have the Eee, but that's awfully limited). With four people vying for 'puter time, we really need at least one more computer, and with prices where they are it just doesn't make sense to get a desktop any more.

That said, what shows up in my inbox this morning but this deal. $270 for a refurbished Lenovo laptop with free shipping? Caught my attention! Now, the specs aren't the greatest - only 1 GB of RAM, that's the lowest since the HP desktop I bought in 1998 - but the price is decent. I'm making a couple assumptions on this - like, a laptop being sold in 2011 is going to have USB inputs and is wifi capable - and for a web-surfing, take-along laptop $270 is a pretty good deal.

Anyone have any thoughts/comments/impressions on the Lenovo series of laptops?

That is all.

18 comments:

Unknown said...: Lenovos are decent (they took over the ThinkPad line from IBM), but those specs are a little on the weak side. You can get a low-end Compaq with 2GB RAM and a much bigger HD for right around $300 at BestBuy these days:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Compaq+-+Presario+Laptop+/+AMD+V-Series+Processor+/+15.6%22+Display+/+2GB+Memory+/+250GB+Hard+Drive+-+Basic+Black/1271897.p?id=1218245812097&skuId=1271897

Those are very decent for the money, and the slightly higher price is more than justified when you consider the bigger HD and double the RAM.; May 26, 2011 at 12:08 PM
Unknown said...: Forgot to add: the Compaqs are also noew, not refurbs, and easier to exchange locally if something isn't right.; May 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM
Unknown said...: Lastly (I swear), judging by the specs, the Lenovos are five-year-old machines that just came off a corporate lease. Thirty bucks more for a Compaq with far superior specs, more modern OS and a warranty is a no-brainer, especially if you like your hardware without five years of wear and tear inflicted on it by some corporate warrior.; May 26, 2011 at 12:23 PM
Anonymous said...: Personally, I would take the Thinkpad over the Compaq, but that's just me.
The wife, the kid and I all have thinkpads, they are hard to kill and take way more abuse then a laptop should take. Dont forget the Lenovo you linked also comes with a docking station, that's a handy item to have especially when the laptop is doubling as a desktop.

Last, I *HATE* me some touchpads, and the thinkpad has the trackpoint as well as the touchpad. I disabled the touchpad on mine.; May 26, 2011 at 12:28 PM
JohnOC said...: Agree with Marko, that laptop is almost certainly being resold after sitting for 3 years on some cubicle-farm desk in a docking station.

On the one hand, that means it is effectively new. On the other, effectively new but still around 4 years old.

The Thinkpad (Lenovno made them for IBM when they were still called that too) still has a deserved high reputation for hardware quality and fit & finish.

You can also a 2GB SODIMM for it for $28. Likely it has 2 RAM slots, and there is a 1 GB chip in it.; May 26, 2011 at 12:32 PM
Jay G said...: Yeah, right after I got that e-mail I found a Toshiba Satellite @ Best Buy for only $30 more, with 3 GB RAM and 250 GB HD.

Plus I can pick the Toshiba up over the weekend...

I was more curious about the Lenovo brand, actually. Thanks!; May 26, 2011 at 12:34 PM
Laura said...: Lenovos...my opinion? meh. i hear their customer service is good, but i haven't had good experiences on the IT side of things. they're finicky.

Compaq/HP boxes generally have mediocre to tolerable CS but repairs are easy and parts are readily available.; May 26, 2011 at 12:46 PM
Andrew said...: Oddly enough, I have left windows. I got a Mac (Sandy Bridge+SSD) and have been very happy.

That said, I think that the Lenovos are pretty good machines. You can upgrade the RAM for short money from Crucial.; May 26, 2011 at 1:20 PM
Phil L. said...: A quick thank-you to everyone on this thread: I'm out-of-date in the laptop market, so the comments have been useful for me!; May 26, 2011 at 1:40 PM
Chris said...: Stay far away from Lenovo. Component wise they are not bad, they are equal to a lot of stuff out there, but the build quality is not up par. They fall apart. Broken keyboards, fractured screens, ripped out hinges and the list goes on and on.; May 26, 2011 at 2:02 PM
Teke said...: I have bought 2 toshiba's in the past 2 years. One for the Mrs. and one for Oldest Daughter. They both work very well.

I still keep 1 desktop online. It handles backups local and Cloud as well it acts as a central repository for Pics, Music, and other Shared Files. It bit the big one a month ago. I ended up replacing the MB, Processor, and memory for $300. Much better than I could have bought off the shelf.

As far as laptop though cant go wrong with the Toshiba.; May 26, 2011 at 3:48 PM
Comrade Misfit said...: XP won't be supported by Microsoft after April, 2014. So if you think that you may still have the laptops in three years, you may want to get something with Win 7.; May 26, 2011 at 4:06 PM
Rabbit said...: I'm prejudiced, but Marko and JohnOC are correct; IBM is dumping a lot of end-of-lease laptops/desktops, and has been doing so for the last year or two. The T60 is a workhorse, but it's probably 4 years old, and 3.5 years out of date as far as competitiveness.

Disclaimer- I own a T61p that was a refurb, and was sent back for a MB replacement under warranty. I use a T400 as my remote system.

I'll send you a link, privately, that will give you some further insight.; May 26, 2011 at 4:53 PM
wolfwalker said...: I bought a (remaindered) Lenovo laptop in ... let me see, I believe it was spring 2006. I just got rid of it a couple of months ago. Considering its age and price, its specs were pretty damn good, and it never gave me a problem throughout the time I owned it. Even at the end of its life it was adequate to run Photoshop CS3, and that's a respectable feat for a bargain laptop.; May 26, 2011 at 6:01 PM
Steve R said...: I'll offer my boilerplate IT guy advice, take it for what it costs--

Avoid the (Intel) celeron processor, if you can, it's a high profit margin with a low price for Intel and underperforms compared to the price of the standard Intel processors. That said, most everything these days are multi-core, but not many consumer applications can use more than one core, so the speed (clock frequency in GHz) isn't a huge factor.

Get as much memory (RAM) as you can afford, 4GB is the top end that most versions of 32 bit MS Windows support; more RAM = less watching the hourglass spin.

If you're into video editing, streaming movies and that sort of thing, opt for the larger video memory if you have a choice.

Get a larger disk than you think you need ~500GB, audio and video files in HD or high bit rates are big and the PC file systems are inefficient in the way the write to disks.

Backup hard disks are great, periodically burning important files to DVD is better. It's easy to burn multiple copies and keep the irreplaceable things (photos, etc) safe. The two is one, one is none principle.

I don't have brand loyalty since all the components of the major vendors are the same. The difference is in support mostly, HP and Dell change places in terms of suckitude. I don't know how Lenovo is supported, I never signed a PO for any.; May 26, 2011 at 9:04 PM
DanM said...: Get the toshiba... 30 bucks to get a perfectly usable 3gb of ram.
As far as lenovo is concerned I feel they make solid hardware but the extra bloatware that is installed on them make them slow. I also don't trust programs that are reporting back to china even if they are as simple as a driver update utility.
With any new computer you have to remember that they don't come with restore disks anymore. you have to burn one from the welcome to windows screen.; May 26, 2011 at 10:35 PM
Anonymous said...: I'm going to have to put in my two cents about Toshiba. I got a new Satellite A660 last year and it's gone in twice to have it's hard drive replaced. All under warranty so it kinda balances.; May 26, 2011 at 11:22 PM
Daniel in Brookline said...: I don't believe I'm saying this, but I've begun leaning in the direction of MacBooks (after using PCs since 1983).

Briefly put: PCs are tools. Macs are appliances.

As long as you ask a Mac to do one of the things it was intended to do, it'll just work. As I get older, that appeals to me more and more.

Of course, you shouldn't ask your dishwasher to make coffee... and Macs can get downright cantankerous about doing something other than what Steve Jobs had in mind. (A good tool, of course, can be used to do something the tool's designer never dreamed of.)

And these days, with OS X, it's a comfort to know that I can always open a Unix command window and move things around the old-fasioned way.; May 28, 2011 at 4:06 PM