Laptop recommendation

[Scrapper_511]

Good morning folks. I'm in the market for a new 14" laptop with an i5 CPU, discrete graphics, internal optical drive, and Win7 64 bit, all for under $900(USD). I've configured a nice Toshiba Satellite S50 but reviews for this brand haven't been very good. So I'm currently leaning towards a Lenovo Ideapad Y410p with similar specs. I'm going to be using this primarily for school, using MS Visual Studio, and hopefully if time permits, do some map editing in SB. Feedback please! Thanks!

Edit: I need to consider Win8 as well. Have no need for touch screen/interface. Feedback on this OS as well.

Edit2: I went ahead and placed an order for a Lenovo Ideapad Y410p which has i7-4700MQ and GeForce GT755M(2GB), for $800. Great price for the hardware included. This laptop would probably run SB faster than my desktop!

Edited March 12, 2014 by Scrapper_511
Win8

[Scrapper_511]

This laptop arrived today (14 business days from China to L.A.) and of course the first thing I did was install SB 3.0. This laptop actually runs SB a lot faster than my desktop (specs in sig)! I am truly impressed by the i7. The laptop itself is all business, no fluff. There are a lot of prettier and more polished laptops out there, but not with the specs and price of this Lenovo Y410P. I hope it holds up to the test of time. I also need to get used to Win8.1.

[Alicatt]

This laptop arrived today (14 business days from China to L.A.) and of course the first thing I did was install SB 3.0. This laptop actually runs SB a lot faster than my desktop (specs in sig)! I am truly impressed by the i7. The laptop itself is all business, no fluff. There are a lot of prettier and more polished laptops out there, but not with the specs and price of this Lenovo Y410P. I hope it holds up to the test of time. I also need to get used to Win8.1.

Been using a Lenovo convertible laptop/tablet X201T - 2985EZG since 2010 and it is great, now tho it does struggle with SB 3.XX but apart from that it was a great investment and it has worked better and longer than any previous laptop I have had. It has an older version of the i7 the 620M with Intel integrated HD graphics which is the real limiting factor in the laptop. The first and best mod I did to it was put in a SSD, that really transformed the laptop.

I wish you long and fruitful use of your new Lenovo

PS. the wife also went with a similar model Lenovo as mine and she loves it as do the grandkids, they use it in it's tablet format and from that they pressured their dad into getting them an iPad

[Captain_Thunder]

This laptop arrived today (14 business days from China to L.A.) and of course the first thing I did was install SB 3.0. This laptop actually runs SB a lot faster than my desktop (specs in sig)! I am truly impressed by the i7. The laptop itself is all business, no fluff. There are a lot of prettier and more polished laptops out there, but not with the specs and price of this Lenovo Y410P. I hope it holds up to the test of time. I also need to get used to Win8.1.

Congrats on the new machine! Those Core i7 processors are nice. I have one in my relatively new HP desktop, which is about 15 months old now. I am not comfortable with typing on a laptop...too cramped for my liking and I have no need for portability, so it's a desktop for me.

Mine is a i7-3770, 3.5 GHz, fully loaded with 32GB RAM, Radeon 7950, which came with Win 8-64bit, but was upgraded to Win 8.1-64bit. I came over directly from Win XP Pro, so it was a bit of a bigger jump. I got used to Win 8 fairly quickly.

Tip: [Window-Key] + X brings up a menu where you can quickly access Task manager, Device Manager, Command Prompt, and a bunch of other options on the desktop screen. Right clicking the mouse on the 8.1 "Start" icon in the lower left corner of the task bar brings up the same menu list.

[Window-Key] + I brings up a settings menu.

Moving the mouse pointer to the extreme upper right or lower right corners of the desktop screen will bring up the Charms menu. Also, [Windows-Key]+C brings up the Charms menu.

[Windows-Key] + W brings up the Windows search function. Using S instead of W also works.

[Windows-Key] + R brings up the Run command box.

Just pressing the [Windows-Key] will switch you to the tiled "Start Screen" and back again to the desktop.

There are others. Those will give you something to play around with.

Enjoy the machine!

[Scrapper_511]

PS. the wife also went with a similar model Lenovo as mine and she loves it as do the grandkids, they use it in it's tablet format and from that they pressured their dad into getting them an iPad

Thanks for the reassurance. For $799 my wife was questioning its quality because she had spent $1200 on her HP Pavilion with AMD Turion and Vista. It was agonizingly slow and gave up the ghost recently (probably due to cracked solder on GPU, from what I gathered).

Thanks for the shortcuts, Captain_Thunder. :thumbup: I'm starting to get used to this new OS.

[Alicatt]

The wife's laptop was just under £400, it has an i5 CPU with the Intel HD Graphics, still has 8GB ram and a 500GB HDD, also has inbuilt GPS, and a much smaller battery, there are a few differences between her laptop and mine but a big difference in price, you can add about £1k to the price of hers to get mine, the difference of a couple of months and a sale!

The i5 is a lot less power hungry than the i7 and her smaller battery pack lasts almost as long as mine.

I used a Dell for about 4 years before the Lenovo, it gave good service too, I still have it as it has a serial port that I use to control my radio and my telescope.

[Scrapper_511]

Nice. From my cell phone it looked like a TOW launcher at first!:debile2: