Lenovo laptops

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Barry_Green

Moderator
After getting my Sony VAIO's laptop screen smushed a little too hard in the luggage on my last trip, it looks like it's time to shop around for a replacement. No quad-core MBP exists yet, and I really don't want to give up the P2 slot.

So I went to PC World and looked at their rankings and pretty much found Lenovo all over the lists, ruling the top of the ultraportable lists and ranking highly on the all-purpose list. So I went to check 'em out. Holy moley, do these things look like a smokin' deal!

First, they meet the design criteria I have for an HVX/P2 laptop: they have firewire ports, SD card readers, PCMCIA card slots, ExpressCard capability, and dedicated graphics. Just like the Sony had. But it's way more powerful and much cheaper! The Lenovos are on a big sale now; I got a Lenovo that's got twice the hard disk, twice the RAM, a slightly bigger screen, higher res display, 2.4GHz vs. 2.0GHz, and it was nearly half the price of last year's Sony. Even comparing against the modern VAIO, the VAIO configured comparably was about $1700 vs. about $1200 for the Lenovo. Then, to add the icing on the cake, I googled for "Lenovo e-coupon" and found a 10% off coupon for Paypal users.

Net result, a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB 7200RPM SATA hard disk, expansion bay that allows adding another hard disk, DL DVD writer, P2 card slot, ExpressCard slot, nVidia external graphics card, 1400x900 screen res, firewire port, everything -- for about $1200. Less than half the cost of a comparably-equipped 15" MacBook Pro; granted I don't get a FW800 port, but I'll take the PCMCIA slot in exchange in a heartbeat.

I was awfully tempted by the ultraportable X61 with its 12" screen, but I can't live with 1024x768, that's just too small.

Anyway, they have some big sale going on now, and the e-coupon just clinches the deal and makes it even cheaper. Anyone shopping for a powerhouse laptop for P2 use might want to look into these Lenovos!
 
Barry_Green said:
I got a Lenovo that's got twice the hard disk, twice the RAM, a slightly bigger screen, higher res display, 2.4GHz vs. 2.0GHz, and it was nearly half the price of last year's Sony.
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don't you just wish the rest of the world worked that way? :)
 
I was looking into a laptop for editing hd for a while but I could not find anything like that that could handle an external 22' monitor with a 1680 x 1050 resolution. If the laptop you mentioned was capable of doing this it would be perfection.

Of course, for half that money here in Spain you can get a desktop with quad core, 4gb desktop, and a 500gb HD.
 
Is that the T series?
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No, I went with the "R" series.

but I could not find anything like that that could handle an external 22' monitor with a 1680 x 1050 resolution. If the laptop you mentioned was capable of doing this it would be perfection.
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The Lenovo I went with has a discrete nVidia graphics board instead of (or perhaps in addition to? ) the built-in graphics. The nVidia 140M graphics card supports up to 1600x1200 on a digital panel, and 2048x1536 analog.
 
I've consistently had great experience with Dell notebooks, and I was about ready to get a new Dell lappy...

...but I'm looking at Lenovo, now.

Come to think of it, maybe I can sponge off the research and hard work of others, here. Any specific model recommended, as a starting point for a professional-grade location-worthy machine for Lightwave, Rhino, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro2, Maya, Sketchup, Solidworks and Vectorworks...?
 
You could theoretically run every one of those programs without an issue, Lightwave and Maya probably being the most hardware intensive programs.

The drawback is the M140/140M GPU. I'd go for one with a newer GPU especially if the system's set to run for windows.

Asus has always kept up with new hardware release, Lenovo would definitely be my second choice for portable computing solutions following Apple's line-up of laptops. Apple being THE most sound investment solution. Gotta hand it to Apple: you can sell those things a year later for 100 less than you bought it for and upgrade to the newest model.
 
Well...I don't sell hardware along; I use it up, bang the crap out of it, then relegate it to second-desk-at-home use, until it's time for the next machine (unless it's suitable for to be fitted with leg irons and sent to the render farm...).

Apple's product line is not really a contender, for my hardware dollars. No offense intended, to anyone who enjoys using the damned things.
 
i would for sure pick the thinkpad t61p , their mobile workstation line with the

NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (256MB Open GL) GPU

and

WUXGA: Wide Ultra eXtended Graphics Array Resolution: 1920×1200 (FULL HD) !


I have 1 old inspiron 8000 laptop that lcd died and 1 dell latitude laptop (frm work) that is now falling apart. While my Thinkpad 233mhz is still running strong. From personal experience, the Thinkpads are absolutely the best laptop available in the marketplace today.
 
For what it's worth.

T61p great laptops. Use Thinkpads in our company exclusively for years. Had some driver issues, but can fix with downloads.

Solid machines. You'll love the keyboards. On the heavy side compared to MacPro. Decent graphics responses with Nvidia. Bigger draw on battery, but worth it.

You can get memory and HD upgrades after market cheaper than buying direct from Lenovo.

Have MacPro. Problems with dual boot and Leopard/Vista&XP. Microsoft and Apple point fingers at each other with problems.

No experience with R series...
 
So a comparison between a suitable Lenovo system vs. a suitable Dell one, closest match I could make, kind of comes out...

Dell offers only a 17" lcd, vs the 15" of the Lenovo

Lenovo offers 3GB RAM, Dell 2GB (or 4, but I can only address up to 3 anyway since I'm sticking with 32-bit XP)

Lenovo offers the NVIDIA Quadro FX 570 video card, Dell offers the NVIDIA GeForce8700GT

Lenovo offers a 160GB HD, Dell offers a 200GB HD

Lenovo wants $2429.00 for their system, Dell is asking about $3100.00

So I'm left to decide if 2" additional screen size, 40 additional GB of HDD space, 1GB less RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce8700GT card in place of the FX570 justify the $700 extra cost of the Dell...
 
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Sad Max said:
Lenovo wants $2429.00 for their system, Dell is asking about $3100.00

So I'm left to decide if 2" additional screen size, 40 additional GB of HDD space, 1GB less RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce8700GT card justify the $700 extra cost of the Dell...
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This is surprising, I bought a Dell laptop 7 months ago with the (mistaken) idea that it offers the most bang for the buck.

$700? For me that's a no brainer. That's a lot of beer money...

Based on my experience, for anyone reading this, stay the hel away from Vista. What a disaster.
 
What's funny, now, is that Windows XP has become a tough-to-find option with Dell- very few of their laptops are offered with anything but some flavor of Vista.
 
One reason I went with Lenovo was because you could easily still get XP instead of Vista.

Second reason was that they're some of the highest rated laptops on PC World's charts.

Third reason is because they're crazy cheap. I had a Dell, I've got lots of Dells but I had a Dell laptop, top of the line 17". It was slow as a turtle in offloading P2 cards, I was shocked when my new Sony was twice as fast as the Dell (even though both were 2GHz systems). I had to replace the PCMCIA slot in my Dell twice. No thanks, no more Dells.

Max, check out the ecoupons for Lenovo, you should save another $250 or more off that Lenovo price. To get a way better system for a thousand bucks less? That's entering no-brainer territory. :)
 
I'm also hunting for a new laptop. My main problem is the same as that of many mac users. I love OSX. And my whole production suite- office workstation, home workstation, and old laptop are all macs. Even though I'm typing this on a PC (E-mail office machine), I sincerelly want to stay away from Windows as much as possible.

Investing on a new laptop is a lot of money, and it is an investment I would like to make for the next 3/4 years, like my still strong, P2 friendly and dvcpro HD capable Powerbook G4 1.67ghz.

The thing is, my old powerbook is such a fantastic machine- Entering its 4th year without a single hitch- that I sincerely am very relunctant to go to the PC realm. I want a machine that can integrate my workflow, and be able to save my @$$ in extreme situations (Like my powerbook did in a couple of on location DVCPRO HD editing tasks and immediate output- see the "horror stories" thread in the cafe :) )

However, current Macbook Pro's are just outdated and way too expensive to justify the upgrade. Going to a PC laptop would mean probably going back to Premiere Pro. Not that I disliked the Premiere software, but I got traumatized with the problems I got with projects that were beyond 10 minutes in lengh....

And having to use the duel adaptor for p2...Just doesn't give me confidence at all. Panasonic should come out with a P2 expresscard to pcmcia adapter at the price of the Duel Adapter that is both tough and reliable. This is not an accessory- this should be mandatory and bundled with any camera, since it would prove Panasonics commitment with the technology. PCMCIA is a standard that is no longer developed and has been replaced by Expresscard. So it should be Panasonic responsability to guarantee that P2 users get compatibility with their systems. Panasonic nowadays is probably the only company still investing in PCMCIA technology.

EDIT- And coming out with 2000 to 3000 dollar multi feature readers is not what I meant as a reliable pcmcia to expresscard adapter at the price point of the duel adapter and bundled with new cameras. (sorry about the rant- just upset of the pain it is to upgrade to a new laptop. They are so much faster nowadays that sincerely A top end laptop can rival in cpu performance- and surpass!- my Powermac g5 dual 2.7)
 
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Barry_Green said:
To get a way better system for a thousand bucks less? That's entering no-brainer territory. :)
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That's my turf!

It's really a question of the difference in the graphics cards. I don't use laptops to play games, so the gaming advantages of the GeForce don't move me...but I wonder what difference it will make for Lightwave, Photoshop, etcetera...
 
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