CanadaSVT,Jul 3 2009, 12:02 AM Wrote:I have been looking for awhile. Narrowed it down to this one. If anyone knows of something better for the price or any info at all chime in. Thanks.
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/sea...0&sku=T71-15412
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I got a pair of refurbished Gateway laptops from them and pretty happy so far - stable and bullet proof ... but just a little thing they did at the store that pissed me off.
They offered a bunch of "free" software that I didn't really need or want (CA and it turned out to be garbage anyway) but what the hey - it was free, right?
Well ... what they do to make it free is to "reduce" the price of the laptop by the cost of the software ... roughly 150 bucks ... so far so good right?
Nope ... only the laptop is guaranteed and only for the amount you paid for it ... which in my case was now technically some 150 bucks less than I really paid for it due to the software reduction.
Fortunately I never had to use the return warranty (so far) but if I do I am immediately out the 150 bones.
Otherwise it seems hard to beat their prices.
Personally I'm still a little leary about Lenovo - I'm still old school enough to be suspicious of made-in-China electronics - probably just a vestige of an old bias because they seem to get good reviews.
my wife works at Lenovo. Its basically IBM's PC that was sold. Some of thier models are the old IBM, such as the T series.
If you want i can ask my wife to see if there is any good deals around. One thing with Tiger direct, Lenovo does not warranty the unit once its purchased from there. You have to purchase them from Lenovo in order for warranty to be active. Or you can get 3rd party warranty thru Tiger Direct.
A few things stick out to me (in the bad way):
1 - what Mo said.
2 - that's an awfully low-res 15.4" widescreen LCD. The refresh rate and/or pixel quality is probably poor as well.
3 - lots of processing horsepower and RAM but only integrated video? That will also vampire some system RAM for the frame buffer (video RAM). Dedicated laptop vid cards are plenty cheap these days. Going integrated is just for the uninformed and it places too much strain on your subsystems for the stuff you likely take for granted (content-rich media and any video rendered/displayed beyond 720x480 with any real quality to it come to mind). FWIW I can play most of the recent NFS series on a laptop with the same processor, 1GB less RAM and a dedicated Nvidia video card (Quadro NV135M 256MB).
4 - Vista Premium on integrated video? You won't be running the Aero interface smoothly at all. It'll require some fussing with in order to get the desktop experience running smoothly. Conversely, we never worry about our (limited number of) Vista laptops because all our laptops here at work have dedicated video cards. They just run. :)
If I find anything in the next day or so, I'll let you know. :)
that machine will have no problem running vista with the integrated video (even on a slower, single core machine).
I've been using lenovo laptops for as long as lenovo has owned the thinkpad brand, and have owned several other brands including Dell, HP, and Toshiba.
And the lenovo's have turned out to be the best-built and most robust of the bunch.
I've also hooked up several friends and family members with lenovo lappy's including several high-end t-series laptops and a tablet PC. One t-series (t-61) wouldn't boot after a power spike caused by a faulty space heater -- but 5 minutes with lenovo support had the laptop back up and running (remove power cord, remove battery, wait 5 minutes, plug battery in, plug power in, boot).
And in the end, a couple of the laptops blew former gateway and Toshiba/HP owners away with the build quality of the laptops... I could even forward the emails.
So even though the lenovo PC's aren't the cheapest, I, and a few other folks can attest to their quality.
And yes, I do earn rewards if I refer enough equipment through my employee purchase program, but if you can get Lenovo through an employee purchase program (and you can, if you PM me), you bring the prices down to a reasonable level, and you get a decent laptop.