Looks good! but like Paul said, 5400rpm is on the slow side comparing to our industry. But the hard drive is easily upgradable!

I can't say much about the graphics, at least its a dedicated card.

I think my dad has the same laptop. It's been holding up well so far.

 

Sounds like a great deal @ $800

 

Thanks David, I'll see if I can upgrade the hd speed and keep the sale price.

 

That's a great deal on a good laptop. Personaly, I would upgrade the HD immediately , to something like THIS, and keep the original in a Portable HD enclosure for use as a backup HD.
The faster HD (although lower, but still ample, capacity) will not create a bottle neck in work speed.
If 300GB isn't enough there are other larger capacity options. You don't have to get a 10,000rpm HD but I would get a 7200rpm as a minimum.
There are also Hybrid drives. They have typical spinning disks with a small amount of additional Solid State memory for quicker access. I put one in my Lenovo and it has been great for 6 months so far.

 

Great advice Paul. Now all I need is for my daughter to check out this laptop at a real store and see if it will work for her. Hope the sale lasts for a while.

 

I don't know where you are going to find Lenovos in a store. Especially the one you want.

 

The 300GB Velociraptors has a heatsink around it to dissipate heat beacuse of how fast it spins (10k rpm) This heatsink actually makes it a 3.5" drive and taking off the heatsink voids the warranty.

If your daughter needs 120gb or less, get a solid state drive. It's one of the most noticeable upgrade anyone can do today regardless laptops or desktops.

There are 240gb solid states, but those are wayy too overpriced atm.

If your daughter needs more than 120gb, then i would stay at a 7200rpm Western Digital Caviar Black drive. (this will slightly decrease battery life because of the speed)

I've never used hybrid drives before so I can't comment on it.

Futureshop might have it on display:

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/produ...spx?pid=finder

 

Call me insane but I think you guys need to remember who we're picking a computer out for... it's someone completing a public relations course going on an apprenticeship- not an aerospace engineer designing a lightspeed vehicle for a jaunt into virtual calculated space.

Any one of those computers touting huge stand alone HD graphics and enormous amounts of RAM are going to have battery lives of about 1 hour unless the screen has 1 pixel illuminated in "energy saver" mode. You guys recommending I7s and their 8 recognized cores- give me a break. The difference between 5400 and 7200 RPM is so small few people would make any deal about it at all unless they were to run tests on it.

Granted, any mention of photoshop generally means big ram requirements- but this is not a graphic artist. Maybe there will be some copy and pasting of images with some writing and a couple of layers- at the most.

And then we're looking at 800 dollar computers- then you've got a case, peripherals (probably)... at least give her the option of strapping into a decent 19" monitor at the end of the day and use a real keyboard and mouse. At least then when she's at home she can be at a work station and unplug a few connections and now it's an ultra portable laptop / netbook.

You guys can call me insane if you want- but I'd been looking into a new laptop for a long time, doing loads of research into something that was practical, powerful and had a long battery life. The best unit I came across was actually a netbook with a decent dual core atom processor, alternating integrated HD and normal def video, full windows 7, 2 gigs of RAM, 250gb or so of onboard space with an additional 350 or so available online. The true value here is the HD capability for most applications- but it doesn't turn on that battery hungry graphics card until you're actually playing HD content. Until that time, it runs on battery sipping integrated graphics- with a battery life ofup to 6 hours (the slightly slower version has a slower processor and over 8 hours of battery). It's a 12 inch screen- making it bigger than those ridiculous 10" netbooks, but more portable than a 15". The keyboard is big enough for me- though I'm not a huge person I'm more than likely larger than most daughters... and it truly does balance out the practicality, power and portability a person in this industry would expect. Built in webcam deals with the skype stuff...

Most laptops at all that you're going to find that can even handle 8 gigs of ram are going to HAVE to be windows 7 x64 (32 can only manage a little over 3 gigs of RAM including video graphics) and I can't imagine spending that amount of money and dragging some heavy, power sucking monster around.

I am currently using and love my ASUS 1215N . It's not the fastest, or the biggest, or the most asskickingest- but it gets the job done and then some. Spend the money, get the extended warranty (with something that's going EVERYWHERE I always recommend it), buy some peripherals, a monitor, a case, a good antivirus software suite (Eset internet security suite is EXCELLENT) and call it a day. And you'll still come up under 1000.

Anyway, just my opinion. Don't get me wrong guys- I've got 2 980X machines, a 920 and a 930 all overclocked over 4gigs running solid state drives in a couple of them with 5870s, GTX460s etc... I totally get the need for speed... plus I fold@home so have those processors going full blast 24hours a day for months at a time, graphics cards included...

But this doesn't seem like one of those situations that requires that kind of hardware.

 

^ you have a point, and I agree. I'm probably the biggest tech enthusiast out of all my friends, and I have a Q6600 and a 4870. I'm sure you will know now I also hate to spend money on what I dont need.

However, 800 bucks for that is quite a steal, not gonna lie. It might also last longer, but pretty much its gonna be obsolete in a few years like all the other laptops anyways

I just never got used to netbooks. That's why I dont recommend it

 

^^ As Sam pointed out in the OP, she is utilizing software that can be a huge resource hog. Do we know the extent that she will be using it...no. Better to be safe than sorry.
With laptops, it make more sense to get the bells and whistles today than it does to upgrade tomorrow, figuratively speaking.

Oh and seeing that I have your permission, You are insane .

 

Interesting perspective, Maybe I'm looking to buy too much for her, just me trying to get the max for the money. I like your idea of peripherals. I'll run it by her.

 

Yeah, that ideapad has good stats... but I'm going through some support issues over the border right now as well with my scalienware laptop from before... doing some warranty work... and it's been a nightmare. Even just getting it over the border to get fixed has been horrible- nevermind that the support sucked (that's my own alienware issue... I'm just saying that you first have to GET it there before they can fix it.)

So yes- while that is a nice figure be very aware of what kind of support you're going to get. Alienware was funny because they only let you into the forums if you'd already bought a unit... of course everyone in the forums were totally pissed off- and that's probably why they didn't want to let other people in. Now it's a part of dell... but things haven't improved. I sent in my computer at the beginning of May and only just yesterday got a phone call back.

Make sure there's a place locally that you can bring the computer for service or troubleshooting.

And yes, I'm insane!

 

I wondered about the cross border support. For sure I'll see what's available on this side of the border. Good to know about your sanity. Knowing is half the solution.

 

Lenovo has global support in major cities all over the globe. We have dozens of Lenovos in dozens of countries and there support is as good (or bad) as any company.

EDIT...in the new Future Shop eflyer...it still has the slower HD (and smaller), less RAM too, but you can go test it out. $750...I see SOLD OUT...maybe they will get more.
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/produ...41f49685e6en02

 

Just to update. We had decided to purchase a Lenovo W520 with all the specs suggested. It was just short of $2 grand with 3 yr. warranty from XS computers in Waterloo. Wanted to share the decision with Nan face to face before pulling the trigger when my daughter received an email letting her know she'd have the use of a company laptop. Freekin close call. So we hit Zeke's for ribs.
Thanks for all your help. I feel so computerly empowered now.