Strike4 said:
What's the view of Lenovo's non-Thinkpad computers for business use? I'm in the market for a new business laptop, and I am probably going to need the number pad and larger display of a 15" screen (Thinkpad doesn't come with either). My business is non-profit - lots of Quickbooks, mapping software, mail merges, etc.
The low end Thinkpad E540 line can be had with i3,i5 or i7 cpus, the screens are all 15.6 with either 1366x768 or better 1920x1080 resolution, the keyboard does include a full numeric keyboard, and better yet, besides a normal HD it has an M.2 2242 connector that can take a mini-SSD (similar to mSATA but an even smaller formfactor), which can be had in 128, 256 Gb and even larger sizes. Add one of those as your boot drive and you not only have a superfast laptop but you can inherently backup to the mechanical HD.
Available tech specs here
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/e-series/e540/#techspecs
as to other Lenovos, let me repeat what I just posted in the Tech Bargain thread concerning Ideapads, note other cheaper Lenovos like the 700 series use a trackpad with real mechanical switches:
Lenovo laptop caveat
ATM the Lenovo Outlet has been very quiet, only single laptops at OK but not great prices.
2 people I know, however, both found decent deals on "Z" series Ideapads and both reported the same 2 issues: One fixable, the other not.
Both laptops had i5 cpu, 8 Gig of ram and large hard drives, and were complete slugs. Fresh installs of Win 8.1 on each. At a minimum the following needed to be done to make them perform as expected.
First added Classic Shell (of course), then turned off Indexing on all drives, completely remove the McAffee trialware crap and added protection that doesn't make it run like it's in molasses, finally reset the pagefile to a fixed size (generally 100 to 150% of real ram is preferred). Now the machines responded as expected.
Now the problem you can't fix: Z Ideapads use a trackpad with 'virtual buttons' in the lower portion. These are poorly defined in relation to the rest of the pad, the result is erratic response, inadvertent presses and an overall twitchyness that is driving users bonkers. Add to this that there is no scroll area on this pad and overall navigation is hyper annoying. Users have looked for a fix from Synaptics (who make most trackpads in everyone's laptops) and they have replied that the design and features of this pad are baked into the firmware and Lenovo is responsible: no change in drivers or fiddling with the settings can improve this at all.
All of this just reinforces my predilection for Thinkpads which always offer the trackpoint option for navigation. Both my acquaintances intend to mostly use their Ideapads at home and are content to add mouse or trackball to solve the issue. You definitely want to sample an Ideapad of this sort before buying one of these.
