Lenovo Ideapad Y550 15.6-Inch Laptop

5 comments

1. 

   Muhammed Fatih Dogan on December 22, 2009 at 1:43 am

   it is a terrible company I have never seen a costumer service like lenovo.

2. 

   DBguru on December 22, 2009 at 3:12 am

   Not happy with Lenovo laptop. First 220GB Disc storage turned out to be 2 hard drives C: and D:. C: Drive only 30GB. As you know most programs install in C Drive by default so it filled up very quickly. Also C drive is used for temp files, downloads and system. I have very little room on C now and it effects system performance. In addition Lenove DVD/CD Drive is very noisy. Every time I put CD/DVD into drive, the laptop vibrates and makes loud noise. I avoid using it if possible. Third. The cursor skips unpredictably when typing. I have to slow down my typing and make sure that cursor stays where it is supposed. Overall not a good laptop.

3. 

   Varij Saurabh on December 22, 2009 at 5:33 am

   disclaimer: my previous laptop was a thinkpad with XP, so my expectations from a laptop are fairly high.
   
   Pros:
   
   1. i bought a decent configuration, the machine runs fast. (at least for now)
   
   2. It fairly light for a laptop this size.
   
   3. speakers seem ok so far, (dont expect too much from a laptop anyway)

   cons:
   
   1. one of my biggest turnoffs is that the harddrive has a very strong vibration, which i can feel through the palm-rest and keyboard. This is annoying the hell out of me. you can even hear it if you come close enough
   
   2. I also felt the body was a bit weak and shaky, compared to my thinkpad. DOnt care about the bright white keyboard panel either.
   
   3. a minor issue is that the screen can only go back so far. So if you like to flaten out ur screen and use it laying on ur back. This will restrict ur ability.
   
   4. I am still adjusting to Vista, so some pain there

   the laoptop is also crashing my wireless router. still have to figure out the issue.

4. 

   Mr. Santhanam S. Kumar on December 22, 2009 at 6:03 am

   Keyboard keys are in weird places. Fn key is in where usually ctl key is. Eventhough it has a full size keyboard you have to use function key to type certain commonly used keys like home, end which is very annoying. I find typing with this laptop very hard. Finally you cannot upgrade any component other than memory in this laptop. Mine came with Intel 3945ABG wifi and want to replace with 4965AGN card found a good deal over the internet. After the upgrade the laptop BIOS catchup saying non lenovo item found and wont boot at all. Moreover lenovo is not selling this card and lenovo branded card cost you a fortune. If this laptop is not under warranty anything happens to it forget it you have to throw it out. My Dell laptop few things went wrong after warranty I replaced the components with bargain price and this I have to trash if I have any problem. I already replaced keyboard under warrany and the cusomer service insisted me to send the laptop and they will do a through diagnostics that it is not my problem only then they will replace. I don’t recommend this laptop and it is good only if you have warranty and definetly not worth for money. Lenovo will lose customers to their competetors until they change their proprietary mentality.

5. 

   Nan Chen on December 22, 2009 at 7:51 am

   First of all, I didn’t purchase the laptop through Amazon. I got it
   
   from Lenovo’s website. Having heard good things about the company and
   
   read some good reviews of their laptops, I decided to check them out
   
   when I needed a new laptop. I’ve had my Y550 for 4 days and will post
   
   updates if things change for the worse but so far so good.

   The specs:
   
   Intel Duo P8700 (2.53 GHz)
   
   4GB of DDR3 memory
   
   500 GB HDD
   
   Standard integrated graphics card
   
   Blu-ray optical drive

   The price was very good. I couldn’t find a better deal (about 900
   
   bucks after the ecoupon) for such a powerful machine with a blu-ray
   
   option.

   The first thing I noticed after setting up everything was the
   
   beautiful, bright, and crisp screen. It is a full HD screen and
   
   it is wide/squat (1366 x 768), great for watching movies. The screen
   
   is bright, crisp and glossy but has very little glare. It really does
   
   live up to the hype I’ve heard about it though I do wish that Lenovo
   
   offered a higher resolution screen option (like a 1920 x 1080). After
   
   seeing a blu-ray movie on it, I came away not disappointed that I paid
   
   the extra 150 bucks for the blu-ray option.

   The setup was easy and the software gives you the option of deleting
   
   all the bloatware that it comes standard with. (It took me about 15
   
   minutes to deselect all the bloatware) I only selected two of them to
   
   run on my computer as the rest was useless junk that will slow
   
   everything down and I suspect useless to most people too.

   Performance: The computer is quite fast so for my needs (email, net
   
   surfing, word processing, etc), it is more than sufficient. The
   
   computer has the newer DDR3 memory making it even a little more
   
   impressive performance wise.

   Looks: It has a beautiful design with black carbon-fiber shell and
   
   white palm-rest. The idea is to make the laptop light (it is just over
   
   6 lbs, and only 1 inch thick(!) which for a laptop this size, it
   
   really is among the lightest and thinnest.

   Sound: The speakers are pretty good. It has a subwoofer and two JBL
   
   speakers that, for a laptop, gets decent sounds.

   Cool factor: The Veriface security software works very well in
   
   allowing one to use one’s own face to log in (the computer’s camera
   
   scans your face and logs you in when there’s a match to saved images
   
   of you) and only takes a few seconds to set up. No problems yet with
   
   it and it works like a charm. The carbon-fiber shell, though not
   
   fingerprint proof, will make cleaning them off easier; just wipe once
   
   with non abrasive cloth and they’re gone. The Touch Inductive Panel
   
   above the keyboard is pretty cool but only a little better than being
   
   useless as far as I can see. The touchpad allows for expanding/shrinking
   
   text size by sliding two fingers apart or together.

   Batteries: There are several energy settings. Since this is a powerful
   
   laptop and has a relatively large screen, it doesn’t do well at all on
   
   the highest setting unplugged as to be expected. But on the lowest
   
   energy-saver setting (Super Energy Saver), you could probably get a
   
   little over 3 hrs of internet surfing, email, etc. and about 2- 2.5
   
   hrs of watching movies. But who wants to watch a movie on such a low
   
   setting? The bright LED screen makes viewing a pleasure but on the
   
   lowest settings, you will not get nearly as much image quality. So
   
   this laptop is more like a desktop replacement in that area but get’s
   
   OK battery mileage for simpler functions.

   Negatives:
   
   -The thing only has two USB ports (Plus one eSATA port). For
   
   a laptop with almost a 16 inch display, it should have more.

   -Like I mentioned, Lenovo doesn’t offer a 1920 x 1080 display
   
   option. Watching blu-ray on a system like that with this type of
   
   screen would have been incredible I’d wager.

   -Like some other customers have mentioned Lenovo’s customer support blows. I emailed them with some simple questions about my order and could not get a satisfactory answer. The answer they did give me was wrong as I later found out doing my own research. But since this has nothing to do with the product, I didn’t deduct my rating on this account but the customer should be warned. Also, if you are buying from Lenovo’s site, make sure you look into all the offers they have on sale such as the ecoupons they have scattered (hidden from view?) about on their site. You need to enter the code on the order page for the coupon when you order to get the discount. I got a 12% “employee discount” that cut the price of my laptop by 120 bucks but I had to dig through the site to find it. They sometimes also offer free shipping but search/hunt down and read the disclaimers (they don’t offer this for several states). The Lenovo website was pretty disorganized and confusing.

   -There’s a lot of bloatware that comes installed on this laptop. Like I
   
   said, remove as soon as possible because they are mostly crap and will
   
   slow your computer down.

   -The laptop doesn’t come with backup software. Instead, it has a “One
   
   Key Restore” function. I’ve had to use this function when I
   
   accidentally uninstalled some good software that I wanted. I’d like to
   
   have backup software, still.

   -The touchpad takes little to get use to but that’s not too much of a problem.

   Overall, the computer has lived up to my high expectations and surpassed
   
   them a little too!