Lenovo 438343U 15.6" AMD E-300 Dual Core Laptop with Windows 7

This model is made by Lenovo specifically for Best Buy's Black Friday 2011 sale. It was sold for $178 and many people thought they got a great deal. After all, a laptop with OK specs from a name brand manufacturer. What they didn't realize is that Lenovo stripped as much as they could off the laptop to meet this price point. That includes replacing the stereo speakers with a cheap monaural speaker. Yes, the sound comes out of only one side of this laptop. This does not affect people who listen through headphones, it's just that this fact was mentioned nowhere in the technical specs nor the Black Friday ad.

For anyone looking to upgrade RAM, this also only has 1 DIMM slot, so the max you can go is 4GB on a single DDR3 stick. If you're fine with the above, go ahead and make the purchase. But buyers must be aware of these facts.

I bought this at Best Buy and think its a pretty decent computer. The standout feature was the price though. Good PC for basic computer users. Good for browsing the web, email, and occasionally creating documents.

Like the other review states this model was specifically manufactured for Best Buy's Black Friday promotion and does have some limitations.

Among the Cons:

Only has 1 speaker (mono sound).

Only has 1 RAM tray, max at 4GB on one ram stick.

No memory card reader

No HDMI

Case feels a little like cheap plastic.

Hard Drive partitioning is kinda weird. There is a Drive 'C' with about 180gb and a Drive 'D' (Lenovo) with 30gb (about 26gb of which are free; applications and drivers can be found here).

The Processor AMD E-300 is both a PRO and CON. It is a very basic processor with low CPU Benchmark results.

The Good:

THE PRICE! $180 @ BB on Black Friday.

Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit (again you can only install 4gb of ram though)

Webcam; with face recognition login software (your webcam will recognize you and automatically log you into Windows).

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter (Functional Word, and Excel with ads included; no PowerPoint, Outlook though... that's what OpenOffice/LibreOffice is for)

Lightweight

Good keyboard and track pad

Good battery life, and battery management software

Very little bloatware (some programs don't come pre-installed; rather you need to install them from the Lenovo Drive, in the 'Apps' folder).

Small and compact AC adapter

Google Chrome pre-installed faster than Internet Explorer

Good HD graphics, because of graphics card

Processor (Con and Pro): It gets the job done!

Overall:

Great computer, for the price, for basic computer users. I got this for my mother who uses the computer pretty much only to surf the internet, and check email. For the price, and what she'll use it for its perfect. Again, for basic everyday computing this laptop will get the job done, but not for those with high resource needs (specially because of RAM/Processor limitations).

Buy Lenovo 438343U 15.6" AMD E-300 Dual Core Laptop with Windows 7 Now

First let me say that this laptop and it's reviews are going to be far more subjective than most other laptop reviews. Mainly due to the E-300 CPU.

One's opinion of it will REALLY depend their usage requirements:

what you plan to use it for

what software you plan to run on it

will this be your first laptop

are you just going to use it for web surfing and/or checking email

do you normally have just a couple windows open when using a laptop OR are you the type of person that must have 25 windows open, with 25 apps running simultaneously

Myself, my only other "personally owned", "portable" computing device has been an emachine netbook, purchased two years ago.

However, I have owned over 10 desktop PCs over the past 15 years.

So when I compare this unit's functionality to my netbook, the experience is the same and/or better than the netbook.

When comparing to one of my quad-core desktop computers, the performance gap widens quite a bit.

[Note: The performance index I got from this Lenovo was 3.4; due to the CPU].

Pros:

the screen is thinner than my netbook (and laptops I use at work). Yet the screen is large enough to view most anything I've looked at while using the unit.

6 cell battery. Longer running time than my netbook with it's measily 3 cell.

built-in optical device (my netbook requires that I carry a slim line external DVD drive).

so far it has been adequate for light usage: surfing and email

Cons:

performance index is lower than other computers I have used.

one memory socket that requires removing the existing So-dimm module and replacing with a larger one.

no HDMI (I knew this going in)

one speaker (as noted by another reviewer).

If you plan to buy one, I'd suggest trying to find a computer on display somewhere which uses the E-300 CPU. That way you can test drive to get some idea of how it might work out for you.

For some people on a budget, they might be able to forgive it's slower speed.

If you currently have an AMD quad core computer and you want this as a new laptop, more than likely you will be quite irritated by the slower speed than what a quad core runs at.

If you just need something to check email and web surf while away from home, it might work out fine.

Read Best Reviews of Lenovo 438343U 15.6" AMD E-300 Dual Core Laptop with Windows 7 Here

I'd love to come upon another offer to purchase one of these Lenovos for the same amount of money. I purchased it as a gift for my husband and he was thrilled with it. So am I, because I no longer have to wait for him to finish using my p.c. to get work done.

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