I purchased the Lenovo SL410 after my trusty, 5 year old Dell finally died and I must say, I am extremely impressed.For the price ($625), I have yet to see any others come close. In fact, this definitily seems like a much more expensive machine than it is. The design, although boring and old looking at first, has really grown on me and I have come to appreciate the simple beauty of it. No fancy case or buttons, just simple and easy to use features that always work instantly one pressed or used.
The trackpad is great and it even has the scroll feature on the right side, which is extremely useful when browsing the web. The keyboard is also of great size and response and is even spill proof! Really, it has drains which will drain any spilled liquid on the keyboard. I love this feature, since I replaced the keyboard on my old Dell TWICE for this reason.
Windows 7 has been great. I never owned a Vista, but did work on a few and it was awful. The Windows 7 that is installed in the SL410 has been wonderful. It is basically Vista with all the bugs worked out!
The number 1 thing about this laptop is the SCREEN! Not sure if its standard, bu the one i have has the glossy HD screen and it is unreal. HD video on this is bar none! Similar to the the screens on a Mac. Great!
A close 2nd favorite thing on this is the build-in Wi-Fi. WOW! My signal strenth is always powerful no matter where in my house. My sister has a Dell Mini Netbook, which she paid $550 for less than a year ago, and she cant get any wifi from her room. With the Lenovo, I have full signal strenth from my room which is much furhter from the wifi point in our house! Unreal.
I purchased this as a work travel/home laptop so I didnt need all the fancy media packages that HP and those other brands offer, but this thing has rocked for media. I am an avid photographer and this thing has no problem working with my DSLR, Flip Videos and other gadgets i have. I also use with my iPhone and iPod and have yet to experience issues or delay.
I did my research before purchasing and nothing in this same price point can compare.
I strongly reccomend this to anyone looking for a fast, reliable and efficient machine for work or play.
Overall I would rate this a 4-star laptop, excellent for moderate business productivity. The screen is sharp, glossy, but so much that it catches glare coming from florescent lights, or through office windows. The keyboard buttons are large and I find typing fairly simple and easy. The mouse interface has both the "nub" (my own word) which is a characteristic red finger sensor that used to be common on most of the major brands but only remains on Lenovo laptops, and the trackpad, which does hiccup sometimes, so your cursor can jump around unintentionally if you don't use small gestures. I have no problem with either of these really.
Initially, when you boot up the computer you will encounter the telltale bloatware present on every new PC these days. My first boot up took nearly twenty minutes (18m:45s) and until I disabled all of the completely unnecessary programs running the performance was quite pathetically slow for a Core 2 Duo processor. However, I used the MSCONFIG utility (type MSCONFIG in the search bar of the start menu) to disable all of the bloatware on startup and when I rebooted the computer was a far more reasonable 3 minutes.
It was when I went to backup the system disks on the Lenovo partition that I ran into my first problem. I ordered the Dual Layer DVD rom specifically for a project that requires a lot of data backup, so when the system hanged after I put in the DVD-DL, I was distressed to discover that my laptop was configured with the CD-RW combo drive, despite the invoice and order information containing the part # of a DL drive. Lenovo's post-sales number (1.866.428.4465) gave me someone with imperfect English who told me to call technical support. I called the number from the invoice--and to make a long story short, I have been bounced back to post-sales and I am waiting to find out if I need to ship the whole computer back or if they can just send my a new drive. Since I don't think that Lenovo's DVD drives are modular the way that Dell and HP drives are, I think I must ship it all back. As it turns out, this is a good thing, as I have since discovered that my RAM isn't the 1066mhz DDR2 that I ordered, but 800mhz DDR2, which isn't really that much of a performance decrease, but still, I should have received what I paid for.
Anyway, I reduced my rating by 2 stars to account for each of these misconfigured items, and if my Lenovo return process goes well I will post a comment amending my review rating.Pros:
Intel processor, screen size, Thinkpad line, okay cooling, adequate graphics
Cons: First of all, my unit came with Windows 7 X64 pro on it, not exactly the same as this one
-"Ctrl" key is NOT the left most one on the bottom row, for someone who uses keyboard shortcuts, it's a nightmare to always remind myself "it's the second to the last key".
-worst motherboard ever, as you will have issues installing another windows 7 version or upgrading later on, because the storage drivers are not compatible and leads to BSOD or failure during system install. At first I thought it was the CD/USB drive that I loaded Windows 7 x64 Ultimate onto, but installed Win 7 on two other PC's (laptop and desktop) without a hitch with the same disc/USB. In all fairness Microsoft also to blame partly for this problem. Common M$, keep the communications open with 3rd party distributors and ensure your valued customers does not have to spend days to figure out a simple 15 min system upgrade/install.
-Cheap feel, mind you this is not a business class laptop albeit the "Thinkpad" line name, it does not have a metal skeleton inside the case such as the high-end Thinkpads or Alienware; you get what you paid for in this case.
-Owned the unit ~1 year, used it infrequently since I have another HP from work, finally got Windows 7 installed by pulling out the hard drive and installed Win 7 onto it in my work laptop (yeah it installed fine), then placed the hard drive back into this unit. Junked it at a local PC shop for $250 in return. The unit runs Win 7 ok after all that nonsense, but still with errors.
Other thoughts:
Laptops are not like desktops, which you can easily swap out a motherboard if problems occur; such case is when my desktop's mobo died I just swapped out a new one with $50 and an hour of my time. For a laptop, you either spend $300+ for labor/parts or you spend a day trying to replace it. Hate to say it, since Lenovo took over the Thinkpad Line, those junky Asian parts just pollute this line of premium mobile computing. My suggestion for Lenovo is to change the name of these laptops to "Unthink Pads", it certainly stifles encouragement of any further dealings with Lenovo on my end. Changing to Toshiba Protege/Alienware.
AlphaI was big IBM laptops fan since X31. But SL410 is last drop. I can't stand it any more.
My sound card messed up in less than 6 moth. I had to restore whole laptop to its factory defaults twice in less than a year. To be exact 9 month.
Despite having good spec, performance is just more than disappointing.
Sorry my French, but I'll never buy Lenovo crap any more.
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