Lenovo or Dell Laptop?

[Shomax]

I'm ambivalent about choosing from two laptops: one Dell and one Lenovo.

The Dell is about $100 more expensive.
Its display is NVIDIA GeForce something.
Its RAM is 8GB. Up to 3.1 GHz. Intel Core i7 4510u.

As for the Lenovo one: Intel Core i7 4500u. Up to 3 GHz.
Its display is AMD Radeon something.
Its RAM is 6GB.

Both are 4M cache, 15.6 inches, 1 TB hard disk.

Which one is better? Does the 2 GB memory difference affect performance? I will use it for basic tasks that nevertheless include multitasking and sometimes using heavy apps or some programming. The only thing I want is something that doesn't slow me down. Thanks a lot for any help.

 

[giantbucket]

I have a refurb'd dell, i5-2520 with NVidia. friend has a Lenovo e1-2100 with all-and stuff. I hate her machine - way too much bloatware to sort through, and build is flimsy. my dell is way nicer, though it's a refurb of a much higher end machine.

what are the operating systems on each? screen is touch on both? dvd drives? usb ports? you can always upgrade the ram (though in either case it's probably not necessary), but you can't upgrade most of the rest of the hardware.

if one has a dvd drive but the other doesn't, I'd go for that one since you can then move the 1TB into a dvd-caddy and put a new SSD for the OS itself.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

There's not enough information to make an assessment on performance. As for brand names... since neither Lenovo nor Dell actually make a laptop, it's very likely they were build in the same factory

The vast majority of laptops on the market (94% in 2011) are manufactured by a small handful of Taiwan-based Original Design Manufacturers (ODM), although their production bases are located mostly in mainland China.

Major relationships include:

Quanta sells to (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC
Compal sells to (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP
Inventec sells to Toshiba, HP and Lenovo
Pegatron sells to Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer
Foxconn sells to Asus, Dell, HP and Apple
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP

I'd bet both have slow 5400 rpm HDs

I always suggest that you have your laptop custom built to their needs and specifications.

What apps you use will determine whether component differences are significant and how much.

http/forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/592609-clevo-guide-v3-0-faq-reseller-info-read-before-posting.html
http/www.lpc-digital.com/notebooks.html

 

[Shomax]

Ok sorry but I don't have that much knowledge about cpu, etc. What is SSD? What do u mean by putting the 1TB in a dvd caddy? As for what I know, neither of them is touchscreen. What is meant by a slow 5400 rpm?

I will use the laptop basically in surfing the Internet, using word and PowerPoint, using iTunes, and things like that. I will also use it to watch movies, etc. I will sometimes use Photoshop in a light way. I'm planning to use the laptop to delve deeper into programming, so I'll program a lot on it. No heavy games, etc. That's it.

 

[giantbucket]

based on your planned usage and the specs you have, it really doesn't matter which one you pick. it might just come down to brand preference and physical things like keyboard style and overall design. or how cheap and easy it would be to get a spare battery on eBay. or how many USB / USB3 ports it has. or if one has a card reader (SD cards used in cameras), etc.

SSD is a solid state drive, it replaces the hard drive, it's much faster but also smaller (less capacity), uses a bit less battery power

caddy is an item that holds a separate laptop hard drive and goes where the dvd drive normally would (assuming it's removable)

5400rpm is the typical "speed" of 90% of laptop hard drives. geeks worry about this, most other people don't. it's just a bit slower than a 7200rpm, but both are still way slower than an SSD.

 

[orlbuckeye]

Ok sorry but I don't have that much knowledge about cpu, etc. What is SSD? What do u mean by putting the 1TB in a dvd caddy? As for what I know, neither of them is touchscreen. What is meant by a slow 5400 rpm?

I will use the laptop basically in surfing the Internet, using word and PowerPoint, using iTunes, and things like that. I will also use it to watch movies, etc. I will sometimes use Photoshop in a light way. I'm planning to use the laptop to delve deeper into programming, so I'll program a lot on it. No heavy games, etc. That's it.

SSD is solid state technology. They replace hard drives which use spinning plates the read data with a laser. SSD are basically the same technology as system memory where there are no moving parts and like th post before are much faster then HD.

I TB in dvd Caddy mean a 1TB HD was placed in the slot where a DVD/CD optical drive was removed. Alot of people use SSD's as OS drives and HD for data. But how SSD's are less the $300 for 500 GB and less then $500 for a TB of storage.

RPM = revolutions per minute speed of the hard drive basically today they are 5400 or 7200. A 7200 is faster but burns battery life more and a 5400 is slower and doesn't use as much so it's better for battery life.

SSD are good and boot times a noticeably faster then HD.

More memory makes multi-tasking faster. But memory is easy to upgrade and cheap so maxi capacity might mean more then memory installed.