need help choosing a new laptop

[fleggle]

Birthday soon so have decided to get a new laptop. It will be a substantial upgrade over my current ThinkPad R61i.
Given my current love for Lenovo, I am seriously considering the Ideapad U410.

http/www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-Ideapad-U410-inch-Ultrabook/dp/B008AVCAOK

However having done some searching I have been unable to find any products with similar bang for buck. I was wondering if anyone could recommend another laptop, that is also lightweight (~2Kg), performance comparable to the ideapad and, ideally for under £900?

 

[dragon567]

well it really depends what your gonna use it for. I saw in the reviews that has problems connecting to the internet (wifi) So it may not be the kind of laptop you want for the internet. also the graphic card is 1gb and the amount of memory on a graphics card is not a measure of performance, it's the card model that matters. A 1gb is still 5X faster than 2gb.

Having 2gb is only useful when running multiple monitors or at super-high resolutions like 2560x1600. That much RAM is utterly worthless on laptops with a 1600x900 or lower resolution screen. Even at 1920x1080 resolution, a 1gb card is fine. It's the graphics card model that matters, not the amount of video RAM.

In general, laptops are not good choices for gaming because their components are weaker than desktop counterparts and cannot be changed/upgraded in the future. With desktops you can install better graphics cards as they become available.

Laptop graphics cards- for gaming you'll want Class 2 or higher.

 

[fleggle]

well it really depends what your gonna use it for. I saw in the reviews that has problems connecting to the internet (wifi) So it may not be the kind of laptop you want for the internet. also the graphic card is 1gb and the amount of memory on a graphics card is not a measure of performance, it's the card model that matters. A 1gb is still 5X faster than 2gb.

Having 2gb is only useful when running multiple monitors or at super-high resolutions like 2560x1600. That much RAM is utterly worthless on laptops with a 1600x900 or lower resolution screen. Even at 1920x1080 resolution, a 1gb card is fine. It's the graphics card model that matters, not the amount of video RAM.

In general, laptops are not good choices for gaming because their components are weaker than desktop counterparts and cannot be changed/upgraded in the future. With desktops you can install better graphics cards as they become available.

Laptop graphics cards- for gaming you'll want Class 2 or higher.

Sorry should have mentioned the purposes of the laptop. I will not be using it for gaming (or certainly nothing heavy) it will be largely used for programming with Visual Studio which is currently very laggy on my older system.

 

[dragon567]

well it really depends what your gonna use it for. I saw in the reviews that has problems connecting to the internet (wifi) So it may not be the kind of laptop you want for the internet. also the graphic card is 1gb and the amount of memory on a graphics card is not a measure of performance, it's the card model that matters. A 1gb is still 5X faster than 2gb.

Having 2gb is only useful when running multiple monitors or at super-high resolutions like 2560x1600. That much RAM is utterly worthless on laptops with a 1600x900 or lower resolution screen. Even at 1920x1080 resolution, a 1gb card is fine. It's the graphics card model that matters, not the amount of video RAM.

In general, laptops are not good choices for gaming because their components are weaker than desktop counterparts and cannot be changed/upgraded in the future. With desktops you can install better graphics cards as they become available.

Laptop graphics cards- for gaming you'll want Class 2 or higher.

Sorry should have mentioned the purposes of the laptop. I will not be using it for gaming (or certainly nothing heavy) it will be largely used for programming with Visual Studio which is currently very laggy on my older system.

I'm pretty sure it will run great and smoothly because you need around 6gb or more of ram and you have eight which is great
for the hard drive you need a fast one like the HDD I think and i have no idea on any hard drive's so your better on with taking someones else advice on hard drives lol i'm sure the one your choosing is great . for the CPU it is recommended to have and iv5 and up, the lenovo has 17 which is way better.and for GPU im not sure on as well i do not know anything on these but after doing some research it said something like this is required for visual studio's

GPU - VS 2010 is (at least partially) a WPF application that benefits from hardware acceleration.



hope this helps
i'm pretty sure it will run smoothly as it's an awesome laptop