Ideapad y460p/y560p any good?

[plympton]

I know, stupid question, but hear me out.

I'm a die-hard ThinkPad user, lots of TP's in my life. I really need to upgrade my aging T60 to a Sandy Bridge Quad-Core machine with decent graphics for this WPF project I'm on. The T520 won't be out for a while, and the W520 is out of my budget anyway.

That said, for a machine that is going to rest on my desk, say, 90% of the time, be hooked up to wired Ethernet, 24" monitor, etc.. is there any reason that the Y460p/Y560p machines are BAD?

I know the keyboard will be bad, and there's no TrackPoint (ugh), and the battery life might be sad, and the screen is crap, but, just sitting there, will it be much less reliable than a ThinkPad T-series?

Any thoughts, please, thanks!
-Dan
(I'd post in the IdeaPad section, but there's not much traffic there...)

[TechDeals]

Well, you named pretty much all the problems with the Y460: poor keyboard, no trackpoint, unimpressive display (though no worse than a ThinkPad). The entire Y Series (and most all IdeaPads actually) are unfortunately limited by the fact that the chassis is designed to accept only a 6-cell battery. I used a Y460 extensively, and I expect the Y460p has the same chassis/keyboard/etc. It would be just fine for anyone NOT used to a ThinkPad; in fact I'd consider getting one for my fiancée.

Would it do fine sitting at your desk? Sure. IdeaPads likely have somewhat higher failure rates than ThinkPads, but certainly no more than industry standard.

But the real question is, why not just get a desktop and upgrade it as needed? For the money you'd spend on a Y460p, you could almost get an M90z all-in-one and certainly any other ThinkCentre desktop.

[plympton]

Well, there is that 10% of the time I need to travel and work remotely (or rather work un-remotely as I work from home). Thought about the dt route, but I don't want another in my already too full office.

So, as long as I rarely touch it, the ideapad should be tolerable.

It's at least reasonably quiet, right? My T60 is actually fairly loud, so I'm hoping to gain a bit of relief there.

I just wish intel hadn't messed up the sandy bridge chipset, otherwise everyone would be shipping in quantity by now...

[TechDeals]

I don't recall the fan being loud, but it will kick in depending on what you're doing. Unfortunately I'm not the best judge of fan noise, as I almost always have ambient noise if not music/video playing.

BTW, if you're set on a Y460p, now is the time to buy. 20% off through midnight EST 3/17, only $959 for a model with 8GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm HDD, and Blu-ray. See here.

[ssd_thinkpad]

The Ideapads seem to be a good choice for you as you do not need portability and only want to have one notebook with docking as you do not want to hassle with synchronization etc. You can turn off the fan with tpfancontroll and rmclock. Your system will then get hotter but as you do not have contact with it at all in the docking, it might be fine. CPUs from intel can get up to 100 celsius - I cool my T60 only when temperature reaches 85 celsius which is once a day if at all.

[plympton]

Seems nuts to not go with a ThinkPad, but with the delays, and the price premium that I'm sure the T520 w/ Quad will have for a while (I'm guessing $1500), the Ideapad seems like a viable option for something I'd like to get sooner-than-later. Besides, I'll keep my T60 up-to-date and frequently backup in case the Ideapad hits the bed for some unknown reason, too. No reason to sell it, as it's only worth a few $ on the used market.

Good point about TPfancontrol (does it work on Ideapads? I figured not) and RMClock - I use both on my T60 to keep the fan down, and undervolt the CPU to keep the temps down. Awesome combo.

Boggles the mind that you can get a Quad-core w/ 8GB RAM, 750GB HD + 64GB SSD for < $1k. The components alone would seem to cost more than that...

Anyway, thanks for the advice, much appreciated. Now to get the boss to fork over the $....

[ajkula66]

TPFC doesn't work on IdeaPads, AFAIK...

[plympton]

<vent>
Aargh... been checking my shipping date every day.. 3/31... 3/31.. 3/31... today 4/13.

Ugh. Not only do I have to wait longer, the T520's w/ Quads are available, supposedly with an 8-business day lead time. Intel really screwed up this launch....
</vent>
And to top it off, my co-worker's Dell arrived today...

[thePCxp]

That said, for a machine that is going to rest on my desk, say, 90% of the time, be hooked up to wired Ethernet, 24" monitor, etc.. is there any reason that the Y460p/Y560p machines are BAD?

I know the keyboard will be bad, and there's no TrackPoint (ugh), and the battery life might be sad, and the screen is crap, but, just sitting there, will it be much less reliable than a ThinkPad T-series?

I think that the IdeaPads are as good as the ThinkPads. Lets not forget that the IdeaPads are targeted for consumers and ThinkPads are targeted for business users. I heard that the IdeaPads go through the same kind of testing as the ThinkPads (I read it over at the "Yamato Thinking" Lenovo blog). Both are intended to be the best for their intended users. I also heard that the keyboard is based on the ThinkPad's keyboard. You should probably read some of the reviews out there.

In my opinion, I don't think that a Y460p/Y560p is a bad option for you. If I had an IdeaPad, it would probably be the Y560p.

[plympton]

Well, I'll never know - my order got delayed, and when I called to check on the status, they said it would be another MONTH before it would ship out! Apparently, the rapiddrive's are on allocation (Japan?) and there's no ETA for arrival. Quite bummed with Lenovo, mostly with the lack of communication. I'm ok with delays, as long as I can decide what to do about them.

I picked up a cheap Asus from Amazon, shipped to be overnight, with comparable specs. Not what I wanted, but I'm in a crunch now even more due to the delay...