lenovo laptop z560

Lenovo Ideapad U460 0885-26U 14.0-Inch Laptop (Black)
Review by Mike McNally : So-so computer with some serious flaws

I've had a U460 for about six months now, using it mostly "on the road" (which means moving around my home town from place to place, mostly). I won't go into detail about the technical hardware specs; the machine runs about like you'd expect from this class of laptop. Is it extra-fast or extra-slow? I have no way to know. (I've got an i5 model with 4GB of RAM; I don't know how many configurations Lenovo has currently.) I will however talk about the machine's physical setup, with which I have some serious issues.

The keyboard keys have a "flat" uninteresting travel. They're built into a protective plastic cover, which is kind-of nice because it prevents gunk from getting between the keys (or at least it prevents you from seeing the gunk). The typing feel is not the best but probably not the worst, but for the money it certainly could be better. The worst part about my particular machine was that it had a "reluctant" key (the "5" key). It was a situation that probably could have been resolved under warranty, but I had business need for the machine and I didn't feel like going through the two week hassle that warranty repair would entail. It is really annoying, however, and I think it's something that should have been caught during the sort of burn-in testing I'd expect from a Lenovo at this price range.

The absolute worst feature of the laptop, however, and the one that irritated me enough to make my take a break from a vacation and type in this review, is the light sensor that controls the monitor brightness level. That sort of feature is, I realize, something a lot of people really like and expect from a "road" laptop, and I'm sure that when it's implemented properly it makes a big difference. I also realize that that feature in particular was one of the "wow finally!" new things on this model from Lenovo. That said, I find the mechanism to be absolutely awful. It's completely uncontrollable - once the brightness sensor kicks in and decides that you're in a dimly-lit room, it obliges by resetting the brightness to what it thinks should be the right level. You know what? It's *always* wrong. Generally, it errors on the side of trying to keep the screen *way* too dim, regardless of whether the machine is plugged into the adapter. I can fight it with the "Fn" keys to adjust the display, but it'll fight back relentlessly. As I said, to my knowledge the feature cannot be disabled. Honestly, if I had been able to play with this machine for a couple of days before buying it, I absolutely would not have chosen it due to this one flaw alone. The best cure for the problem I've found is to hook up a little USB-powered LED lamp and point it directly at the light sensor. That makes it think I'm out in direct sunlight, so it cranks up the brightness.

Battery life is fine; I get about 3.5 to almost 4 hours, usually, and that's (often) running Linux. It might get a little more with Windows' smarter power management. Oh, and that reminds me: the machine comes configured with a "recovery" setup. That's implemented as a Windows Vista partition on a big chunk of the disk. Saving the configuration from Windows 7 makes some sort of backup blob, which can then be recovered by booting into the Vista partition (and there's a little red magic button on the keyboard to do that). I actually found that to be useful, because when re-arranging the disk I knocked out the Windows 7 partition and was able to get it back (to my amazement, I admit). However, that uses up a big chunk of the hard disk, so if you really want/need/expect every last gigabyte from the published configuration, take that into account. (You could nuke the recovery partition if you wanted to, I guess, and expand the Windows 7 partition to take up the space.)

The screen looks as nice as any (except for the problems caused by the insane brightness controller, of course), though the color balance seems a little off to me (I'm no expert so take that with a grain of salt). My kids have used it to watch movies etc. and have given me no complaints at all.

Lenovo Ideapad U460 0885-26U 14.0-Inch Laptop (Black)
Review by Robert S. Laroe : So far, so good!

I did my research in choosing this laptop. It is very similar to another model available through Amazon -- apparently, the difference is that this has less hard drive space and, from what I understand, that's it. I saved the money since I don't need much storage.

The track pad, mouse buttons, and chiclet keyboard all feel really nice. The screen is clear and is visible from a broader range of angles than some screens I've used. The sound quality is not great -- which is to say that it is about average for laptops this size. Don't be fooled by the "Dolby" certification. Optimized or not, the speakers are small and weak. But no smaller or weaker than average for a laptop this size.

It is solidly built. It looks and feels sleek. For the money, you shouldn't be disappointed with this machine.

I installed Ubuntu and not everything worked right away, but the basics are there and I just need to figure out the rest. It comes with Windows 7 pre-installed and that seemed to work very smoothly.