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  • MikeMurphy - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    More mediocre laptops. Would it kill them to include a larger battery? Even as an upgrade?
  • Zwaffelaar - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I agree on battery life, but have you ever seen a range of budget laptops. These are one of the best I've seen thus far. I just hope for the buyers, that they have a minimum of 6 or 8 GB of RAM. The AMD models with only 4GB of RAM is just a joke in the era we live in, even for those only using the internet and email.
  • WorldWithoutMadness - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    You can look for Asus N551ZU, they send out top of the line AMD stuffs. FX7600 with M280x.
    IMHO 4GB is a lot for internet and emails. Most people even can live by with ARM and 1GB ram for doing those things.
  • Cspeeds - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    It is madness to compare Asus N551ZU with dedicated graphics to the likes of lightweight, budget, sturdy, work/education laptops that is valued at 2/4GBs.
  • mkozakewich - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I find I don't usually use more than 4 GB, and a good SSD reduces the crappyness of page files. For a budget system, 4 GB is actually good.
  • DCide - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Both Apple and MS have made their latest operating systems run well on 4GB. While I prefer more memory, 4GB is far from a joke.
  • Hrel - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I don't think performance is bad at all on 4GB for light users, like my grey haired father. I agree with you in principle because RAM is just so cheap, but without seeing a BOM I'm not willing to say 4GB is unacceptable as a base configuration. Where I take issue is if the upgrade to 8GB costs a disproportionate amount, like $50 or more.

    Mostly I'm just happy to see 1080p in a $500 laptop, bout damn time!

    Though it is annoying that they can't give a larger battery, at least as an upgrade, like Murphy said.
  • w_barath - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link

    Windows 8 is surprisingly light and snappy even with 2G for browsing and using Outlook. If you have an SSD anyhow. The only reason I'd suggest you need more than that, is to future-proof.
  • Adding-Color - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Yeah, battery life isn't great, but otherwise they are decent laptops. The keyboard should be awesome (it's almost the same as in the much more expensive Lenovo Flex line, typing on one right now). You have full height arrow keys and a decent numpad (which just lacks the 4th "Enter,-,+" row). The layout is great and the keys are sturdy and provide great "force feedback", unlike some slightly cheaper Chromebooks that feel glibbery.

    The Lenovo Z41/Z51 seems to provide good value per $. Buy the one with the cheapest HDD, buy a 250/500 GB SDD, pop it in a and you have a nice laptop for 600-700$.
  • Adding-Color - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Warning:
    I can't really recommend Lenovo without mentioning the "Superfish bug":
    A few months ago it was discovered that Lenovo had installed a highly vulnerable bloatware called "Superfish" on some laptops. This was a crappy "advertising tool" that changed the adds of your browser (for what it probably needed access to your SSL root certificate"). It set up a very vulnerable fake root certificate on the computer, which enabled attackers to easily execute a man-in-the-middle attack on your https connections.

    Quote from: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8993/lenovo-superfis...

    "This essentially amounts to a fake root certificate, necessary for SuperFish to intercept HTTPS connections to do its image analysis, but in the process giving SuperFish access any information passed via HTTPS.
    […]
    As it turns out, the security of these certificates would seem to be using SHA-1, which is insecure and can be overcome with the right software and ordinary computing hardware. The 1024-bit RSA key has also been cracked, with the private key being bundled with the software in order to execute on-the-fly digital certificate signing
    […]
    in essence allowing anyone with network contol to execute a man-in-the-middle attack on any Lenovo system with the SuperFish root certificate installed."
    --------------------------

    Furthermore the responses by Lenovo to this serious "bug" were very lame and sometimes "not the whole truth".

    == >
    Don't trust any software installed by Lenovo, and install a "clean" Windows image if possible.
  • galfert - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    This is old news. Lenovo no longer loads Superfish.
  • Adding-Color - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Yeah, I know.
    It is still worth mentioning, as it gives you an impression how they treated software and security.
  • testbug00 - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Well, if you don't flash pretty much any laptop to stock Windows/Linux you're doing it wrong. Or don't know how to do it, I suppose :)
  • w_barath - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link

    Not entirely true. Retailers are still selling through stock of Lenovo laptops which still have SuperFish installed. There has not been a recall. That's what I find inexcusable.
  • mkozakewich - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    You would have more pull if you didn't just paste a smear of text. Try to reduce that down to two sentences. It's important that people know Lenovo does stuff like this, but they don't have to know precisely what happened (they can look it up easily).
  • mkozakewich - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    No, the layout is crap. The arrow keys are just splashed into place, and so you'll end up hitting the num keys trying to find the Right arrow. At least they didn't pull an ASUS and put the Shift key on the right side of the Up key.
  • shanethegeeek - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Nope... everything has to be thinner and lighter! Smart Engineer - Maybe we should make the battery last longer... Lenovo - Nobody is actually going to use this thing that long (insert meme face)!
  • jabber - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    The one thing I wish they would do when taking publicity shot of Windows 8+ based hardware is this -

    Get rid of the damn purple Start Screen background!!!

    Just looks awful and reminds me of Barney the dinosaur.

    Use deep blue or black or anything...
  • meacupla - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Umm... It is deep blue, but if your screen has bad color reproduction, like these lenovos do, it looks purple.
  • meacupla - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    My surface pro, which has good color reproduction, says it's blue and it looks blue.
  • kenansadhu - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Really?? It's purple on my nexus 4. This makes me sad
  • jabber - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Most Windows 8 machines I get in come with the horrid purple as standard. I set it to deep blue or grey.
  • ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    What's up with AMD suddenly getting all these laptop deals with dirt-old GPUs?

    Are they somehow offering them for free?
    And isn't that M360 with ~16GB/s memory bandwidth going to be slower than Broadwell's GT2 anyways?
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Since the M360 is essentially a rebrand of the M260, you can do some benchmark comparisons to see the relative performance compared to Intel's HD 5500. For instance, take a look at the listings here:

    http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R7-M260.12...
    http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-550...

    It looks as though the M260 comes out ahead in most gaming benchmarks.
  • ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    They're actually trading blows because there are two versions of the M260 (with 64 and 128bit memory). But this M360 corresponds to the slowest 64bit M260, which seems to be some 10-15% slower than the 5500 GT2 in most games.

    And I'm assuming that this Z41 model won't take Broadwell models with the GT3 GPU, which would be faster no matter what.

    Difference in price between GT2 and GT3 models seems to be $25 to $30 to the manufacturer.
    So why get the discrete GPU anyways?
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Given the M260 benchmarks aren't that far off the HD 5500 and if the memory pipeline is indeed something that hurts it enough to put it a bit behind Broadwell GT2, I really don't know if there'd be a compelling reason to bother with it. Personally, I'm happy making do with integrated graphics since games aren't overly important for me. Maybe someone a little more gaming-focused can chime in if they have some thoughts on this though.
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    AMD's lack of anything new and obligatory rebadging means that 2013 era GPU designs are still a large part of their current lineup. :(
  • zodiacfml - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Interesting. Nice WiFi and Broadwell CPUs. The battery life is not something they left out, it is intentional. I could see it is a slim battery beneath the screen.
  • meacupla - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Oh look, another lenovo.

    Probably has a super cheap TN panel that inverts colors at normal viewing distances, like all their other junk laptops.
  • GauravDas - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    A friend of mine bought the Lenovo Z50 a couple of months back which has a 1920x1080 TN panel. I think the Z51 will be using the same panel.

    Where I live (India), plenty of people buy these budget laptops and so I have seen plenty of cheap TN panels. However, this one by Lenovo definitely has the worst display I have ever seen.

    Max brightness is pretty low, contrast is horrible and viewing angles are non-existent. You cannot show a black screen without half the screen appearing grey and washed out.

    I would seriously prefer any other 1366x768 TN panel over the junk Lenovo has put in the Z50 (and probably the Z51).
  • Flying Goat - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    A bit surprised Lenovo is still a thing, after they were caught installing SSL-MitM software on the PCs they were selling. Know I'll certainly never buy a laptop from them (Yes, it's always a good idea to reinstall windows yourself, but dealing with crapware is one thing, an active attack against their own customers is quite another).
  • mazzy80 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    2.3 Kg for a mediocre 15" Baytrail ?
    mediocre laptop, heavy, overpriced...
    The cheap laptop need to be lighter... slimmers... it's 2015... you can have a tablet with a baytrail for 500-600gr. Why you can't do a laptop that weight 1.3-1.5 kg on plastic ???

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