$500 Laptop Advice

MrNinjaSquirrel

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So I'm finally going to be buying a new laptop in a week or two and was hoping someone could give me some advice. I don't have much to spend ($500 is my budget), so I'm trying to find the best bang for my buck. I need it as an all around day-to-day laptop, but want to be able to play games on it as well (not anything very demanding really, mostly indie and older stuff). It would be best if it was from amazon, as I have credit there and they don't charge tax in my state (newegg does).

Currently this is the best I've found:

Lenovo G505s 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

A10-5750M 2.5 GHz (4 MB Cache)

6 GB DDR3

1000 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive

15.6-Inch Screen, ATI Radeon HD 8650G

Windows 8, 5-hour battery life

Is this a decent deal? I haven't owned a Lenovo before but have heard good things about them, but with no reviews on this particular model I'm always a bit wary. If anyone has any advice or other models they'd recommend, I'd really appreciate the help :)

 
It looks like a good deal to me.  We get lenovos for our work laptops and my IT dept installed starcraft 2(it pays to be gaming friends with the IT people) for me when i got this one a few years ago.  Best laptop I've ever had.

 
It looks like a good deal to me. We get lenovos for our work laptops and my IT dept installed starcraft 2(it pays to be gaming friends with the IT people) for me when i got this one a few years ago. Best laptop I've ever had.
do you know what product line yours is? Most of what I've heard about Lenovo is based on the Thinkpad and Ideapad lines, but I can't seem to dig up much on the G series or this one in particular, which is the only reason I'm a bit cautious. Lastly. do you happen to know what sort of warranty comes with Lenovo laptops? I'd originally planned on buying a similarly priced and specced Asus laptop since I they seemed to have a really good warranty, but it has since gone OOS and up in price.

 
This appears to be a brand new laptop, which is why you can't find any details on it. Those specs are pretty good though. AMD's A series processors are really good for laptops. It should handle what you want it to... and possibly even handle some retail release games on low settings. This is a similar laptop that uses the same APU and GPU as the Lenovo you're looking at so that should give you an idea of its performance. Lenovo is probably the most reliable Windows-based laptop maker and I've heard good things about their customer service. 
 
The only weakness I see here is that it has a 5400RPM HDD but you probably wouldn't notice it for most things. Oh, and if you haven't used Windows 8 before, get ready for change. 

 
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Love the post I really appreciate all the help
um, I don't really know what you are referring to, wrong thread maybe?

This appears to be a brand new laptop, which is why you can't find any details on it. Those specs are pretty good though. AMD's A series processors are really good for laptops. It should handle what you want it to... and possibly even handle some retail release games on low settings. This is a similar laptop that uses the same APU and GPU as the Lenovo you're looking at so that should give you an idea of its performance. Lenovo is probably the most reliable Windows-based laptop maker and I've heard good things about their customer service.

The only weakness I see here is that it has a 5400RPM HDD but you probably wouldn't notice it for most things. Oh, and if you haven't used Windows 8 before, get ready for change.
Thanks for the link, I looked over a few of the benchmarks and was surprised to say the least (Bioshock Infinite apparently runs @ 30FPS on medium, which while not outstanding is more than I would have expected, same with Skyrim on High). The HDD and RAM are definitely the least of my worries, as I figure I can always upgrade those without a huge hassle, unlike the CPU and GPU (or I guess in this case APU). Glad to that Lenovo is good, I've been seeing a lot of mixed opinions online, but a lot of people just seem to be clinging to a security scandal that was years ago. And yeah I'm not sure how I'll take to Windows 8. I messed with it for a few minutes in a store and was thoroughly confused, but I'm hoping that after a while with it I will be able to warm up to the changes (or tolerate them at least). Thanks for the reply, I think I'm set on ordering this one :)

 
I don't think you'll need to upgrade anything on that laptop... 6GB of ram is plenty for most computers, unless you want to play the latest games in high resolutions with maxed out graphics (which you can't really do here;)). As for the HDD, it's not really an issue outside of you having to wait a few more seconds for things to load. If anything, you might wanna downgrade the OS to Windows 7.:lol: 

The only reason I can think of to not get that laptop are that BF is coming in a few months, and there's almost always a good deal on a laptop around that time. 

 
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I don't think you'll need to upgrade anything on that laptop... 6GB of ram is plenty for most computers, unless you want to play the latest games in high resolutions with maxed out graphics (which you can't really do here;)). As for the HDD, it's not really an issue outside of you having to wait a few more seconds for things to load. If anything, you might wanna downgrade the OS to Windows 7. :lol:

The only reason I can think of to not get that laptop are that BF is coming in a few months, and there's almost always a good deal on a laptop around that time.
well when I say upgrade I'm talking a year or two down the line, when perhaps it will be more beneficial (I tend to stretch my laptops lifespans as long as possible, for example my last one was a 2006 model that I drove into the ground earlier this year ;) ). About BF, I did consider that, but the thing is I have no personal laptop at the moment and sharing the one I have access to is far from ideal, so I'm not sure I can wait that long. If my other one hadn't died (power jack is history) then it would probably be a different story, but I think I'd rather just get this one while I can and not have to deal with crowds/items going OOS.

 
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