Laptop dilema: Help me decide between Dell or Lenovo

In my view Dell lost the battle vs. Lenovo on the 15-inch business laptops. The main advantage of Dell is that it has eSATA (I think Lenovo doesn't have that). For your uses I think Lenovo is better because of the hybrid graphics and better screen (1680x1050 is the best resolution for 15-inch IMO).

 

haha after using 1920x1200 i'll never go back to anything less than that. also in terms of screen quality the 2ccfl and RGBLED dell's wipe the floor with the thinkpads. the warranty and support offered by dell also is very much superior to the thinkpad (3 year next business day onsite as standard). my notebook is my main machine, i dont have a backup or a desktop if it fails. the NBD onsite warranty ensures if there are any issues i have minimal downtime.


having said that, hybrid graphics in the lenovo is a definite great advantage. screen quality and price was more important to me so the dell won when i was shopping for a mobile workstation.

 

Isn't 1920x1200 on a 15-inch too small?

Dell's standard warranty and support definitely beat Lenovo's, at least here in Finland, but the original poster did mention that even with the warranty upgrade the Lenovo comes out cheaper.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=343303&highlight=wuxga

i think this thread kinda shows quite well

 

Indeed it does.

I actually found 1440x900 in my E6400 (14-inch) a bit small at first, but I've grown used to it and really like the crispiness of the text. I have gone back to no DPI scaling after a couple of weeks at 110%.

The battle is getting more interesting...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLUUBQp0yeI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOeJ2iihlGI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVKBU6wM5dE


dell marketing videos, but quite interesting nonetheless

 

yeah i've been hearing a lot of good things about Lenovo, but little positive things from people who actually use it for 3D work on Maya, Max, Autocad, Rhino etc. The specs might seem good but it renders everything useless if there are driver issues etc that aren't yet resolved and causes problems runnning the aforementioned softwares.

 

Little update on my situation as well. I ended up talking to the school program director and he looked into the Dell M6400. Needless to say he contacted me today and informed me that he is now switching the school's recommended laptop. Guess ill go with that through the school. Cheers!

 

Switched to the M6400 for school use!? Nice
No other laptop really comes close for pro use....it's heavy though

 

Its a career oriented school, really popular here in Los Angeles... part of the program comes with a laptop. Of course, its possible to opt out and get your own, but it has to be able to run the software the school will want to use..including photoshop, maya, and various game engines including unreal 3.

Since they have a new program in game development, the head of the program wasnt sure which laptop to give to the students (it comes out of the total cost). First it was an alienware m17 but that was dropped, then him and the board were pretty much sold on the M4400. However after hearing about the problems with that laptop, and considering the course it ended up being the M6400.

The M6400 will offer the Ati FirePro's now (or soon), which i think was also the other selling point for them.

Before I was pretty much ready to get my own laptop rather than use an M4400 just because it has some serious pros along with some serious cons. I can handle 2 lbs more for a notebook if it can handle more work and have a better GPU.

At least its not as heavy (12lbs) or wide as the older Sager i have.