IdeaPad Y730; T5800 vs P8400

Hi Guys;

I am very tempted to replace my 5 year old Gateway 505XL with an IdeaPad Y730 (blue cover). While I have read up on a lot of things lappy related, I am in no way an expert and would like your opinon on the following:

Is the P8400 processor model worth a $300 price increase over the T5900?

With my employee rebate and the current code, I can get the T5900 for $800 shipped and inclusive taxes. The P8400 would run me around $1200. I figuered I will be easy to up the RAM to 4GB for $100, so this should leave around $300 for the different processor. I believe all the other components are the same.

I mainly use the computer for web, e-mail and entertainment while travelling, as well as some infrequent gaming (def will pick up Diablo III and hope this lappy will be able to play at decent setting).

What you think, should I spend the extra money?

Thanks in advance.

 

The P8400 is a newer-gen product, so it will definitely be faster. It has SSE4.1, which makes a HUGE difference when encoding video, so if you do a lot of that, it's probably worth looking into. It also gets better battery life. However, $300 seems ridiculous for the upgrade - i think you could buy the CPU from newegg for less than that.

Also, do you really have your heart set on the Y730? Your computing habits (travelling, web, occasional gaming) don't really lend themselves to lugging around a huge 17" laptop - the Y730 weighs 8 pounds not including the power adapter, and it doesn't get great battery life either.

In the price range you are looking for, you might be better off looking at the Thinkpad T series laptops. The T500 has pretty much the same specs, except it has a P8400 standard, has switchable graphics (can turn on integrated video on-the-fly for better battery life), and weighs 2.5 lbs less. the T400 shaves off yet another pound, has a nice LED backlit LCD, and gets great battery life (like 9 hours with a 9-cell battery), although the video is trimmed down to a Radeon 3470 (which is still enough for some decent gaming). Both start at $949 including the P8400 and the video cards, and with your discount you could easily get one for under $800.

 

Great food for thought; thank you very much jd!

I had actually looked at the T500 but did not realize that it had dual graphics. I think that is indeed pretty cool. The website only shows it with the 256 MB AT 3650.

Heck with my discount I can get the T500 with the P8600 for just over a grand and only loose out on the HD size and maybe a little on the GPU. On the other hand, I had a heavy 17 incher for the last 5 years and kind of loved that big lug. Decisions, decisions.....

Thanks again and happy Turkey day to all!