The toughest gadget I encountered so far

…and it is my laptop, a Lenovo Y410. Well, technically it’s not really mine. The story goes like this: when our desktop is facing deterioration and everything required new hardware, my mom finally agreed to purchase a new set of  hardware and we gunned down for a Lenovo. It is more expensive than the laptops equipped with 3D accelerators and high-end Intel processors nowadays but the high price is worth the pay because of something else and something very important: Build Quality.

This laptop of mine is turning three years next year and it’s still working fine. Although it fails sometimes but it doesn’t let you down once you try to revive it after its fainting. It is equipped with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1 GHz dual core processor, an Intel X3100 Graphics Media Accelerator Card for not-so-intense graphics applications, and some upgrades for RAM (from 1GB to 3GB) and hard drive (120GB to 250GB). Pre-installed with rubbish OS Windows Vista Home Premium but I changed it to Windows 7 Professional by the time I got the guts as well as the laptop to change the OS. My ownership took shape when everybody else were tired of having a shared computer and started getting their own. :))

So what about build quality? The brand “Lenovo” is actually a chinese-owned computer manufacturing company which took over IBM’s personal computer business by 2005.  That’s why the usual IBM’s “ThinkPad” is now under Lenovo’s lineup. Although there’s the fear that the quality has dropped since it’s a chinese company taking over IBM’s PC manufacturing but I don’t think it did because I think what Lenovo has done was to just take the IBM manufacturing division and still let them continue what they usually do but all output will be labelled Lenovo. 😀 Which means that the blast-proof IBM build quality is still there.

How to prove it? My laptop, as I’ve said, is turning three years old. Aside from the DVD Rambo drive which failed after a year, everything’s running fine and smooth. The DVD Drive is actually a faulty one and I don’t know where Lenovo sourced this particular drive. To add up to that, a Rambo drive (one that doesn’t have a disk tray and only has an opening where you will insert the CD/DVD) is one type of CD/DVD drive which is more prone to damage, mainly because of it’s constant exposure due to a permanent opening for the disc. The rest of the laptop is working well.

This build quality was tested when I accidentally dropped the laptop to a rough, concrete floor. I was going down from our vehicle and I forgot to zip-lock my bag’s laptop pocket and the laptop fell from about 3-4 feet above the ground, with once of the laptop’s corners hitting the concrete floor. I immediately checked everything: screen, ports, keyboard, touchpad, laptop-specific buttons and all devices such as graphics, bluetooth radio and WiFi and to my surprise, everything is working fine. The screen, though, is dislocated but it’s dislocated by less than a millimeter so there’s no big fuss about it, nothing’s bothering me with my view on the screen.

All I had to do every now and then is clean the fan and the heat sink fins so that my laptop could get its optimal cooling everytime.

Other tortures?

I usually put my can of drink above the palm rests when I’m using the laptop on my bed since I don’t I have any firm surface to place my drink. I eat a lot while using the computer and some bits of the food goes into the keyboard but they keyboard still responds fine. Oh, speaking of the keyboard, none of the keys have faded but I guess it depends really on the person who uses it.

I was offered to have a replacement unit with an ASUS one, equipped with first generation Intel i5 and NVIDIA CUDA 1GB. I told them I don’t like a swap because one, it’s one more year before I graduate. Second my laptop contained authentic software I did not have to pay for, such as the Full-Fat Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus and the Windows 7 Professional as well. Third, and the most cheesy of all, this computer stores most of the memories of my college life and I can’t afford someone owning this and starting to erase everything for his/her own use.

So, there you have it. Not an iPod touch, not the old Nokia 5110 but this laptop. 😀