Lenovo G550 Series 2958XFU 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Reviews

Customer Ratings:

I received the new G550 a few days ago, so this is a very early review. Out of the box, the unit was very easy to start up and configure. Even the "bloat-ware" was nicely done. Instead of having dozens of icons and applications, there was a single application that walked you through various options and allowed you to select what you wanted. After this, we only had to uninstall three programs to clean up the system.

I really like the keyboard. I had first looked at the Acer, but when I tried one at Costco I found that the keyboard would flex and warp when you apply pressure. The Lenovo is very solid and has a great key feel. The quality is the same as for my much more expensive Lenovo T60p at work. It has lights for CapsLock and NumLock. I understand that some low-end laptops do not have this anymore. The number pad has narrow keys and will take a while to get used to.

The case itself is not the same quality as the Lenovo I use at work. Even though it has a nice texture, the lid looks like cheap plastic. I am OK with this because of the low price. This laptop cost 1/3 of what my wife spent for her MacBook Pro.

The webcam works fine. My son had a great time setting up the face recognition feature for logging in.

I was happy to find that the unit has three USB ports. When researching the G550, I found some document that claimed it only had two.

I ran the built-in Windows performance test. The processor and memory tests reported between 4.3 and 5.3, but the graphics tests reported 3.3. This is reasonable for integrated graphics, but don't expect great gaming performance.

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Update Dec 2010

Now that we have had this laptop for a month, I have two comments:

First, while the laptop has a webcam, the picture quality is poor compared to our old USB webcam and our Macbook-Pro laptops. The image is never very sharp and was always dark until we added a desk lap. My son still likes the face detection feature for logging in. It claims it will remember faces from failed login attemps so you can find who has been trying to use your computer.

Second, we also had problems with the cursor jumping around while typing. The problem is that your wrist will touch the touchpad and register a mouse click. This happens even if you are using an external mouse. Luckily there is an easy fix. Pressing Fn-F8 can disable the touchpad when you do not want to use it. Other than this issue, we have had no problems with the keyboard.

Overall, I am still quite pleased with this machine.

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I've always had IBM Thinkpad for work. This has the same great feel to the keyboard. This was way ahead of the competition in quality and was a perfect gift for my casual computer user wife.

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One substantial deficiency of this laptop is the inability to adjust the 'sensitivity' of the touchpad. As delivered, the pointer was dificult to control with any precision through the touchpad. The location and movement is erratic. Don't bother looking for a "Control Panel' page to make adjustments to touchpad properties. It isn't there. You are only able to change 'mouse' properties. Looking for a 'driver' on the Lenovo web site that would actually let the user control the behavior of of the touchpad was unsuccessful. To my knowledge, a 'hard wired' touchpad with no user control is unheard of.

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The computer was really nice at the time I bought it. Simple build up material and moderate configuration. Unfortunately, I used it for only two months before it was stolen.

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I bought this PC for one thing only. It is used to keep data for my wife so she does not go onto the internet often. The only thing I would change is the chip, the celeron is not as fast as I would like it to be...