I think you will get better battery life from the Acer but I may be wrong. Since the graphics card is the same, go for Acer.

Quality and after sales service is questionable, and I have ~1 year of experience with that. Their service center is a joke - they are not serious at all when it comes to diagnoses and repairs.

But, warranty is fairly inexpensive when compared to Dell. Price is "fair"?

Sorry I meant Lenovo, not Acer
I have never actually bought from Acer before.

Lenovo customer support is just bad. The tech support they are using is equally poor. Product quality is not great either. I'll spare you guys the torment but if you want the full story, I'll tell it. It just sounds like any of those Acer/Dell/Asus/Sony etc horror stories that you come across.

With pleasure. And this is without bias.

Went to PC Fair (worst idea ever), ordered laptop (Ideapad) in early Dec 2009. It's understandable that it came really late (late Jan or Feb 2010) because it was new and people in America only had it in Oct/Nov 2009.

After having it for 3 days, BSOD. Ignored it, but BSODs kept coming. I was busy with school, couldn't be bothered since it was a new PC (now I know better of course), contacted them only after a week+. First I contacted their main support center (1800 phone-line, under Lenovo) - totally useless.

They doggedly ask you to perform the Recovery (available on all/most Lenovo PCs), which I initially refused. They failed to understand the situation.

Continued to contact them continually, speaking with different people each time. Once, I happened to ask for a replacement machine (this was over 2 weeks since I bought the laptop), they told me it was too late. Of course I was ignorant of the law back then.

This continued, they asked me to send it to the service center. Even though I had bought on-site warranty, it wasn't "updated" yet, so I had to SPEND TIME and DRIVE there twice. 2nd time I went there (after 1 week), the guy switched it on, it BSODed right in front of him. So the ordeal continued.

Another time, the "manager" from the Service Center (this center is affiliated with Lenovo but is only contracted for their services, not belonging to their company) delivered the laptop to my house, when it BSODed right in front of him. Now, I was pissed (I wanted to take the laptop away during a trip).

This continued (ENDLESS phone calls, repairs taking WEEKS) until their Customer Care (another separate thing, but this is under Lenovo) manager told me they would get me a replacement. Imagine my joy at that.

Replacement arrives (March/April 2010), old one is returned. Replacement is as slow as the old one, but the main issue is White Screen (screen error, fails to power down, Google it with Lenovo). So after the same processes (ENDLESS PHONE CALLS, ENDLESS SERVICING, ENDLESS WHITE SCREENS), I email/call them (must have been at least 50+ times or more) and I demand a refund. They refuse (about 3/5 times), but after I threaten to sue (at least twice), they give in. This is July 2010.

Finally, in late, late August 2010, I receive a refund. Der Albtraum is over.

So, the entire time, their Support Center was useless, the Service Center was useless (BSODs were registered by Windows Event Logger many times, but they failed to act on it or even notice it, when I pointed this out the manager just kept quiet), and Customer Care was useless (took ages to do everything - how many customers do they have that has such a HUGE problem?).

They were asinine in their actions, and everything was poorly done. For this simple reason alone I will never buy an Ideapad/Lenovo no matter how attractive or unattractive the price or product appears. I doubt they would want me as a customer, because I actually wanted to utilise my RIGHTS.

Well, just like many of Lenovo users and potential users, back in July this year I was actually interested in the Y460.

I actually even considered getting it and asking for some money back, as stupid as that was. But after a few days I asked for the refund, they said they would replace the Y550P with a Y560. The Y560 is ~RM100 more, but with a far superior GPU (one version has HD 5730), which is so much better (faster) and cooler than the GT 240M I had.

I think at the time the Y560 they offered me did not have 5730 (maybe it was 5650, which is what Y460 has), so it wasn't a very good deal anyway. And I did not want another Ideapad, and this was nearly the same (same CPU, 2GB more RAM, etc).

I even asked my relative to buy Lenovo (because I was impressed with the quality) at the start! But what it comes down to is that low end Lenovos are fine. At the middle range their prices are maybe above average, so a Dell or Sony or Acer or Asus may have more value. For me, Lenovo and HP's pricing just does not make any sense. Dell/Sony/Acer/Asus price the product according to the product (except Dell tries to force the more expensive processors to consumers by upping the price of the cheaper processors).

Do not get a high end Lenovo. A netbook will be ok.

If you want a high end laptop look to other brands.

I have not as yet bought a new laptop (since August!) but I am on the hunt.

Mostly it's because Dell's current config options are obscenely unfair.

Soon the new generation of laptop Intel CPUs will be out (earliest January, but maybe March).

Yes, Y460 does look like a good overall laptop, fast CPU (with 5650).

But at that price range Dell SXPS 16 is also available.

But the one I bought was only worth the price when it was brand new. And even then it wasn't worth that much - far more expensive than from conversion (of US price). Kind of ordered it a bit hastily (I thought i7 quad was good).

I'm aware that there are Lenovo affiliated shops aplenty in Lowyat.

I do not, however, know if any shops in Lowyat are actually under Lenovo (I highly doubt this). It may not really matter - but I had to consider the legal aspect of things. You were quite fortunate (still, it doesn't take 2 hrs for a keyboard job, and I don't quite understand what your keyboard issue was, really). The one I went to was in Subang (the only one they directed me to, and the only one I actually went to).

However, know that I have dealt with all levels of the Lenovo staff, company, as well as their dealers and contractors. The Subang service center is contracted. The customer care is Lenovo. Lenovo also has its own people at the ThinkPad office (there's one in Uptown, there's some others). Lenovo also has its support center in Subang or somewhere in PJ/KL. At one point or another my laptop passed through all of these.

I'm just glad to have had my money back. Not having a laptop for a bit sure beats having a lemon that has more than its fair share of problems.

Like I said, lots of Lenovos have no problems at all. I had to go through 2 of the same PC with more than a handful of unsolvable problems, but if that wasn't bad enough, the extremely poor way that the staff handled the "checking" and "repairing" was just awful. When you have such a big problem one time around, I don't see how they can't make it ok the second time. Took them ~1 month just to send me a cheque.

I didn't ask them to compensate me for all the time spent driving and calling, as well as the expenses - but I would've had I succeeded in suing them. They buckled at the last minute.

One old laptop of mine just failed to start, but it was shipped/made in July 2004 and used from January 2005 - now that's quality (RAM upgrade from 256MB to 1GB of course).

You're right, I had really bad luck. But some of the tech people who worked on the laptops were negligent. They did replace the motherboard a couple times, but they failed to notice/record/note/report and/or act on the multiple BSODs that happened while they were supposed to be fixing it. 3 Lenovo laptops were used, I was fine with one of them (a temporary replacement) while the other two were just slow plastic ovens in my opinion.

You're also right about Dell, their service has been reasonably good, though I can't say the same for their products (I have been using 3 Dell computers).

I would go so far as to say they (Lenovo) owed me more than the original price of the laptop. The law allows for inflation to be taken into account, which is considerable given that the entire ordeal lasted nearly a year. I also had to needlessly travel to their service center on several occasions, and spend countless hours of my time (as well as the time of others) on the phone and using email trying to fix this problem - not to mention my phone bill itself.

Yeah, it was likely the result of a class-action suit.

You're completely right, in Malaysia the absolute rights and freedom of consumers is very much a theory, nearly non-existent in reality.

My 6 year old Dell still works (needed lots of repairs of course), along with a 3 year old and 0.25 year old Dell.

I would just like to warn others before buying a Lenovo here, because it would be like buying a Sager here - if you had a major problem or several problems (like the ones I described) that cannot even be fixed by the (albeit mediocre) staff after months, and which exists across batches of the product, then you are screwed, because you can't get proper attention for it to be repaired - buying a Sager means you may need to incur expenses to send it back etc.

No, because 5730 is found in other laptops too.
I have no idea why the Malaysian price is so high.

Now there is a HD 6570 + Sandy Bridge i7 (2.0 turbo 2.9) laptop with 15.6 LCD, costing only RM2999.

If anyone is willing to risk the pains of owning a Lenovo, or you simply have got money to burn, this'd be a reasonable buy, considering it is all new and pretty powerful (compared to the RM4799 POS I bought the last time).

They are wrong.

The new i7 quad CPUs have the same TDP (45W) as the old i7 quad CPUs. The only way to "overcome" the heating problem is to improve the cooling mechanism and design.