Dell Inspiron 11.6 vs Lenovo IdeaPad W210 (Windows 8)

January 8, 2014 | This Just In

[This Just In]

Good evening,

I'm seeking your opinion/advice on these two laptops. If given the choice which would you choose and why?

Our child has been given a gift: a Dell 11.6, but we may be able to exchange it for the Lenovo. I'm just wondering whether or not it would be worth the exchange. I'm inclined to think it is, but trading one for the other presents a little bit of a challenge. We must travel out of state in order to exchange the laptop. I'm wondering if it would be worth the wait and travel.

Thank you, as always, for your time and comments.

TJI

[1_Rain_Drop]

Not sure if this will help you as I have old IBM Thinkpads.
I think it was eight years ago I bought the R51e (a Lenovo). It is a work horse and has survived much physical abuse. It has been in extremely dusty situations when my house was being renovated. Thinking it was going to bite the dust due to the abuse, I bought a back up Thinkpad, a Lenovo T60 about 5 years ago. When Irene hit, the area was filled with mud dust everywhere. There was no escaping it. It was on everything. I’m still using the R51e and have no problems whatsoever with it. The T60 I started using last summer just so it wouldn’t feel neglected. Both work fantastic.

For durability, I would recommend Lenovo. It has survived through a lot of abuse.

[sickoflibs]

Thanks, I will try it

Classic Shell main page

[Tainan]

Thanks for the correction.
Lenovo did buy-out IBM PC business in 2005. The deal was for US1.7 billion(2005). Under the deal, IBM will took an 18.9 percent stake in Lenovo. Lenovo paid US$1.25 billion for the IBM PC unit and assume debt, which will bring the total cost to US$1.75 billion. Lenovo paid roughly US$650 million in cash and US$600 million in securities.
Lenovo and Dell are both making offers for the remains of HP.

On ownership:(from WikiWacki)
Ownership
As of 1 October 2011, 58% of Lenovo stock was held by the general public, 34% by Legend Holdings Limited, and 8% by other entities. The Chinese Academy of Sciences owns 36% of Legend Holdings.[77]
On 4 September 2009, Oceanwide Holdings Group, a private investment firm based in Beijing, bought 29% of Legend Holdings, the parent company of Lenovo, for 2.76 billion yuan.[78] Responding to claims that Lenovo is a state owned enterprise CEO Yang Yuanqing said: "Our company is a 100% market oriented company. Some people have said we are a state owned enterprise. It's 100% not true. In 1984 the Chinese Academy of Sciences only invested $25,000 in our company. The purpose of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to invest in this company was that they wanted to commercialize their research results. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is a pure research entity in China, owned by the government. From this point, you could say we're different from state-owned enterprises. Secondly, after this investment, this company is run totally by the founders and management team. The government has never been involved in our daily operation, in important decisions, strategic direction, nomination of the CEO and top executives and financial management. Everything is done by our management team."[79]
Yang dramatically increased his ownership stake in by acquiring 797 million shares in 2011. As of June 2011, Yang owned an 8 percent stake in Lenovo. He previously owned only 70 million shares. In a statement, Yang said, "While the transaction is a personal financial matter, I want to be very clear that my decision to make this investment is based on my strong belief in the company's very bright future. Our culture is built on commitment and ownership – we do what we say, and we own what we do. My decision to increase my holdings represents my steadfast belief in these principles."[80] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo

Who owns what?...its a guessing game in the PRC.

[sickoflibs]

I just installed it and I am playing with it.

Thanks again,

Great find!

[This Just In]

Our child will be using the Dell primarily for college. Will this model be sufficient?

Thank you for all of your help. I will be revisiting this thread once the laptop arrives.

TJI

[This Just In]

I would like to thank everyone for lending your helpful comments. I will be returning to this thread once the laptop is delivered.

Sincerely,
TJI

[sickoflibs]

I installed this app that dan suggested,
It makes the MS windows 8 user interface look more like past versions of MS OS.

Classic Shell main page

I am using it now to post this and its not a bad computer at all.

[sickoflibs]

I have always found Dells very reliable,

[sickoflibs]

The Dell computer windows 8 I bought last ~ April and that I using right now at home is a Inspiron 17R 5721.'

It came with McAfee and MS office already on it with a three year service support warranty.

You turn it on and it walks you through a setup procedure.

So far it works pretty good but dealing with windows 8 takes some work.

[This Just In]

Thanks, sickoflibs. I visited that link briefly, and will revisit at a later date.

[daniel1212]

Our child will be using the Dell primarily for college. Will this model be sufficient?

There are 3 different models of the Inspiron 17R 5721.', but it should be, yes. The main difference is between the i7 Processor i3 Processor .

[daniel1212]

I have always found Dells very reliable,

We have a Sony laptop which has been good, and an old Toshiba, which is fast now that i replaced Vista with XP, but I use mostly desktops, and would not recommend Dell for that.

Instead, I would recommend a company called AllPCzone , which offer much customization and 3 years warranty and lifetime free tech support, and zero bloatware, or spam (in fact, the only e-mails labor receive them were related to the purchasing of the computer I bought from them).

You always get more bang for the buck with the desktop than a laptop. For instance, for the same price that you paid for the lower end Dell laptop, which is only a 1.7 GHz dual core processor, and a 500 GB hard drive running at 5400 hundred RPM, you could buy a desktop from the above source with a 3.9 GHz, six core processor, along with 8 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB hard drive running at 7200 hundred RPM.

But of course, the laptop was far superior in terms of use that requires portability, college being one of them. And finding the right college for the right purpose is more important find the right laptop. I think most of them more brothels then places which promote character.

[daniel1212]

last year there was heavy flooding in Thailand that took out most of the hard drive manufacturing facilities in the world

The flooding occurred during July 2011 which showed a lot of impact on hard drive industry in between 2011 to early 2013, and caused HDD prices to increase 72.7% from $0.055 per GB, but HDDs have returned to Pre-Flood Prices. - Tom's Hardware. I doubt that you have to worry about B hard drives anymore. However, solid-state drives (SSD) are much faster, and, of course, much more expensive per gigabyte, and the prices have not come down as fast as we'd like them. They are the drive of the future (though the future will be troublesome on this earth).

[sickoflibs]

I been using classic shell since you told me about it here.

I just downloaded a update to it tonight.

It’s definitely a big improvement over what windows 8 was doing before.

I hate those tiles and those apps that take over the whole screen

[daniel1212]

I hate those tiles and those apps that take over the whole screen

Thank God others provided freeware as an alternative!