Lenovo users - please share your experiences...!

[bosonHavoc]

lenovo T410 i7 here
other then it will not work proper with my firestudio (which leaves me with no interface at the moment)
i thought i could get away with it due to what i have been ready..
i found a good deal on cl for a new sealed in box machine so i jumped and got a little burned .... but...
it is a great machine.. lots of options, lots of usb ports, i can remove the dvd drive and ad another internal hard drive
their is a physical switch that turns of the network which is really handy.
i can but a dock that has like 5 vga outs..
when i get a mac book pro this machine will become a dedicated visuals machine for sure.

does really suck that i can't use my audio interface though
but i do have to say this
i have done 2 gigs with it so far
i run out of the headphone jack into a radial di box into the board
i run battery, some drum racks, sampler, effects, and audio clips.
control it all with an mpd 32 and mpd 24
no latency at all, and no hick ups on stage as of yet..
we have a mac book pro that handles the vocals, keys and all that stuff
but i want my vox, percussion, and bass on my machine
no money and no job at the moment to buy a new audio interface
and no one seems to want to buy my motu pci 424 and 2408 mkiii either

i personally wouldn't recommend it for audio because they dropped the ball on the fire wire chip set
if lenovo would have only realized a whole new market would open up if they just used a T.I. chip set
but if you use a usb interface or maybe don't own an interface yet and go for some of the ones
that i have been hearing about like the motu and saffire that seem to be working
(and yes i spent 2 weeks striping and reconfiguring to try and get my presonous to work.. fail)

[matthews]

these look good value to me - i7 8gb RAM for $1049, would an MBP be like $2500 with those specs? Or are these faulty models?

I have the y560P, similarly spec'd machine. I swapped the HD with a SSD. Couldn't be happier tbh, works like a charm. I was considering a MBP as well, but it was well over $3200 with an SSD from apple, just couldn't justify that price. The only thing I would keep in mind is that it doesn't have a firewire port. Not a huge deal at all for me, considering I use USB, but something to keep in mind. Other than that, great machine, and the sandybrdge i7 is a beast.

[chris vine]

these look good value to me - i7 8gb RAM for $1049, would an MBP be like $2500 with those specs? Or are these faulty models?

I have the y560P, similarly spec'd machine. I swapped the HD with a SSD. Couldn't be happier tbh, works like a charm. I was considering a MBP as well, but it was well over $3200 with an SSD from apple, just couldn't justify that price. The only thing I would keep in mind is that it doesn't have a firewire port. Not a huge deal at all for me, considering I use USB, but something to keep in mind. Other than that, great machine, and the sandybrdge i7 is a beast.

Thanks for that - as for no Firewire port I guess I'd use a FW card in the card slot, which I what I do now anyway with a PCMCIA card.

[Breaks Dude]

+1 on the Lenovo T61p - one of the best designed PCs laptops ever in its day - more or less a 15" size, but 1920 x 1200 display and can support two hard drives (one in the DVD/HD slot) and 8GB Ram. Dunno if there is an upto date equivalent now and thats a bit old.

High end lenovos are more or less the PCs worlds equiv of an MBP when it comes to audio work - you will still need to do a fresh format when you get it to get rid of the default install junk and perhaps might need to disable some hardware devices when stressing the machine (not as clean as an MBP), but still its about the best the PC world has to offer.

I was thinking of getting one of their high end ones (cant remember the model now) at the beginning of this year, in the end bought a 2011 MBP17 which ended up a similarish price to what the custom lenovo would have been - and really happy with it - prefer it to the lenovo mostly for runign windows. Lenovo advantages - two drives, slighly more compact for a 1920x1200 screen - mac advantage - just seems loads less hassle for running audio apps in win/7 under bootcamp at very low latency, but to be fair - the latest lenovo's may be just as good.

Agreed. I have a T60 for business related stuff which is running on 4 years old that is built like a tank.You could throw the thing across the room and it would probably still work fine.

[Skallawa]

I have a Y560p that has two issues.

I have to disable the acpi-compliant control method battery or I get horrible spikes that cause audio drop outs

It sometimes crashes and gives a usb bug code messages on the blue screen. It doesn't happen everyday, but two to three times a week. I don't use it for giging so doesn't bother me much. (Edit: just found out that this may be a known issue with my soundcard.)

The machine is a Sandybridge i7, 8gd ram, two hard drives (swapped out the optical drive).

It has it's issues, but the price was low. under $900 on tigerdirect. I can send it in for repair but I can't be bothered. Probably keep it for the next three years. the performance is awesome. I use only midi and vsts and I routinely have about 30 tracks with under 50% computer usage. This with with no freezing and effects.

[esky]

Hey, thanks guys for your help, just to make it complete...my Lenovo setup is an old G530 Ideapad (Win XP)and an even older emagic 2/6 usb soundcard (Asio4all), but it does what it says...for putting down some Ideas it works like charm. Thanks again...