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Question

Down to 2 Thinkpads

Jan 5, 2015 4:57PM PST

Hey everyone, I've narrowed my search down to 2 Lenovos.
Now, even if anybody has a a different/better suggestion no matter the brand I'm open to it, as long as it's within my $1000 price range.
My choices so far are:

1. Thinkpad E545, 500 SSD, 16gb DD3, AMD A6-5350M Dual Core (2.90-3.50ghz), AMD Radeon HD 8450G, both with Windows 7 (important to me) same number of ports and everything else relevant to me is technically the same

2. Thinkpad E540 Intel i7 Quad (2.2-3.2ghz) 4th gen Haswell, 256 GB SSD + 500 GB 7200rpm HD, Intel IrisTM HD 4600 Graphic

Even though price between the 2 is not as important (they're both under $1000), choice 1 is about $200 cheaper, so would any upgrades I could do make it a better machine in the end?
And again, if someone has a suggestion for a better laptop I'm not aware of, I'm all ears. Are Surface Pro 3's any good?
Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: laptops
Jan 5, 2015 5:47PM PST
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No, 8gb RAM is absolutely fine, that's what #2 has
Jan 5, 2015 6:43PM PST

Using it for work, video streaming, editing and medium gaming. Would primarily like it to be fast processing and hopefully to not run hot (I'm not sure which brands and models have problems with fan noise, high temperatures, etc.)
I can always use an external drive for large files, so only SSD works. Portability isn't an issue, battery somewhat important.
I prefer the freedom and choices of Windows, but I'm open to Macs as well in the price range, but I see only i5, 128-256gb SSD options for that much. But don't know if that's still a better choice than let's say #2 Lenovo with i7?

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Answer
Let's look at the game numbers for each.
Jan 5, 2015 11:53PM PST

1. http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8450G.89652.0.html finds a sea of red. While games ran, the performance was pretty bad.

2. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4600.86106.0.html shows a lot of red but for games, slightly better.

Frankly, neither should considered for gaming. Did you look at Lenovo's Y50 gaming laptop which you can get under 1000?

3. http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-860M.107794.0.html shows a sea of green so that's a gaming laptop at about 900. http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-15-6-Inch-Gaming-Laptop-59418222/dp/B00K6ZIO2K
Bob