I'd go with the second, should also be better for basic gaming over the Thinkpad for what it's worth. Cost aside, consider also what you really want to be typing homework on: something a bit bigger with a bigger keyboard, or squinting at times while typing on a smaller one? Of course, the converse is, how much will you be lugging it around campus as well, as the size and weight difference is kinda big. SSDs are faster for bootups and such, but I mean in all seriousness, that probably doesn't really matter much for your average college student I would think. The Thinkpad also lacks an optical (read, DVD or Blu Ray) drive, meaning you'd have to spend more if you want to watch movies or other stuff involving discs.
the cpu differences are misleading. If only one core is active then the turbo frequency kicks in and that's a fair bit higher for both, but the i7 still wins out (3.1 vs 3.3). The other difference is that the i7 can run 8 threads which is only useful if 1. you like running shitloads of programs at once or 2. you plan to do simulations/programming/something that can utilise 8 threads lol. If not, then the extra price you pay for the i7 doesn't seem to be worth it, but that's ignoring the difference in the other components.
This is a great post. I used to have an HP laptop and it was absolute shit. after about a year the graphics card just decided to go fuck itself and the screen is destroyed. I called customer service and I got absolutely zero help. Do not buy an HP. They are going out of the computer business for a reason.
The most intense stuff I'm looking to do on this thing is just gaming, and I probably won't be running FRAPS at all, nor am I concerned about playing on highest graphics. League of Legends and Guild Wars 2 are probably going to be the most stressful programs on this computer, so I probably don't have to go for an extremely powerful GPU.
The computer I'm currently using is the 13 inch MacBook Air (may be 13.3?), and trust me -- it's fine. Unless an inch makes a REALLY big difference and I'm missing something, 12.6 inches should be fine for typing. I never have eye strain or anything bad from using a smaller screen.
underclock your processor, turn off hyperthreading or turboboost. those will pretty dramatically cut CPU power usage if you are a power user but naturally the CPU will be less capable. i'm sure there are programs that dynamically change the clock of your processor more dramatically than intel's default does.
The Lenovo y5xx series you linked is your best bet for a gaming notebook. You will be able to run modern games just fine as long as you don't expect to run them at 1080p60 on ultra. Just beware of microstuttering, so turn off vsync.
Oh please. Don't go with AMD notebook CPUs. Their integrated graphics processors are pretty good, but I can't say the same about their CPUs. AMD "quad-cores" aren't really quad cores with only 2 FPUs and my friend's A10 is beaten by the low end Pentium B960. That said, AMD CPUs are about sufficient for anything that doesn't require prime95/video-editing (provided that the CPU doesn't bottleneck the GPU). Really, just go for an i3 + discrete graphics if you need gaming on a low budget. And anyway, now that you can get 35 W Ci5's for less than $600, why not just go for that? The Ci5 can do enough legwork for the HD 4000 to permit basic gaming.
