Lenovo Idepad Y450 In A Glance

Yesterday I just received this notebook, Lenovo Ideapad Y450. It belongs to my friend’s office. He asked me to prepare this notebook before being used by his employee. It was my pleasure to testing this gadget for the first time, start from opened the box and so on 😀 Quiet surprise when see the spesification listed on the box, I think it was very powerfull notebook. For the price around 8 million rupiahs, I think Ideapad Y450 can compete with other brand….at least in my mind I’ll choose this one for that price. With the elegant design and powerfull engine it serves the user with great computing and entertainment environment. Before touch the system, I prepare the photo session for this notebook. Trying how difficult the product photography :-p Only used Speedlite 430EX II and its diffuser, I shot and the result are like you see in this post.

Lenovo Ideapad Y450 has Centrino Duo processor, this type has 2.2 GHz Core™2 Duo Processor T6600 (with front size bus as big as 800MHz, and 2MB L2 Cache). Those CPU feel more fast with 2GB DDR3 memory. Very powerfull desktop replacement for standar office usage. For storage, Ideapad Y450 has large space 320GB hard drive installed. For connectivity reason, we can find many interfaces. Gigabit Ethernet for local area network connectivity (goodbye 10/100Mbps Ethernet), Wifi, Bluetooth, and plus the old type Infrared port. Very complete connectivity solutions.

I always like the keyboard on Lenovo’s keyboard. The same with its predecessor, IBM Thinkpad, Lenovo has excellent keyboard. I like to type using that kind of notebook. The buttons are soft and easy to press. The touchpad also good. Although almost all the body made by glossy material, Lenovo make the touchpad with textured material. I like the textured material, make me easy to handle the cursor. The other brand like Compaq, I’ve tested it before, has the touchpad with same material with the body. It’s not easy to use the mouse made with glossy material. Ideapad Y450 has two major colors, white and brownish black with a red striped at the edge of lid. The cover of the screen (back of the lid) has textured coating, very elegant. Its screen has 14.1 inch WXGA. On the top of the screen we can found 1 tiny 1.3 Megapixels webcam.

This machine also has dual layer DVD writer. There are also 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 E-sata/ USB combo, and 34mm Express Card slot. There is also one 6-in-1 Multi-card Reader slot that support several types of multimedia card. I like the idea to put the dummy card to secure the multimedia slot, to open it just press the dummy card to open the slot. Above the keyboard, there are several shortcut button, not ordinary button but touch-sensitive slide bar. If we put Windows as operating system, Lenovo provide the software to configure those slide bar. I don’t test this feature yet, but see it on Lenovo website I see the slide bar will produce shortcut with animation effect just like dock bar in Macintosh operating system. Some part of the body will illuminate when the computer turned on. For example, the Ideapad logo in the corner (below the Intel logo) illuminate when the computer turned on.

For entertainment purpose, Ideapad Y450 has nice stereo speaker. By default, I can hear the nice welcome sound when I just powered the notebook up. I think there is a parameter in the BIOS to choose whether we want to turn on this welcome sound or not. Just a quick guess. You can see the logo Dolby sound system logo in the left corner, followed by “Home Theater” text. According to Lenovo website, this notebook designed for family entertainment, that’s why Lenovo put the nice speaker system in. The speakers (2 Watt each) are located near the screen hinges.

I don’t know how’s the battery performance. As far as I know, Lenovo has good temperature control which makes the bottom of the notebook cool enough although it works for several hours. Ideapad packed with separate battery, it wasn’t installed yet. But it is easy to installed the battery pack. After put the battery in correct position don’t forget to set the battery lock to “Locked” position to safe the battery position. With the battery, Ideapad Y450 will be 2.1kg in weight…quite heavy for me.

If I want to buy notebook, I’ll pass this beautifull notebook because of its white body….it will be dirty fast 🙂 White body has elegent look but it need more clean handling unless your white keyboard will turn to yellow soon :-p In the packaging, Lenovo only provide Windows Vista driver only. Some of the drivers work on Windows XP too. Some part need Windows XP spesific driver, VGA card is one of them. I can download the driver from Lenovo official website.

Same like other new notebook, by default Lenovo Ideapad set the harddrive in SATA AHCI mode. I’ve experienced this issue some time ago, I wrote it here. So when I tried to install Windows XP, I got the blue screen when installation begin. But I was happy to know that on BIOS there is a menu to turn off SATA mode and switch to SATA Compatibility (IDE mode). Windows XP installation process ran well after set that to IDE mode.

Overall in my opinion, this is the best choice for buyer who has 8 millions budget.

18 thoughts on “Lenovo Idepad Y450 In A Glance

  1. Pingback: Blognya Tedy Tirtawidjaja » Belajar Tensis Lagi

  2. weleh om tedy di link download driver yang om kasih ga ada tuh nyediain vga card buat xp… pake yang mana ya? sori pertanyaannya bertubi-tubi soalnya situ lebih pinter dari saya.. thanks

  3. Pak Teddy saya minta tolong, saya baru beli lenovo y450 ideapad. Saya sudah download semua driver untuk XP. Tapi, setelah saya install XP dan install semua driver nya, koq jadi error yah pak… Ketika mau shut down, laptop nya g bisa mati. Dalam keadaan “saving your setting” terus, harus tekan tombol power baru bisa mati. Mohon solusi nya pak Teddy…. sebelum nya saya ucapkan terima kasih

  4. pak teddy tuh ga tw tentang laptop alias goblok yg sok”an bwat blog…….
    lenovo y450 emank ga bsa pke xp, bsa sih bsa tpi ga lengkap…..
    lenovo seri itu emank support’y tuh pke vista sma win 7……
    percuma ajj lw instal pke xp ga bkl bsa alias eror terus…..
    klo yg type G mungkin masih bsa tpi tetep ajj masih ada eror’y……
    w saranin mendingan lw pke win 7 ajj….
    sama” bgus koq, tergantung kebutuhan ajj sih…..

  5. @Fathor
    Salam kenal,
    saya juga pengguna Y450.. Menurut pengalaman saya, ternyata yang bikin tidak bisa shutdown ketika pake xp adalah driver webcamnya. Uninstall aja.. Beress tuh pake XP ga ada masalah apa2..

  6. @ dipta
    lam kenal buat smua bener menurut anda coz saya punya y450 pake xp ga bisa shut down tapi setelah driver cameranya di uninstall bisa shutdown …. thank ya bro…

  7. Lenovo dan laptop generasi agak baru lainnya itu bisa menggunakan SATA AHCI mode jika kita ingin tetap menggunakan windows XP, caranya masukkan driver intel ICH9 di windows kita dengan menggunakan Ultra ISO. Terus mengapa sering ngak bisa shutdown kalau menurut saya sih krn di Windows XP tidak mendukung driver untuk High Definition Audio. Jadi caranya kita harus install Microsoft UAA driver dulu sebelum install driver Sound cardnya.

  8. Pak teddy .. mohon petunjuk dimana bisa pesan ato beli … batery lenovo Y450i yang harganya bagus lah .. (alias terjangkau)

    makasih sebelumnya

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.