I recently purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad from the Lenovo web site's outlet. Not the model you are looking at but I had also considered buying one at Best Buy.
The price at BB was around 500.00 for the model I wanted. I ended up getting it at the Lenovo outlet for 380.00 and tax. Shipping was fast and free. Painless experience.
The laptop itself is great. I have the x130e which is more of a netbook than a laptop.
Pros:
Excellent keyboard
Excellent battery life
matte screen
4gb RAM
7200 rpm HDD 320gb
Windows 7 Home Premium
Very clean desktop with some bloatware that was easy to remove.
Cons:
Trackpad but that is a downer on this model I have in particular. I hate trackpads and use a mouse so its not an issue for me.
Screen is not as bright as most but that is probably why the batt life is so good. Also one of this model's quirks that may not be on Ideapads.
That model you are looking at should be a real good performer. If memory serves, it comes with an I5 processor, 6 gig of RAM, etc. Should handle pretty much anything you toss at it.
I can recommend Lenovo but I haven't been that excited by Best Buy in the past. If it is in stock locally and you can't beat it at Lenovo's site, pick one up and wipe the bloatware off of it.
Pc decrapifier is a good site to go to for that. I also wax Norton and go with MS Security Essentials and Malwarebytes for antivirus j***.
Here is a Thinkpad in your price range but has an I3 processor instead and a smaller HDD.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...7C74F77391020F
You can configure it the way you want.
Good luck. Oh yeah, I'd pass on the Windows 8 upgrade. Haven't heard anything good about Win 8 yet. From what I gather, it is more geared towards tablets. I am sure someone will chime in on that but Windows 7 seems to be the preferred OS of the two.
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