Lenovo G710 Introduction

INTRO
Hello everyone!
2 month ago I became a proud owner of this, in my humble opinion, beautiful laptop and one of the best buys out there that money can get. Since will be keeping it for a while in this blog I'm going to keep you posted about any change that it occures in his lifetime. Will give away tips and tricks that have been discovered. In short, will keep you updated how's my baby doing :D

It's a all round budget laptop that has everything that average users need. Other than G710, there are similar models like G700, G770, G780.
I'm using Windows 7 64bit Pro. Windows 8/8.1 is simply worse OS ever and just don't like it, and this laptop will not be seeing it in a while. Think will wait for Windows 9 in a year or two. Maybe Microsoft will start listening it's users again.

These are G710 specs:
CPU: Core i3 4000M @ 2.4GHz
Memory: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
Hard disk: WD 1TB Blue Line (Not Hybrid one)
Screen: CMI 17''
Graphic card: Intel HD4600 (integrated) / Nvidia GT720M 2GB (separated)
OS: My installation of Windows 7 64bit Professional

None of the components are low end or outdated. Latest 4th generation Intel CPU which although seems weak or low end, it's pretty powerful and snappy. Can handle everyday use without any problems. Tasks like watching HD movies, Internet surfing with multiple tabs, Photoshop, burning DVDs...
Of course it's not like i7 or i5 CPU, but honestly for a second or two I don't give a s****. It's fast enough. End of discussion. That is telling you someone who has came from desktop machine with AMD Phenom X4 installed.
9/10

Lets go to screen. It not like IPS desktop monitor but colors are decent, although a small calibration is needed (too much blue). Viewing angle is also decent. by decent I mean that you can seat in a chair and enjoy picture even if you change sitting position. You don't have to be statue in order to keep a perfect viewing angle. Black is not perfect, it's more a gray but on most of the days work that is irrelevant. It only comes to front when watching movies. Brightness, one word, actually two words; f**** amazing. Brightness is most powerful I have seen on any laptop. Indoors it's unwatchable how bright it is (got to keep it a bit dimmed), but outdoors shows it's real power.
8/10

Keyboard. Again, just amazing. Accutype keyboard showed here her magic. You can type all day long without getting tired or loosing on your speed. Adjustment period is very short. Most important; doesn't flex. It's rock hard.
10/10

Battery. If you are using wifi and surfing with a bit dimmed brightness and balanced energy setting you get around 4 hours. Just typing without wifi 5 hours. Watching Divx 2-3 hours. So battery is nice and durable.
8/10

One big downside in whole story is hard drive. Mine came with a shitty Western Digital Blue line. First it's noisy. You can hear it how it working. Wind noise combined with those typical data mining grinding noise. Second it's not so fast, but hey what can you expect from old mechanical 5400RPM drive? Other thing that pisses me off is that hard drive goes to standby mode even after 10sec on idle! Constant spins on and off. Not good for hard drive durability and my nerves! Can't be controlled via BIOS or windows energy management. Not good job WD here. Managed to solve it via app called hdparm. Now it stays ON all the time. Have turned off that stupid APM.
One day I'm going to SSD, but not yet. Why? Technology there keeps developing very fast every year, and prices are going down and capacity are going up. 500GB are a minimum that for me. 1TB is ideal. For now this one will have to serve.
5/10

Driver update. Everything works on all systems weather it's Win 7 or 8.1. Only thing Lenovo did f**** up here is that on their webpage you get wrong sound drivers. You should get them from G700.
Than there is this Lenovo Energy Management which control battery charging and FN keys. This you should download from Lenovo website but from model G780.
In the end use program DriverBooster. Works perfect. You get latest signed drivers.
6/10

Maintenance: perfect. This just keeps getting better and better. Brilliant design and one of the reasons why did I bought this laptop in the first place.
This is a huge step forward in a laptop world. Why the hell didn't all laptops have been build like this from the start? Anyone who has every dismantled laptop in his life knows what pain can it be just to clean damn CPU fan! Here's all that gone. You have litterly 2 screws and voila, access to complete components is there, weather it is FAN, CPU, RAM or Hard Drive. Good job Lenovo!
10/10

OUTRO
In short: For a few bucks you get laptop that is easy to maintain, works very cool and is almost dead silent, has a big bright screen, fast CPU/GPU/RAM, has battery saving mode to keep it "new like" in years to come, great touch pad, rock steady wifi, amazing keyboard.

Images taken from Notebookcheck.