Lenovo Laptop bought from Tesco Clarehall

MelbourneDub · 06-01-2015 6:46pm #1

Hi guys,

Just looking for a bit of advice here. I bought a Lenovo B50 (budget range) laptop from Tesco Clarehall at a price of 249 euro, which I thought was a great price. I didn't expect the laptop to be amazing as its the budget range but its proved to be pretty poor to be honest. It lags when opening anything. Youtube and most videos are hard, if not impossible, to watch due to jumping/freezing and/or pixalation. Even right clicking a single file to see the properties sometimes causes a file explorer crash.

I'm not happy with the laptop as I don't believe it is fit for the purpose.
What are my options on this one? I have it about 2 weeks with receipt.

Thanks

(ps: i ran pc-decrapafier and removed any pre-installed bloatware that could be slowing down the laptop)

chocksaway · 06-01-2015 6:51pm

Not sure of your exact model but the B50-30 is noted for its slow processor and bad resolution

http://mobile.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/laptop/3580472/lenovo-b50-30-budget-laptop-review/

ZENER · 06-01-2015 7:00pm

Is it mainly network and internet tasks it struggles with ? What about playing videos from the hard disk or a USB stick - are they as bad ? According to the Specs and this review it has a limited wifi system which can only handle 802.11N so it doesn't appear to be able to step back to G or B if the Wifi Signal weakens.

It's a budget laptop with a sedentary Celeron CPU and integrated graphics so you can't expect much from it. Cleaning out the installed crud was a good step but it's also worth going into MSCONFIG > StartUp and disabling some of the rubbish in there too. Also consider removing any supplied AV Software - Typically Nortons Trial version - and find something a bit lighter. One thing sure to bring any laptop or PC to it's knees is Nortons !!

As to whether they will take it back you can only ask and see what they say though they may just take it and send it off to be checked which will likely consist of a restore which will return all the bloatware again.

Good luck !!

Ken

MelbourneDub · 06-01-2015 7:22pm

ZENER wrote: »

Is it mainly network and internet tasks it struggles with ? What about playing videos from the hard disk or a USB stick - are they as bad ? According to the Specs and this review it has a limited wifi system which can only handle 802.11N so it doesn't appear to be able to step back to G or B if the Wifi Signal weakens.

It's a budget laptop with a sedentary Celeron CPU and integrated graphics so you can't expect much from it. Cleaning out the installed crud was a good step but it's also worth going into MSCONFIG > StartUp and disabling some of the rubbish in there too. Also consider removing any supplied AV Software - Typically Nortons Trial version - and find something a bit lighter. One thing sure to bring any laptop or PC to it's knees is Nortons !!

As to whether they will take it back you can only ask and see what they say though they may just take it and send it off to be checked which will likely consist of a restore which will return all the bloatware again.

Good luck !!

Ken

Hi guys,

Yep it's a B50-30
Re: Saving and watching videos
When I save an avi or wmv on the HD and view it with VLC it just pixelates or jumps and freezes its way through the video. It won't play any large or higher res files

Watching rte player or 3 player causes serious jumpiness and its unwatchable.
Wifi speed is not the issue as I'm hitting good d/l speeds.

Hmmm...
It just seems like an incredibly slow processor that's not suitable for the laptop.

It's 4gb of ram... Would sticking in another 4gb in help?

Yep I'm pretty up with msconfig and all the windows 8.1 speed up tips and have tried that.

Ideally I'd love to give this back and get a refund.

ZENER · 06-01-2015 7:34pm

What about AV ? What came installed on it ? Could it be running updates perhaps ? Even my GFs Netbook with a dual core Atom CPU with 2GB can play back video from the hard disk and the 'net without throwing a fit. What does TaskManager say when you're playing these files ?

Ken

MelbourneDub · 06-01-2015 8:08pm

ZENER wrote: »

What about AV ? What came installed on it ? Could it be running updates perhaps ? Even my GFs Netbook with a dual core Atom CPU with 2GB can play back video from the hard disk and the 'net without throwing a fit. What does TaskManager say when you're playing these files ?

Ken

Thanks for replying,

There's no antivirus on it at the moment. I uninstalled the macaffee that was on it when bought. Task manager shows VLC using 85% of the CPU when files are playing.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 06-01-2015 8:17pm

I'm afraid you got what you paid for and it was as described. You have displayed enough computer savvy to suggest you knew what processor you were getting. It's not that its unfit for purpose, it's just a low spec cheap device. I can't buy a Micra and return it because it won't pull a trailer through a muddy field.

Returning it would be as a change of mind and totally reliant on the retailer's goodwill. Given all you have done to it, I wouldn't entertain a return now.

davo10 · 06-01-2015 8:19pm

MelbourneDub wrote: »

Thanks for replying,

There's no antivirus on it at the moment. I uninstalled the macaffee that was on it when bought. Task manager shows VLC using 85% of the CPU when files are playing.

If it is as advertised/described, you have no entitlement to a refund. You just bought a low spec computer with a slow processor and poor graphics, not a defective one, perhaps you should have checked what spec you required before purchasing.

MelbourneDub · 06-01-2015 8:53pm

davo10 wrote: »

If it is as advertised/described, you have no entitlement to a refund. You just bought a low spec computer with a slow processor and poor graphics, not a defective one, perhaps you should have checked what spec you required before purchasing.

Presumably a laptop these days should be cable of playing a video without stalling/jumping? I'm hardly asking it to render a video in premiere pro.

This was a laptop for a xmas present and not for myself so I didn't do a whole pile of research on the specs

Beano · 06-01-2015 8:55pm

chocksaway wrote: »

Not sure of your exact model but the B50-30 is noted for its slow processor and bad resolution

http://mobile.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/laptop/3580472/lenovo-b50-30-budget-laptop-review/

this section of the review might be useful to you OP

For this budget laptop Lenovo includes its own power management software, and we found this set as default in the middle of three options, economy versus performance.

Used this way, it returned a Geekbench 3 score of 248 points in single-core mode, and 401 in multicore (the Intel N2830 is dual-core but with no Hyper Threading Technology to virtualise four cores out of two).

These scores are the lowest we’d ever seen from this benchmark test. It normally takes around two minutes to complete; here it was taking in excess of 20 minutes.

After setting Lenovo’s management settings to full speed, Geekbench 3 now scored the Lenovo B50-30 with 964 and 1674 points respectively for single- and multi-core modes.

Lenovo Laptop bought from Tesco Clarehall

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