.. and hopefully less intransigent than the Toshiba was.

The new laptop is a July 2012 Lenovo T71 G780, Windows 7, Core i3 2370 (Sandy Bridge), 4gb, and a 17.3” display. Specifications are better than the Toshiba by virtue of the fact that the Lenovo is newer by almost three years.

The Toshiba in it’s overall glossy black coat looked very slick, but the Lenovo has a more durable finish, a better keyboard, and way better sound. The wireless adapter seems to be more reliable too. The newer August Lenovo’s sport a 3rd Generation Core i3 3110 and HD4000, but for under $500, I have no complaints with the slightly older model. My wife won’t have any issue with it being Windows 7 either. I showed her Windows 8 and guess what? She said ‘NO’

I see that battery life is better than the original i3-330’s, almost double in fact. It won’t be spending much time off AC power, but we do get power outages occasionally in the winter, and it’s comforting to know that one of us won’t be bored for at least 5 hours..

The Toshiba L500has no future. At $208 for a replacement used motherboard, it is not an economical repair, and there may be more broken than just the motherboard. I am toying with the idea of keeping the hard drive and getting an enclosure to use it as a small backup drive, and selling the rest off for spares. The screen, DVD drive, keyboard and memory are all ok, as is the case.None of it is even three years old yet and must be worth something, maybe enough to do an 8gb upgrade on the new kid.

After three days of protracted use, the new owner/user of the T71 is very impressed and once again a happy person..