I think Ive got this but check me.

::edit:: Holy crap, I didn't realize I wrote a novel TL;DR, Lenovo is a great choice, you picked a good choice that you'll enjoy

So I can kind of help you, but my opinions and advice will be a bit short. I am not really a gamer, so when it comes to the video card and how well a specific laptop will play games, I have zero knowledge in that area. My only gaming experience is stuff like Fallout and Skyrim and SCII on the desktop

However, what I can tell you is the following. My wife and I both purchased Lenovo T61 laptops back when we first started college (2003) and then we each picked up our own laptops again in the summer of 2008. She does a lot of coding and web browsing, I use mine for BOINC and basic web browsing, and am starting to get into coding as well. We both get good battery life (I would say around the 5 hour mark) even with some web surfing. Netflix and Youtube videos both look wonderful on the screen, even though it's not a 1080p screen. Even though they're 4 years old, they are still fairly snappy and we don't have any problems at all.

If you buy a Lenovo laptop, if they still have it, you should get the full warranty or whatever it is they offer. Basically, they will replace your entire laptop, for free, should something happen to it. Not sure if they still have it, but one of our cats managed to knock over a full mug of coffee onto the laptop, we sent it in to Lenovo and got the whole thing replaced, free. The warranty is expensive, to be sure, but well worth it if they still offer it.

My laptop has a 7200RPM drive in it, my wife's has the 5400RPM drive in it, and I'm not sure your experience with laptop hard drives, but from our perspective there is virtually zero difference in the speed of the drive. In my opinion, if you can't tell a difference in loading times, you know a 5400 drive consumes less power so there's no reason to not get the 5400 drive. Then again, I don'tk now how the drive speed will affect the loading of games, so again, this is just my perspective on our two machines.

I would recommend you get the upgraded battery (9 cell) instead of the 6 cell typical battery. The extra life is amazing and well worth the bit of extra cash you pay.

I personally don't think you can get a better laptop than a Lenovo machine. You will pay more, but you're getting a quality built machine, that (more often than not) uses higher quality parts than a lot of other manufacturers out there. Lenovo doesn't tend to cut corners to make a quick buck, and we've had nothing but excellent dealings with customer service as well. In my personal experience, I would rate Lenovo laptops and MacBook laptops as two of the best laptops you can buy.

You might want to go through the actual Lenovo website, you can customize a lot of different options, so if you want more RAM but less HDD space, or whatever, you can basically build your own through the Lenovo site, and their prices won't be any different than newegg, from my experience. But as for the laptop you have selected, it's not a bad deal for that price. I personally would go with a bigger HDD, more RAM, and a 9 cell battery. But apart from that, it's a solid machine you've picked out that I think you'll be quite satisfied with.
Edited by b3machi7ke - 5/30/12 at 5:48am

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=F41BC8E1656C5F85171FBDB172571912&action=init

i5 model for $720, i7 quad for $750. I'm not sure if that "10% off your next order" coupon for signing up to get Lenovo emails "stacks" with the coupon code they automatically apply. Either will get a similar framerate, i7 quad will probably have better resale value (the i7 quad is usually a ~+$100 option for most laptops). If you reallly want/need it to last for a couple years, warranty extension is super cheap - $35 for 2-year or $70 for 3-year (I'm not aware of anyone with cheaper warranties - just checked Dell, HP, and Sony, and of course NE is more expensive).

At any rate, if you want the Z570, it's the same price at Lenovo ($629), with better specs - namely 750GB HDD instead of 500, and 8GB of RAM instead of 6. The Nvidia 630M is a verbatim 540M rebrand. There's not a huge difference between the 540M and 555M, maybe 10-15%. http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=6C9D31566AE16AEE64C8DA425092E945&action=init

The cheapest way to get Blu-Ray is buy an internal Blu-Ray drive separately and install yourself (ebay search for "lenovo Blu-Ray" - without quotes). About $50ish. Take apart should be simple, you'll probably have to remove the whole case-bottom of the laptop (keep a system for making sure the screws go in the right hole - ice trays etc.), then there's just a couple screws holding the DVD-drive in; the bezel probably has 1-2 screws keeping it attached so just remove those, swap bezel to new drive, put it back together.

edit- also cosign everything b3 said about Lenovos. Nothing else compares (Macs are nice.. but just google "Thinkpad X1 Carbon" - 3 pound 14" 1600x900 screen, Lenovo has no competition). But the Ideapads aren't like the Thinkpads. You can't customize Ideapads at all (short of warranty and accesories) - they just have several pre-built options per model. Still solid machines, similar (same?) quality warranty - they sent me a replacement battery for an Ideapad U350 and a return shipping label via 2-day, less than 12 hours after I called. The keyboards are killer on the Ideapads, sound is pretty good as well (blew away my T61 sound lol). All 1366x768 screens are pretty much the same. Synaptics touchpad is the best kind (only kind Lenovo uses.. watch out for Acer, Asus, Dell, perhaps HP.. some are ALPS or Elantech - yikes).
Edited by jrbroad77 - 5/29/12 at 4:43pm