If this is supposed to be a home media player solution, that is a ridiculously overpowered system. An older Core 2 Duo and cheap graphics card would be sufficient for media playing. I would bump it up to at least a newer Core 2 Duo (45nm era) or Pentium/i3 though, to "future-proof" it.
To comment on your comments and specs in general...
1. "Full HD" (1080p and above) laptop screens are rare, not to mention expensive. Personally, the best I've seen is 1600x900, I believe, on 17" screens.
2. Even though your laptop screen is not 1080p, when you hook up to a monitor/TV with the capability to play 1080p stuff, you will be outputting at 1080p (with the right settings).
3. No USB 3.0 is a definite negative, especially for a laptop like this, which looks like it could easily last 6-7+ years.
4. See if you can decrease that disk size to lower the price. Then, when you receive it, just remove the drive altogether and replace it with a 7200RPM or SSD and clone the disk over. A 5400RPM drive is grossly insufficient for that system. I wouldn't recommend going with their SSD if they offer one, as you won't know what kind of piece of shit it might be.
Thanks for your reply. Yea, I wanted to get a i7 so it can play 1080p Hi10P vids onto an external screen for 24 hours straight without the laptop blowing up/getting too hot or whatever. I'd be using it for general use too, of course (though, no games, I'm not a gamer)
1. I've seen a 1080p laptop for only $1250 (with my 10% student discount, of course) from Dell. It's got similar specs to the Lenovo laptop but 6GB RAM instead of 8. But, being a student, $250 more is a lot of money.
2. Yup, I know, but I would also be watching stuff on the laptop, as well as via my TV. Don't want to get a new laptop just so I can have a home media player. Also, my Access based anime database which I frequently use to record my collection and find info about what versions of anime I have what resolutions and formats, where I have stored it etc was designed for a 1080p screen and is annoying to use on a lower res.
3. I honestly do not care about having no USB 3.0. Most of my transferal is done via my gigabit Ethernet network. My laptop would probably not be storing anything itself, except for word docs etc. Even when watching animu, it would be reading the file from my main computer through the network, or when I'm on holiday through external hard drives that aren't USB 3.0 anyway.
4. I agree with this. However, if I want all the other specs, the disc size cannot be reduced for the Lenovo laptop.
On the point of downgrading the laptop's CPU, getting an i5 Thinkpad instead would only cost $50 less (with a much smaller screen bleh). I could go with another laptop company, I suppose, but Lenovo's prices are cheaper so I'd be paying the same or not much less for lower specs anyway.
But, if you do have any other suggestions for a suitable laptop please link me. Australia sites only please

Hey all,
I've been using a WDTV player for a while to play anime on my TV. However, as you all probably know, subtitles are not rendered properly on these. So I want to get some other kind of thing to play the files correctly. What options are available? Whatever it is, it needs to be able to play a variety of file types at different resolutions and preferably be easily portable.
Cheers!
Glitch
What's the version of your WDTV player?
http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330
This one claims it could play all sorts including subs. How's the PQ of WDTV compared with a dual-core computer?
I am aiming for the same. AMD fusion ITX is quite expensive right now.
If you plan on watching a lot of videos with subtitles, don't get that. It does display SRT, SSA, ASS subs etc but the font size and colour makes reading those subs very taxing. It will only render subs in plain white, no borders. And on large TV's the subs are too small, even on the largest setting. White text + small font = Unreadable subs half the time.
Yo, I already said the WDTV was crap for subs in my original post. So, ya, not going to use one of those.