Build Quality and Design

The Y410's design is much more stylish when compared to their ThinkPad cousins, which isn't such a far stretch considering the ThinkPad design has remain unchanged since the 90s. To be honest at first glance, the Y410 when closed isn't much to look at. It has a pretty plain look and the silvery grey outer colour doesn't really shout hip more than it shouts boring. What's more, since the Y410 is made out of plastic, the silvery grey finishing, doesn't really make it look stylish as it makes it look somewhat cheap.  However once the top is open, the Y410 looks much better, with its dark grey colouring mixed in with a bit of black. The colour scheme almost makes it look professional. Although the Y410 is made of plastic, I found that its build quality was still quite good. There was little to no flexing when I pressed on it, except maybe near the palm rest that has the PCMCIA slot below it.  

One aspect of the y410's design that I did like was it optical drive. Lenovo opted for a slot in optical drive instead of your usual sliding drive which made using the notebook a bit much more fun. However do note that slot in drives usually give some problem should your CD or DVDs get stuck in there, though I never had that problem while using the Y410.

As the Y410 is being touted as a consumer, multimedia notebook, Lenovo has given the notebook media buttons that oddly enough is situated at the back top of the notebook. On top of the media buttons, the Y410 comes with the Shuttle Center navigation buttons that are situated on the right hand side of the notebook. This shuttle center button accesses Lenovo Shuttle Centre interface which is basically a fancy way to access the multimedia content. Most of you might not find this particular feature interesting except for maybe the initial novelty of it. However, it would have been much better if Lenovo provided a small remote instead, which would have been more in tune with the Y410's entertainment functions.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Y410's Keyboard follows a standard notebook keyboard layout and what I liked about it was the solid and responsive feeling the keys gave while typing on it. Lenovo also made the keyboard characters slightly bigger than those in most notebooks so even an almost blind person could read the keys. And for those of you who are unfortunate enough to be hit but constant PC crashes, Lenovo has added a scaled down version of their ThinkVantage recovery system into the Y410 which can be activated with their OneTouch key.

As for the touchpad, it was quite responsive smooth to use.  As the touchpad was recessed, I my palms rarely touched it to cause accidental cursor movements. You could even deactivate the touchpad should you be more of a mouse person.

Ports and Connectivity

The Y410 comes with the usual set of ports and connections that you'd expect in a notebook (3 USBs, 1 Firewire, 1 VGA, 1 S-Video, Microphone and Headphones, LAN and 56K, Multi Card Reader and PCMCIA slot).  All the ports are situated at the left and right side of the notebook with the VGA port located right at the back of the notebook. Lenovo seemed kind of stingy with only three USB ports given on the Y410, as most notebooks give at least four.