Setting up Lenovo Y50 Ultimate edition

My friend asked me to set up a new Lenovo Y50 for her by wiping off Windows 8.1 and installing Windows 7 Ultimate edition on it.  I always don't understand all the hate toward Windows 8.1, but that's her choice and so I just honored it.

My first impression about the machine is that it's freaking fast.  It's as fast as my Dell Precision M6600, which has a Intel Core i7-2920XM CPU at 2.50Hz.  This Y50 has Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU with 2.40Hz, and the performance is definitely solid.  However, I am pretty disappointed by the screen.  It looks dim, bad viewable angle compare with all my other laptops and tablets.  I would definitely choose Yoga Pro 2 or even ThinkPad Yoga if I were my friend.  But then, again, different people have different priority.

My another complain about this Y50 is the keyboard arrangement, particularly the direction keys.  They arrange the direction here in a way that it's so easy to accidentally hit on them.  Also, battery life also not good.  Fully charge only gives me less than 3 hours of battery.  Hope she doesn't find it irritating.

So I was trying to wipe the computer clean by booting a Windows 7 DVD disc, but was failed.  Eventually I found out that I need to go to the BIOS (pressing F12) and change the boot setting to Legacy instead of the default one.  I also turned off the secure bootup.  With that I was able to boot up my Windows 7 Ultimate disc and install Windows 7 on it.

Setting up hardware driver is yet another challenge.  The drivers that comes with the machine seems to be designed for Windows 8.  So I had to go to Lenovo web site to seek for explicit drivers for Windows 7.  Eventually I had all driver installed, and with that, my job is done.