Yeah I almost pulled the trigger on a Lenovo i7 referb with a GT 540M for about $520 but the 14 inch screen made me hesitate.
there's nothing wrong with 14" as long as it has hdmi or vga to hook up to a larger LCD screen to get around that. The 14" size is actually an advantage ( esp. if the resolution is higher than 1366x768); it's more portable when carrying it around everywhere (classroom, work, library, etc.). That would have been a fine notebook with the i7 quad core cpu and good graphics gt540m. price is ok too. For all these features - a good deal no matter if it's last years tech.