This product was not "discontinued" and still is one of the most popular laptops in the US. I grabbed myself an SLI model with the DVD R/W and 16GB SSD. Let me give you a gist:
Pros:
Price - Competing models for such good configurations are very expensive.
Build Quality - The quality is superior and it is not just a shitty looking laptop with high specs. Lid is made up of brushed aluminium and is angular giving it a premium look. The keys’ red rim and speakers’ red highlighted grille downright scream for games.
Future-proofed - The mSATA port can be replaced anytime and installed with a higher SSD which can be used as a memory drive and not only as cache when manually installed. Ultrabay can be upgraded later on for more graphics juice.
Screen - Beautiful Full HD Display. Finally moving on from the 1366x768 pixels on almost all laptops 1080p really is breathtaking.
Quiet - Very low noise levels compared to any high end laptop.
Graphics- GT650M has one of the best benchmarks without the SLI configurations itself. Almost 90% of the game are played in ultra high end graphics with good FPS. New Y500s are getting upgraded to 750M. SLI config for it may come out in future.
Cons:
SLI config - Please note that the SLI config comes with a huge disadvantage. Intel 4000 HD Graphics is completely disabled from stock configuration. Unless you flash your BIOS( not recommended for beginners) to a custom config you cannot use it. This is very important because without that the WiDi feature cannot be used(and was not advertised when this issue was found). This means that there is not Optimus technology also. Optimus technology allows Intel to switch between the graphics card and the integrated graphics(shared with RAM) depending on the fps it experiences. This means the battery has to always support the voltage of the video card causing the battery life to be same even when the usage is minimal. Hence go for this laptop only if you are going to game.
Other Doubts:
The touchpad issue is history. it was a driver issue where people used to install a new synaptics driver and disable a multi-touch feature that was causing an issue. You can get the link very easily if you research. But I have seen no complaints by the newer customers and I myself don’t have any. Assuming you will be gaming, touchpad is used rarely.
I would not entertain any other review about y500 overheating or being very heavy. Do your research. You are not buying an ultrabook with a low powered processor. If you are buying this laptop you will be a good judge of what is to be expected in a gaming laptop. It does not have any overheating issue and is below average weight for gaming laptops in this category.
I want customers to note that almost all of the high end laptops do come with the Optimus technology. if you are ready to sacrifice that for powerful dual SLI and lower battery life this is a wonderful laptop.