[yellowapple]

"Why are the Ideapads terrible?"

They're consumer models, and the ones most likely to be affected by Lenovo's malware shenanigans. Most "PC" OEMs tend to build their business lines better than their consumer lines, and Lenovo's no exception. The Thinkpad line also has a reputation of being friendlier to non-Windows operating systems in general (they're the most-recommended for OpenBSD, for example), while the Ideapad line very much does not.

"Why get a Developer Edition?"

Because they're designed with Linux compatibility in mind, from what I understand.