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Going, Going, Gone: IBM Sells PC Group To Lenovo
It was rumored before, but now, as Rick Zeman writes, "It's official: According to news.com, IBM has sold their PC business in a complex arrangement where, 'under the deal, IBM will keep an 18.9 percent stake in Levono. Lenovo will pay $1.25 billion for the IBM PC unit and assume debt, which will bring the total cost to $1.75 billion. Lenovo will pay roughtly $650 million in cash and $600 million in securities.' Plus, Lenovo will be able to use the IBM and Think names for 5 years."
I can't wait for my Lenovo-e-pad
That's a damn expensive IBM PC unit. The clones are a lot cheaper, people.
bye bye quality ;(
I just hope this isn't the end of an era :(
We all know ThinkPads were for old people anyway.
RTFA,
RTFPA
RTFCOBA.
Dumbass.
IBM is focusing on servers and customer services. Their PC business has been floundering for a while now.
Reuter's story on this is here.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Does anyone know anything about levono? I love my thinkpad and would hate for the new ones over the years to fall off in quality.
Man I hope the quality of IBM Thinkpads doesn't drop. Thinkpads are (in my opinion) the best laptops you can buy.
Does the PC sell include workstations? I have been looking for information but all I hear is PC. The loss of the Thinkpad is terible though, IBM was the only comany I know that made a damn decent laptop which would physically last more than 3 years.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Wow, hard to think the IBM Thinkpad I'm typing on now will be made by the Wal-Mart of computer manufacturers. The FA mentions that Lenovo doesn't spend much on R&D, doubtful they would make drives that survive the 6' fall IBMs do. In my circles, IBM laptops are known as "expensive", "tought", and "secure". Especially since many of them come with BIOS locked biometrics. Sad to see this happen, but I guess the PC market is going commododity.
Makes me wonder what my school, University of Ontario Institure for Technology, will be doing considering they use ThinkPads exclusively
This is not the greatest
Gee, I guess that whole PS/2 thing WAS a bad idea after all........
I only buy thinkpads for my own use... I like em better than anything else and they've been very stable and durable for me.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Yeah, they are only an extremely distant third to Dell and Compaq. Their Power5-based servers are proving to be extremely profitable. And the IBM CPU based game consoles coming up will help matters greatly.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
IBM reps will be exhibiting and speaking at the Southern California Linux Expo on February 12th and 13th 2005.
My Thinkpad's now a Chinkpad?
.. i'm going to get modded troll .. I'm not racist or anything .. I'm asian myself.. so I couldnt help but think it was funny!
.. hopefully the chinese can make do well with this. Thinkpads really rock.
.. question is .. can they sustain the momentum .. if they can really keep this up for 30 to 40 years .. that would rock. I think it's better for the world overall to have powerful economic engines developing goods and services to improve overall quality of life. I don't buy the BS argument that there's a fixed number of jobs .. when every person in the world has everything they need that's when you have a market with no demand .. we're nowhere near that point ..meaning there's still goods and services that can be traded amongst people. With globalization, the number (not just percentage btw) of people living in poverty has reduced dramatically over the last decade. (Google for that recent study).
Ok Ok
Anyway
China is coming up really fast
The most interesting bizarre theory behind some of this was posed at The Register. They claim that IBM may be interested in buying or allying with Apple. It makes some sense, Apple are certainly one of the big vendors for IBM's Power chips, and it would give them a nice UNIX desktop to push, while giving Apple a little more "corporate credibility" and give them a chance to creep into the business desktop market more.
Realistically though, I just don't quite see it. I don't think Apple could quite take the image hit that being owned by IBM would entail, nor do I think the gains would really suit IBM that well. Perhaps some sort of closer alliance may result, but I would expect that to be about as far as things go. Still, and interesting but of completely wild speculation.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
In the short term I guess using the IBM and Thinkpad name will help them out but in the long term they aren't going to do very well if they don't get people to remember their name with the IBM quality. On a side note I hope that IBM really does merge with Apple because after this deal I think I am not going to get another Thinkpad and start buying Powerbooks instead.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
Looks like Steve Jobs will have to get a new laptop
I wonder what kind he'll choose?
Their Power5-based servers are proving to be extremely profitable. And the IBM CPU based game consoles coming up will help matters greatly.
Is IBM's microprocessor division a part of the PC division? I was under the impression that they were seperate entities.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
In China, the word "Lenovo" is advertised in pronounciation ['len'nouvou], which sounds incorrect to me. I think the brand should be changed to 'Lennovo' in order to reflect the advertised sounding.
And I won't be the last to say that this is an end to an era, at least for the thinkpad series. Stories of tech confrences and the sea of black notebooks are legendary.
I am posistive the design will stay the same. I have a first generation thinkpad and its identical to the new ones except its about 2 inches thicker. The same parts will go in and the same subtle changes like the improved trackpoint will appear. The only think this will cause is lower prices. I understand the jacked up prices on desktops servers but the thinkpads need to come down a little. With Leveno in charge maybe they will design the ultimate HOME laptop like every other company out there, IBM has kept the line too business oriented. Give me my 128mb Graphics Thinkpad! (I need to play warcraft in various locations lol) I currently play on a dell inspiron 1100 with 64 mb shared, 256 total in machine and a 2ghz celeron processor. Long story short its slowly making me sterile its sooo hot. Thinkpads are always nice a cool, well more cool anyway. Ill stop rambling now.
...IBM will keep an 18.9 percent stake in Levono. Lenovo will pay...
I was going to make a smart alec remark, but the first return on a Google search of Levono leads to a site for a Lenovo product.
eye bee em
Who cares about cars, TV's, VCR's, DVD Players,
telephones, electronics being offshored ? In fact let's encourage this even more: after all this leads to cheaper prices for consumers.
Of course, IT jobs are different. They require mad skillz. A factory can be built overnight -- all you need is a few billion dollards. Programming requires years and years of study and cannot be done by say, teenagers.
So when IT jobs are offshored, we must scream and shout and form unions. Indian workers are being exploited. We cannot afford to loose our jobs.
Manufacturing is cool though. It's cool, It's cool. Everyone benefits ! (those who loose their jobs are blue collar workers and well, they can
be safely ignored).
I don't know.
Who's on first, and What's the name of the guy on second?
(Sorry, couldn't help the Abbot and Costello reference.)
We've been reevaluating our desktop vendor of choice lately. Most of them are basically commodities at this point, but even though I don't usually have any kind of attachment to a particular vendor, I can't see buying PCs from a Chinese-owned IBM... yeah, I know everything inside most PCs says Made in China, but...
I can see how this will put IBM in quite a different position with regards to its relationship with Microsoft... while I'm sure that their x86 servers will still be available with Windows, we're looking at a completely different scale of total revenue IBM will be "forced" into with Microsoft, and perhaps an ability to wean themselves off Windows and focus more on AIX and Novell (err, I mean SuSE) Linux.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
With the Dragon chip
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
I've been around the business world for a while now (25+ years) and this just doesn't seem right. I have bought businesses, been working for businesses that got bought etc - and deals like this take 6 months to a year minimum. It seems like it was last week that the news read 'IBM has decided to sell'. Was that story completely off timing or is there something else going on?
Anyone know the inside scoop? Assuming it was really 6 months ago IBM started shopping for a buyer there has to be a lot more to the story.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
This would give them a $50-75 cost disadvantage versus everyone else. Now they can support Linux 100% and leverage the Power / grid architecture into other areas. Incl. making reference designs available to OEMs
Help fight continental drift.
IBM's PC's have been apalling for years (at least in the australian market)
But none of the big OEM's are good, simply beacuse they're big enough to customise the hardware, and they don't do that to make it better, they do it to make it cheaper.
My employer buys from local beige box OEM's these days. This has two effects:
1) Quality known brand components
2) If there's a problem we can take the box to the shop, no messing around with call centres and freight services.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Yes, IBM mechanical design was top notch. While I've only been lucky enough to own two thinkpads, both were tanks, both are more than five years old and both still work great. The 90 MHz Pentium model with 16 MB of RAM may be obsolete by now, but I still use it and think it will one day make a nice wireless router. My PII runs Debian excellently and I use it every day. At work, thinkpads survived Bill the truck driver who's favorite tool was a mallet. I've seen dozens of models with two or three major forms and all are carefully overbuilt without being big or heavy. At the same time, I've seen winbooks the same age with broken shells that are excruciating to work take apart and put back together.
IBM also has excellent owner and repair manuals online as PDFs. They tell you exactly how to operate and repair the thing. I've downloaded mine and will burn them to CD for whoever I give or sell them to.
The day I get want more is a long way off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The 21st century will belong to the Chinese. In 20 years time, the only high paying job an American woman will be able to get will be as a bed slave for her inscrutable Oriental masters. The White House will become the People's Regional Administration Center. Mandarin will replace Spanish and Ebonics as the official language of the United States.
There are of course advantages. Obesity will disappear in America, as even the most skilled slave of the Middle Kingdom will be on the breadline. Politics will become unnecessary. Crime will be solved with re-education camps, and the church-state problem will disappear with the mass execution of all theists.
Apple's already separated things out nicely so that things like the iPod and the Airport Express are in their own division. And unlike the hardware division, the iPods have amazing market share.
They've also been trying to increase their revenue from software (frequent releases of OS X, iLife, pro software like Final Cut).
If Apple's no longer a hardware company, who knows, maybe they might be more willing to ship OS X for other platforms.
Stranger things have happened.
Anyone think the new company will maintain the high standard IBM set? Yes, I know about the current Thinkpad debacle but I have bought 6 in the past 2 months and my users all agree on the superior build quality, especiailly compared to the ubiquitous Dells. I'm not sayin Dells are that bad but in laptop build quality, the Dells lag behind IBM, Apple, and Toshiba noticeably.
This guy is way out there
Buy Apple stock now.
IBM is now fully committed to the PowerPC platform.
man thats going to suck since i just bought a t42 tw o months ago, i'll have to always explain it's not a piece of shit since it was from before all this bullshit. serously, my thinkpad is the finest computer i've ever owned, and it's a shame to see this kind of thing happen. i mean what other good laptops are there to chose from anymore? i'll never buy a gateway, hp/compaq, sony (well...), or some noname brand. guess i'll have to go back to ibooks (which might not be so bad).
Did an American company actually get the Chinese to pay for intellectual property?
That would be particularly interesting. In particular, IBM might start running out some low-end Macs to compete with PCs.
I don't at all expect that to happen, but it would be interesting.
IBM has some quality, sturdy laptops that are virtually unbreakable. There is no better quality than an IBM laptop. Plus they have the fantastic trackpoint rather than silly touchpads. On the other hand, getting anything very recent with them is difficult. The fastest processors and best video boards are impossible to find. On the other hand, a company like Dell comes out with new models every month or two with faster processors and newer video boards and features.... This usually means crappy buggy quality. Generally, IBM is great for business, but can't cut it in the home/home-business markets. -M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Geez. You know someone got tossed into the Gorge Of Eternal Peril before the ink dried on that one.
Add one more company and you have a huge game of three card monte.
--- Ban humanity.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess this leaves only Toshiba as a viable option for notebooks, at least for those of us traveling internationally.
IBM and Toshiba were the only companies with decent international notebook warranty support, in my experience.
I would love to be pleasantly surprised and have Levono continue IBM's international service, but unless they can use IBM's service network I don't see much hope. I am not holding my breath.
Ian
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
I don't know how it works in the US, but I know we're still burning stockpiles of food here in EU. Gotta love capitalism.
It's time for the other half of this rumor to come true. I'd love to see Apple and IBM do the impossible and join forces.
Linux and BSD from major companies, with the potential to unite the hippies and the businessmen. The programmers and the grandfathers (and the grandfathers who happen to be programmers).
This could be a beautiful thing. Let's just hope it isn't simply another case of an American company selling out to the Reds. Let's face it, it will be much more fun if it's a case of two of our favorite companies uniting to defeat the evil that is Microsoft.
(Hey, can Novell jump in this too?)
My school has a major contract with IBM, which I think we just renewed this year or last. This leaves me wondering what's going to happen now, since we buy several thousand IBM ThinkPads annually (for incoming freshman and replacements for the juniors... and professors, every other year). I certainly hope that the ThinkPad line won't suddenly plummet in quality with this move and leave us stuck with junk computers. And predictions with regards to quality here?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Time to buy your replacement Thinkpad, before quality drops like no tomorrow. My experience dealing with Chinese corporations is that they are penny pinching low paid operations whose quality is kept in check only by the demands of the western corporations that contract work out to them in the first palce.
Lenovo has almost no R&D and corporate policies of paying their employess $0.25 an hour. Will they have the patience to pay the US based thinkpad designers $100K a year and let them show late to work? or will they give them copies of Chairman Mao's red book and tell them to work 10 hours a day for minimum wage? As I said before my experience suggest the latter is the likelier scenario.
That would be like Cray selling off their supercomputer division. Apple is primarily a hardware company, and OSX is just icing on the cake.
the thing about shipping OS X for other platforms is that it would be a mess. all design and control things aside, Apple makes the whole widget and has a close relationship with most all of the 3rd party vendors. by designing the hardware and software and having control over components, Apple can make a product that is not really possible with M$ products.
watch someone do a clean install of a M$ box and a Mac..... the Mac is cake partially because most of the drivers are in the OS already, and the OS only has to run on a fixed number of machines that can be easily tested in the lab before the OS ships.
I live near the IBM PC Division Headquarters (RTP North Carolina). On the news the General Manager of that division (Fran Somebody) said that since there was very little overlap between the two companies that most of the current employees will remain on. She went on to say that her and her entire management team would remain. Hopefully this bodes well for the quality.. at least in the short term until its decided where money could be saved at. I would suspect that eventually those jobs would be moved overseas where the labor is cheaper. The lady also said that the deal wouldnt be final until 2Q 2005.
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
Except, of course, for all of those x86 based machines in their server line.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
or will it go down in history as a bigger flop than the new Coke?
Will people continue to purchase IBM desktop computers and laptops if they know IBM will no longer be the company behind the name?
Will IBM be reducing the volume of CPUs and other components they will be purchasing and thus lose some of the opportunity for future influence and input on future processor design and technology destined for the consumer and business desktop markets?
Actually I'm not entirely certain what it is that IBM has sold seeing that its computers and laptops are made by other companies including some in China. In fact the IBM servers we bought (X330, X335, others) had "Made in China" stickers plastered all over the internal components and chassis pieces. I suppose the logic of this sale will become obvious in the time to come however I still see it as a potential mistake by a misguided manager or group of managers.
1. Merges divisions A and B to create "synergy."
2. Split the AB divison to improve "focus."
3. Repeat steps 1 through 3.
Most of the computer components you use are ALREADY made in China, if you didn't realize this already. What's the difference of having a different frontend when the products you get are still one and the same?
Call me a paranoid tinfoil fetishist, but is no one else concerned about the fact that one of the leading brands of business laptop is going to be manufactured by a company in a dictatorship with a long history of industrial espionage and IP theft?
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
Anyway, it's a funny world. Low-margin commodity businesses are good for the people and companies that get to buy the cheap commodities, but bad for the companies that have to produce the commodities and suffer from the competition. Stock price uber alles, you know.
However once someone gains solid control of the commodity market, then heaven help everyone, but that's long-term thinking, and very out of fashion.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Apple was primarily a hardware company. But as the last quarter's results show, and as innumerable analysts have speculated, Apple is more-and-more becoming an iPod company.
Ok, yeah it's a bit of a long shot. But not as long as it was four years ago.
And neither Toshiba's nor IBM's machines run BSD/OS X/Linux as stylish as Apple!
See http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/hardware.html
i can't wait to get a workstation that doubles as a wok and spits out eggrolls i will call it RICE STATION!!!!
For what it's worth, I have a Presario 2500 series that up until a few weeks ago was running Debian - I switched back to Windows for games and Photoshop as CS runs like crap under CrossOver, and I've never had a single problem with the Compaq hardware.
I know all the scare-stories to do with Compaq laptops, but I've had mine for well over a year now and it's survived more than enough for me to be able to recommend it to anyone out there who wants a solid notebook. This thing's taken falls off of tables two or three times and shown no ill-effects when my old Toshiba would fall apart if you looked at it funny. The real problem with Compaq laptops is the software, and the way they seem intent on looping functions that could be dealt with perfectly well by the hardware back through annoying, buggy software apps, and their customised OEM version of XP SP1 has always been very prone to crashing (I know it can't be the hardware as Debian and Windows 2000 both ran fine on it). Seriously, if you're scared off of Compaq laptops by scare-stories, they're out of date, and I'd seriously suggest you try one, provided you're not going to keep the pre-installed XP - that thing's more trouble than it's worth.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Does it lun Linux?
Having seen so many hardware problems, I will never consider using a Dell, Sony, and even Toshiba. I just got the T42, but I'm guessing I won't be using Thinkpads in the future because of this. I have used the Acer Travelmates http://www.acer.com/, and they're actually quite nice. They need to have more models with XVGA or SVGA screens though.
Go here for a look at some of lenovo's own notebooks. While they don't look terrible, I don't think anything could truly replace my T40. Also, does anyone know about lenovo's laptop linux compatibilty? It's always been nice to know that thinkpads have better than average linux support.
d uc t_catalog.asp?catalogid=114
http://appserver.lenovo.com/product/channel/pro
Arg...funny...politically incorrect...but funny...must not think about it...but very funny...juveline...but so on target....arg! Damn, this is gonna stick in my head forever. I'll never be able to look at think pad and not think "chinkpad, heh, heh".
They cradled the pc from the beginning, the reseached much of the technology we take for granted in todays computers, they built many of the best PC products.
Im sure IBM will continue their great work in the field of communication technology and keep releaseing great products, but it still sad to see one of their components responsible for part of the Information ages to be redistributed. Even if your some one who never bought one of thier products the fact that you are using a PC is part because of them. They held down the mac, conjured Microsoft's rise and for that we thank them
RIP, IBM (its PC section at least)
i guess this is sorta an end to an era.
BTW, keep up the work on quntum computers IBM
In view of recent US dollar instability, it looks like Lenovo (biggest pc manufacturer in China) is reducing dollar exposure while acquiring well marketed brand thus deriving instant legitimacy with business customers. Question nobody seems to ask: what happens to IBM and Think trade marks after 5 years?
There's something about being able to sell a brand that REALLY makes me cringe, I mean the whole point is supposed to be an assurance of quality gained over time.
But if you can just sell it like any other commodity then it reveals the new evil nature of branding and consumer recognition, marketting.
It's especially scary with computers, where problems usually result in total failure. Statistics are usually only compiled by the companies and only reflect people who actually report problems.
Warranties are on the upswing and reliability is in the crapper, sigh.
Though the laptops have been good in rep for a while, this now means IBM is really gone from the public PC market.
After the trash - er, - TRS-80s, IBM did it's thing in the PC market and looked unbeatable, although a little tramp didn't help much. Were they the first with beige cases? If they were they should have pattented it! (just kidding)
But they essentially left the desktop business decades ago as far as I'm concerned. But still they had a laptop business and that felt good for some reason. Nostalgia, I guess. But the laptops were good.
Now they're gone, and despite all the fun and pain I've had with their pcs, or maybe because of it, I will miss them.
Probably a safer long term bet than USD
All your IBMs are belong to Chinese!!!!
The move is more significant than one might perceive.
they're planning to gain a stronghold in desktop market by deploying linux on their power processors.
In 2005-2006 there will be an allout war between MS and Sony, MS and IBM, nVidia vs ATI, Windows vs linux, Intel/AMD vs IBM.
IBM will be the major beneficient.
For consumers however, its very positive.
I honestly don't think this has anything to do with merging with Apple (a stupid rumour) or for that matter, even leveraging Linux over Windows. It's really just shedding an expensive division, saving money and increasing profitability.
It's explained within the first page of the article:
"If it goes through, the deal would allow IBM to continue its shift from selling so-called commodity products toward selling services, software and high-end computers. Although it helped make PCs a global phenomenon, IBM makes little profit from PCs and often loses money, despite the fact that it's an $11 billion business for the company."
IBM's profits come from consulting and integration services, not from selling desktop machines. The price of Windows, Linux or otherwise, or what strategy they push on the desktop is not a big deal in this case.
What I think it comes down to is they're holding onto a division that is building commodity boxes and that's a tough game with competition like Dell. With ODM's and OEM's doing more and more of the design work these days, really all IBM needs is to pitch the stuff, which isn't affected by the sale of this division. The consulting and sales groups already push the hardware in major deals.
If you read the article, the market is slowing:
"That period will see average annual unit shipments slow to 5.7 percent and revenue growth subside to 2 percent, Gartner predicted."
Hence, you're not going to see any more profits from an area which already has razor thin margins. Give the business to the Chinese, since they know how to reduce costs. The biggest problem Asian manufacturers have today is not engineering skill or manufacturing capability. It's branding and marketing. Lenovo bought the IBM brand for five years and it's worth every penny.
It's pretty obvious the American part of the company will be cut, probably because they're expensive:
"It is going to take quite a long time to consummate, and the only way I see this running properly is that if a lot of blood is shed at IBM PC."
The desktops are already made and built by a Chinese firm (as noted in the article) while the money in laptops is made by large corporate sales contracts, not individual units.
In the end, I think it's just getting rid of an unprofitable part of the business, not some super strategic technology move.
It's official: According to news.com, IBM has sold their PC business...
I guess they're looking to focus on that lucrative mainframe business at last!
Rapidly approaching the Zener knee...
This seems to me, as a long time Thinkpad owner to be sad. IBM always used to produce the best products by a large margin, but the quality seems to be falling already. For example, they've lost the confidence to ship their best trackpoint configuration - one is compelled to purchase a laptop including the ghastful touchpad, and with the buttons in a row rather than 2+1 (therefore making it impossible to have both emulated 3rd button + emulated scroll wheel).
With the amount of risk involved in this transaction (and being that IBM is such an advocate for consulting), I am sure IBM has run this through external management consulting teams on this one. That means that this is an extremely calculated financial move that has been crunched again and again and again...
I can only see this as the beginnings of a well thought out business plan, whether that be PowerPC or security etc... and hardly as simply an attempt for $$$.
This is really sad. I can't believe they sold out. It's just hard to believe.
Didn't this happen with cameras, cars, stereos and TVs, when Japan was the up & coming East Asian country? America never recovered. We did move into computers, but haven't owned that industry for a while. The next wave is mobile phones, but China is already the "outsource" for that. Have we hit the wall?
--
make install -not war
Well, IBM did this with Lexmark ages ago, and it seemed to turn out OK. However, selling off a core business to a commodity box-builder may be a little different. Everyone has mentioned the ThinkPad...it would totally suck if this new company WalMart-ized the design to save a few bucks. ThinkPads are legend for their reliability. I still have an old Pentium 60 somewhere in the lab at work (running OS/2, believe it or not.)
:)
Lots of companies are selling off xore pieces of their business to "focus on services." It's a fad, just like the whole dotcom thing, and (hopefully) the outsourcing wave. True, manufacturing in the US is completely impossible with foriegn competition. Also, PCs are definitely a commodity now. IBM's desktop machines haven't been anything special lately, but some of them have neat case designs. However, I think some companies will look back in a few years and wish they hadn't cashed out of the "acutally producing physical things" market.
There's no doubt that IBM has tons of other stuff it's producing...software, servers, mainframes, POS systems, etc. But I'd hate to see them become another one of the buzzword-compliant consulting firms. There are only so many clients left to employ fresh college graduates as "expert" SAP and PeopleSoft deployment project managers.
IBM stopped making personal computer before Apple. I'm sure there's some kind of ironic victory here somewhere...
I love their laptops. But the hard drives they put in them are failing pieces of junk. They re-brand Hitachi drives as there own. They are better off not even calling them IBM drives. Since this is a Chinese company I'm sure they will follow suit and keep using shitty hard drives. If they would just use Seagate drives that cost $20-30 more they would save so much money not having to RMA all the dead drives. I probably replace 10-20 drives a year myself. I work on a team of 7 people in a company with about 300 IBM laptops. There is no way the savings in buying crappy drives increases your profit margin.
Losers whine about doing their best
Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen!
Over the last 2 years we've adopted IBM as our computer vendor. The hardware is super tough, and support is really good (read: not out of country). So now that IBM is selling (especially to Lenovo), who is the best PC manufacturer left. Gateway? Hah! Seems like Dell and HP are the only 2 major players.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
Thank god, its about time. Our profit sharing has been next to nothing for years due to reluctancy of IBM executives drop these guys sooner.
Im sick of my division (global services) having to make up for the crap these folks have delt out to the rest of IBM.
Hopefully I'll actually get that 10% bonus they promised me when I was recruited.
- Oh yea!
All hail de Raadt.
PS: And no, I wouldn't want a PRC outfit supplying any DOD contracts.
Who the Eff is Lenovo? Or Levono for that matter (it's spelled both ways in the post.)
Lousy facepalm.
IBM is not selling its research division. In acutality it spends a great deal on research. It boasts the linkage between its consulting practice (BCS) with top notch research facilities (IBM Research) through the "on demand" methodology. To date, there isn't an existing consulting company that has the same connections. Deloitte Consulting, BearingPoint, Accenture, and Cap Gemini all have no equivalent to the IBM Research branch. Don't give up on big blue yet. They are simply moving into the "idea economy" full steam.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
"Whose line is it anyway?"
Shared a platform with a Mitsubishi Lancer (Carisma in Europe where it was sold). New one shares a platform with the Mazda 3.
Care to restate your thesis?
...IBM has a different platform in mind?
The Penguin Producer
Just realize this deal was negotiated a while ago, we are just finding out now. They often claim oh we knew nothing. It must be kept from the market
Why does the Chinese ownership of the company matter, as long as the products have the same quality and support that IBM provided ?
Saying the products won't be the same quality just because the company is Chinese owned is like saying all terrorists are Arabs ... which suggests that Timothy McVeigh must have been one of those rare albino Arabs.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
A NY Times article makes the point that an important factor in this deal was IBM's desire to better position itself in China. I thought it was kind of interesting that the chief executive of Lenovo will be Stephen M. Ward Jr., currently an I.B.M. senior vice president in charge of the PC business. Lenovo's current chief and president, Yang Yuanqing, will become Lenovo's chairman.
Wow, too bad their "system builder" page doesn't render properly (at all) under firefox. I had to use IE just to see the available options. They look nice, but they are gamer systems. No company is going to buy their boxes there. Most companies don't care what color their computer is, they just want a good price and good support.
I was hoing that IBM stocks would go up but it looks like the stock market isnt too keen about this sale. stocks are down a few points for IBM
IBM has handed 6% of the market for PC's to a Chinese company. HP and Dell will be hurt bad by this move. They will be forced to brutalize their workers just like the Chinese companies; otherwise, HP and Dell will be priced out of the market.
Okay first off iwan't to say i am a huge IBM fan. Still love my 4 pound PIII 500 super upgraded IBM Think 570e!!! 3 years old and still looks and feels like new.
That said how much is quality worth. I would pay $100-200 more for the IBM quality versus the HP or Dell quality, but nothing more. Also seeing the recent trend of PC's more than doubling in power every year and prices of the newest 5" laptops from Dell/HP @ less than 1000 IMO i would not pay more than $100 today for the same feature set but IBM Quality!!!Once PC's drop to $750, then not more than $75, etc, etc, etc
Your sig (just because you're schizophrenic doesn't mean they aren't out to get you) needs to say 'paranoid', not 'schizophrenic'. Not all people with schizophrenia are paranoid, and not everyone who's paranoid is necessarily schizophrenic.
Look out!
IBM Thinkpads were the only top-tier notebook in the US, and now all thats left that I would like is an Apple iBook.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I really don't understand what you're saying.
Let us hope they will not end up with a poorly written contract, written in Chinese...
a $500 laptop that can only be used for two years. a $2000 laptop that can be used for five years. which one do you like?
That they blew their money. As in "Big Blew"? ...ugh. That one hurt me as much as it hurt you. Sorry.
Someone had to do it.
what is it exactly that ibm does now???...
the name has been synonymous with pc's for so long...
what's really interesting is that ibm compatible may son mean compatible with their 64-bit powerpc cell processer and actually won't be ibm (past 20 years of production) compatible...
Get your torrents...
As a person that chooses which computers to buy for a company, yeah, these are a hard sell. But elements of them aren't. If their water cooling system is quieter than normal fans, that's a plus. I'm already ordering noise reduction power supplies in our whiteboxes. If they allow you to overclock a CPU and get more value out of it, that's a plus. I've already considered overclocking our older PCs allow them to continue being a useful part of the company.
Are Apple water cooling and overclocking? I seem to remember they're doing at least water (or liquid) cooling in some of the new models... Even the well established PC name-brands ignore technology trends like this at considerable risk.
....that I have all 640K of RAM installed in my IBM PC Convertible, then, if things are shutting down there...
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Apple
They're the new (supposedly) English language division of Legend. By the looks of their machines, IBM has now officialy sold their soul for the Almighty Dollar.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Now we all need to download new drivers from www.thinkpad.cn...
-- Just add water!
Wait a sec, what's this sticker on my 12" Al Powerbook? And its battery, and the power adapter, and -gasp- the VGA dongle!?
"Designed in Cupertino. Made in China"
I certainly hope that Lenovo will be able to deliver quality laptops in the future. IBM ThinkPads are the only PC laptops I really like. I've tried a lot of other laptops and they just do not compare to the ThinkPads for professional use.
If Lenovo doesn't keep up quality I hope Apple will fix their laptops.
Apple are close to making decent laptops, but the attention to functional detail is still not quite up to par.
For instance, their keyboards have bad layouts What's up with the huge capslock and the miniscule Enter-key!? Please get some people who have at least looked at a decent keyboard layout before to design your keyboards, Apple. Also, PowerBooks do not have the best key feel. There is something wrong that I can't quite put my finger on -- no pun intended.
Their touchpad and mouse-buttons are also a joke. Come on Apple! Is this your best shot? People are supposed to use these. They are supposed to have some minimal level of ergonomics.
And, of course, they need to get higher resolution screens. I borowed a 17" PowerMac for a while and although most things look OK, it could do with higher resolution.
Apple have a good OS now. Far better alternative than going with Windows. For most people. If they could just deliver more performant PowerBooks and iBooks with all the ergonomic issues tended to, they would have a competitive product. Right now they just look cute, but it aren't really all that usable.
(As long as ThinkPads are on the market I am not buying an inferior, from a hardware point of view, PowerBook)
Not sure where you are pulling your numbers from, but if you check http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=IBM&annual and http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT&annual and look at the most recent annual report, IBM had much more revenue ($89 bil vs $37 bil), and slightly more gross profit ($33 bil vs $30 bil), but lower net income ($7.6 bil vs $8.2 bil) meaning that MSFT's margins are much higher.
They killed off pretty much every company/product they ever bought. Name it norton, name it AtGuard and others.
The main problem they have is that they buy a good product and basically hide it behind megabytes of useless multimedia mumbo jumbo so that they cann sell it to joe average, while at the same time the product quality goes down the drain.
Even their own developments usually are not that good. Visual afe was not killed by to few interested customers, Cafe already was bugfree and stabilized and Visual Cafe was rushed out and a bug ridden hell, never really was stabilized and the customers fled until symanted sold the product to another company, which then sold it again...
Alienware. If we can get those guys to install trackpoint mice onto their laptops for us IBMers, we could have the same IBM power we've come to expect, and possibly even more given that with them we have come to expect from IBM...except their recent supid decision to loose graphics cards and go with integrated graphics instead (BOO! My 32mb ATI Mobility 7500 on my A31 which is being reformatted weekly now is better than my new G40s 64mb Intel extreme) I've never minded lugging an 8 pounder to class, nor have I had problems using it on my lap, so how much different can alienware be? (sorry X and T users, Alienware is unfortunately designed as desktop replacements)
Darn, I'm already set on buying a Thinkpad T42 for christmas this year. Well, i just hope the legendary IBM laptop support doesn't go poof next year :/
As another poster mentioned, IBM might have taken this move to free themselves from Microsoft to push unix/Linux wihout being a target of the usual bullying practices.
But it get's really interresting if you take IBM's Cell chip into the equasion. We already specualted that Cell will mostlikely run some sort of Unix, could IBM have dropped their Wintel line in favor of atleast trying to push Cell based workstations and laptops into the highend market?
Ok, now this all makes sense to me. IBM is getting a huge tax writeoff for doing a "cash rich splitt off" as described in MSNBC.com. Basically, it allows them to sell the unit for cash and stock and write off the proceeds. It's a strange loophole designed to allow companies to cheat Uncle Sam in a creative accounting sort of way.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Economist Morris Bechloss offers a more balanced view of the transitioning "post-industrial" manufacturing sector of the United States. You can read his September 24, 2004 article here
it appears to me that just because the buying company is from china, most readers think their product would suck.
i'm old. but i remember back in the 70's when anything "made in japan" meant the product was cheap but not very reliable. that was the time when japan was making cameras, hi-fi equipment, and cars.
30 years later, their cars, toys, and hi-fi equipment are not so laughable anymore.
i'm not so old to remember that back in the 80's, anything "made in china" meant it was cheap and fragile.
does china need another 10 years or "have they arrived" and you just don't want to accept that?
ford used to be the name synonymous to big american reliable car. what's it synonymous with now?
i sig thus i am
shit!
By coincidence, I just ordered what I suspect will now go down in computer history as one of the last "real" ThinkPads -- a R51 for my wife for X-Mas. While I was in the store, the saleswoman did one of the most impressive stunts I have every seen a computer salesperson do: She took the X31 that was on display, held it at the upper edge of the unfolded screen, and presented the machine to me that way. Then she just kind of waved it around in the air, still holding it by the screen's edge...yeah, I was impressed. This was probably the single most important moment for defining my view of IBM products. In fact, I was going take a very, very serious look at the X31 as a replacement for my iBook when it breaks -- but not any more, I guess. Having been in China, I do not want to have any part with a machine that was tested by Chinese quality control.
In a way, this is like the day when HP stopped making RPN calculators and started turning out cheap TI clones: A sad day for geeks in general.
On the other hand, this is a good day for Apple, because it removes the one serious rival for portable computers if you want something that is of higher quality than a Dell or a Toshiba or any of those other brands that all look and run like they were designed by the last engineers of the Soviet Union. Now, the replacement for my iBook when it wears out will be another iBook -- but man, that 12" ThinkPad X31 was cool.
IBM, probably recognizing the difficulties in cross-culture sales, is handing the reins over to a native company -while retaining 18.9 of the stakes-.
Some humble mathematics. .
350 million people in the U.S. versus 1.5 billion people in China. Having 18.9% of the Chinese market is about the same as having access to 80% of the U.S. market. --With two major differences. .
1. No overhead or management headaches, which means on-going income without having to actually work for it.
2. The Chinese market is rising while the U.S. economy is going into decline. This is a clever way to maintain an income in an unsteady economic climate on 'homeland' soil. (As Walmart funnels boatloads of U.S. green backs East, some of it will come back by default by way of computer sales.)
Plus, somebody else mentioned some heavy tax write-off benefits in the short term.
Sounds like a really smart move for IBM; a way to get a free ride on the success of a rising industrial nation which would be hard to access otherwise. --After all, employing cheap Chinese suicide labor in railway manufacture stopped being an easy money venture long ago.
-FL
IBM is a bit of a curate's egg. IBM global services suck ass royally in every conceivable way, but IBM hardware is actually Very Good Indeed - right down to desktop/laptop components. Sure, they all look like they were designed by Darth Vader on an off day but build quality is excellent, and their service is second to none - we've had field users from the UK out in Eastern Europe with a dying Thinkpad, and the UK warranty's covered them getting it fixed abroad by an IBM tech.
We were using their S50 desktops recently and discovered a bug relating to serial comms: their technical third line guys WROTE US A NEW BIOS UPDATE within a week to fix the problem after we sent them a sample peripheral we were having trouble with.
It's a little like HP selling off the printer business: you can't help feeling they're getting rid of some of the things they do best, leaving just service industry components of their business behind.
A few words from it:
This week two leading PC companies announce their intent to create a single global PC powerhouse.
IBM's Personal Computing Division, maker of the IBM ThinkPad® and the world's leader in enterprise PC innovation, will join forces with Lenovo, the most well-known brand in the world's fastest-growing PC marketplace - China.
The result will be a new company, the 3rd largest PC company in the world*, to be headquartered in New York.
Driven by innovation and customer service, this new entity will have the global depth, heritage, and scale to set new standards in the PC industry.
New standards not just for quality, support and cutting-edge innovation, but for value and choice for PC customers around the globe.
Mind that the A31 is a $2000-3000+ machine and the G series is the lowend. If you really wanted to drop bluetooth and wireless, you could have gone for a T42p around $2000-3000 with all the build quality and trimmings not found in the accursed Lenovo line. Given Lenovo's reputation, they might as well just sell G series laptops with the inherent lack found in most Chinese built machines. You'd have to wait about 30 years for Lenovo to even approach the quality of a 701.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
by purchasing IBM's PC Business, Lenovo can combine that with there best of class Chinese restaurant business. Just imagine, you need a new PC, and need to order Kung Pao Chicken, fried rice, and spring rolls for a party and you need it delivered in 30 minutes. Confucious say Lenovo-IBM future very bright and tasty.
I know that if I paid a premium to buy a genuine IBM ThinkPad in 3 or 4 years time, I'd be mightily annoyed to discover it's actually a Levono product that has nothing to do with IBM.
IBM might be allowing Levono to use the names, but will consumers and the courts allow it too?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I'll chime in, my powerbook has gone through 3 power supplies; one actually shorted on the DC line because of the cheap wire thus melting the whole device in a characteristic smelly (toxic?) plume. The battery pack latch of the same powerbook weared off causing it to jam if certain precautions aren't taken. The DVD drive sometimes makes some nasty noises, likely the full-stroke sensor doesn't work and the stepper motor to laser caddy gear skips; it hasn't given the ghost yet but I'm wary of Warner DVDs that tend to trigger this behaviour. Unfortunately the fans are starting to make funny noises. It doesn't suffer from flaky paint but other do and let's not forget the logic board fusses on the iBook and the battery problems of the Al powerbooks. Granted, it'll be 2 years old in 2 weeks and I still enjoy it as the first day (try that on a w2k Dell!) but powerbooks aren't some mithical Andruil, just another mass produced device.
Now, to be on topic: all these problems can be eventually reduced to lapses in an otherwise good quality control process; certainly better than Dell's or Medion's but still improvable. Now, I'm not saying that it's the chineses' fault, I've seen western made gsm phones crap out like flies (and don't forget good 'ol crappy FIAT... I'm italian, I see these poor jokes every day) but sometimes they do cut a corner too much over there...
Unfortunately my father's 40 yrs old AKAI amp was built with other quality standards in mind. Today it would be overkill to embed such high durability in products we have accustomed to consider consumables; this point is important and it's both our fault and the corps'. We, as consumers, enjoy a continuous turnover of our toys and them, the corps, are quite happy to make products that "help us" take the decision it's time to buy a new one.
Back on my unlucky powerbook... the power brick... what fool would save the 1 cent for a short guard and get to change, free of charge, thousands of blown supplies? This is a design flaw, a mistake done in Cupertino... shure, the cheap chinese cable is the initial cause, but Apple could have reconditioned rather than landfilling if not for the missing transistor (no, not a fuse, just a transistor wired up to shut down the supply if the draw is too high...), tsk... tsk...
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
HP.
1) Apple's stock price is inflated because of the iPod
2) HP won't want to give up their marketing of the iPod, or the perceived loss of control if IBM snatches up Apple
3) A bidding war between HP and IBM for the whole of Apple's biz would benefit neither, only Apple shareholders.
So my conclusion is that IBM isn't going to buy up Apple, unless it was silly enough to have a deal planned to spin off the iPod/iTunes unit to HP, and that's quite a cash cow to give up.
The biggest side benefit of that might be that it could diffuse the Apple Corp. (Beatles) lawsuit, if Apple Computer is no longer the owner of a music-related product. A spinoff might be the only way to end that suit (Apple or whoever owns them would still have to cough up a big chunk of bullion to Yoko and Sir Paul, but it would end the long-term problems).
Design for Use, not Construction!
Wait a couple of months until the massive layoffs and outsourcing begins. Anyone smart at IBM RTP will have started looking for a new job back when the rumors of this buyout started.
This sale will kill what's left of the RTP economy.
I first glanced over the headline and thought that IBM sold their PC business to Leno as in Jay Leno of the Tonight Show. My next thought before I realized I was caffeineless was, "Are the computer cases all going to have giant chins on the front?"
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I suspect it's just a quirk due lack of foreign character set support, but my browser rather helpfully displays the title of their website as "Lenovo ??"
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The reason you're modded as 'Troll' currently is that you dissed an Apple product.
I agree with you.
So . .
You're saying we should nuke em?
The best posts are both flamebait and informative.
In China, all your manufacturing base are belong to us?
1. Stop whinging about things getting made in China or Asia. They already are and have been for years. IBM, HP, Dell and just about everyone has been subbing their work out to Asia.
2. Look around in any high-tech labs or companies, how many Taiwanese, Chinese, Indians etc etc are there? Race and demographics has nothing to do with quality or innovation of products but has everything to do with market forces.
3. IBM still needs a PC line-up in order to provide a full-spectrum solution to businesses. Hence the 18.9% stake in the joint venture. A lot of the design and IP will still be done by the same people or provided by IBM so the JV's product remains competitive (besides price)
4. Quality is not going to be an issue (on the premium product line as least) because of point 2 and dilution of the IBM branding to Lenovo is not a smart move at all.
5. IBM has been moving out of the commodity business and into higher-margin services and enterprise server business for a long time now and this is an orderly retreat, leaving the "kids" to fight out this commodity business.
6. Out of the 10k or so people whose affected, some 7000 are already in China, and Lenovo is moving its HQ to NY with the current IBM PC division chief becoming the CEO of Lenovo. Staff in Raleigh and other sites will also be taken on as well. is as good as any sale is going to get as far as people's jobs are concerned.
7. Most of the comments here are based on unfounded fears, simplistic views and a general unawareness of a bigger game in play.
8. And whoever posted the analogy to Volvo/Ford and Saab/GM forgot to mention Ford and GM are the reason the quality of Volvo and Saab went down so much, both of which are american companies.
9. At the risk of a rash generalisation (disregard if you know it doesn't apply to you) - please, would you americans stop thinking your shit don't stink.
sig's are for weenies
Want my resume? mattberan@gmail.com
Dell doesn't manufacture anything at all. I've sold lots of components to Dell Europe, and they aren't even delivered there. They're delivered to a Taiwanese run factory in Holland that does assembly. No Dell employee lays eye on your Dell computer. They don't even write the invoices - that's outsourced to.
Dell is a shell, just like IBM, HP and Compaq. Making computers is something that chinese people do.
At Furdlog the question is posed how interested a Chinese manufacturer will be in incorporating hardware controls that comply with US copy protection policies, but also cripple the product?
This blog notes that the same question was raised by the broadcast flag scheme. Foreign manufacturers that want to export PCs to the U.S. will have to incorporate this copy protection in the hardware. A globalization of U.S. policies.
I guess Lenovo will be more than happy to comply with U.S. policies to bring IBM PCs back home, controlled and all-American style.
Buy Apple stock now
You must be selling Apple stock and looking for buyers. Apple is in its own bubble. It is literally around its Year 2000 Internet Bubble price, its price/earning ratio is around 90, and about half of its current price is based on iPod euphoria. All Apple stock price will need to come crashing down is a single viable competitor to iPod, something small in size, large in capacity, and a simple if not elegant user interface. iPod will repeat Macintosh history. Initially brilliant and in a class by itself, but eventually low cost competitors that are good enough, but not superior, in design or ease of use will surpass it in popularity.
I am not saying Apple is doomed. I am not saying Apple is beleaguered. I am not saying that Apple Computer Inc is unhealthy. I am only saying that their stock price is inflated and bound to have a pretty large "correction". At $30 or $60 Apple will design and bring to market superior products. But a Mac, buy an iPod, but don't buy Apple stock at $60.
What's with the senseless sideswipe at Apple? (I'm glad to see the /. mod system was correct as usual...) Try using a late-model Powerbook before you dismiss it outright, since it's clear you have not. But, since you brought it up, hey, let's perform a basic experiment, since I've used BOTH of these extensively (unlike you):
1) Close lid of laptop.
Powerbook goes immediately to sleep. And I mean immediately. Running apps, movies, mp3 players, etc. freeze in place.
The Thinkpad (depending on how you've set it up) either just turns off the screen (meaning the hair-dryer-fan vent still runs, meaning you can't just stash it right in your laptop bag or it will overheat) or goes into Windows hibernation mode, which takes like a minute, and wasn't always successful in my experience.
2) Open lid of laptop.
Powerbook wakes up. Immediately. Everything resumes exactly where it was.
Thinkpad takes a while to un-hibernate (since a sleep mode that just shuts the screen off is useless, imho). Strum fingers. Complain when Windows and some Windows apps start acting REALLY funky after a couple of hibernations, requiring a reboot. (Windows does not seem designed to tolerate hibernation states very well.) Ick.
(Aside: The only reason why I found the hibernate feature in the first place [it's not an obvious feature] is because I was USED TO the Powerbook's nice sleep feature and I thus was LOOKING for something similar on the Thinkpad. I showed it to my coworkers and turns out none of them knew about it either, and they were amazed! Moral: It pays to get to know "alien technology", because it broadens your mind to what is possible.)
Sturdiness-wise, I think they are about equal, and I thought the Thinkpad docking mechanism was clever. The Powerbook is (of course...) prettier. Battery life on Powerbooks leaves something to be desired- you'd think that these supposedly-more-efficient PowerPC chips would leave more batt time, but I guess Intel did its homework in that area. There are a lot more possible connections on this powerbook (Al 15" 1.25ghz) than on any Thinkpad I've seen.
Usability-wise... Well, there's really no comparison. I just wish I could do the SQL Server development I do for work, on this Powerbook...
Folks, China is already the "factory of the world"
Yes, that Tradewars... the game. And most Sci-Fi space stories. They had different types of planets that you could capture/create. planets good for mining ore, planets good for gas or whatever...
It's not too different from what earth is doing. we'll have countries that are nothing but factories, countries that are nothing but lawyers, countries that are nothing but managers. Then a few hundred years from now, space travel will be common, other civilizations will start talking with us, and we'll be the Lawyer Planet or the Marketting Planet. Or maybe just the Ore Planet with a few billion miners.
Then they'll blow us up for being morons.
This is what "private sector" Legend/Lenova is doing in its spare time. Profitablity in the commercial sector subsidizes its R&D and production for Chinese military.
Wall Street Journal from this summer
"At the same time, PLA modernization got a boost from the rapidly growing free-market economy and increasingly competitive industries. Huge, newly equipped shipyards are churning out so many destroyers, frigates and landing vessels -- as well as 10% of the world's commercial shipping vessels -- that the head of China's leading shipbuilder says he tells managers not to seek out military contracts. "We just can't manage it all," says Chen Xiaojin, president of China State Shipbuilding Corp., a state-owned company.
Legend, a computer maker spun off from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1984 -- and now named Lenovo Group Ltd. -- last year unveiled a new supercomputer, DeepComp 6800, for military use, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. A senior executive at leading software maker Neusoft Group Ltd. says it is working with the PLA on a satellite-based navigation system -- the kind the U.S. military uses to track special forces and steer missiles. The PLA is also canvassing leading Chinese mobile-phone makers about building specialized handsets, according to two industry consultants.
Huawei, the maker of communications equipment, is a private company with an overtly militaristic feel. Its founder and current general manager, Ren Zhengfei, spent 10 years in the army. New Huawei employees, mostly recent university graduates, are sent to a month- long boot camp and PLA songs such as "Unity is Strength" are commonly sung at company gatherings."
I'd buy that for a dollar. (canned laughter)
How about whoever posts news summaries takes the time to properly and coherently summarize the news? For example, in this case it should be stated WHO THE HELL LENOZO IS. I never heard of this company... Or for all I know, maybe Lenozo is a person. A comedian maybe? Sounds like a comedian's name...
Thanks.
Could be to look at this as outsourcing the management team. The work sounds like it has been outsourced for a while now.
emt 377 emt 4
Lenova bought the ThinkPad and ThinkCenter names. The full press release from IBM says that the eventual goal is for the PC's to be named Lenova ThinkPad and Lenova ThinkCenter. Only the IBM label has a time period.
IBM hasn't manufactured its own PCs in years, it has outsourced the manufacturing. A 20% stake in a company that is actually manufacturing PCs is comparable, if not even an improvement, over their current situation I would imagine.
Meanwhile, the last real expansion market for PCs and laptops is Asia, and Lenova, being an asian company, has a huge leg up in that region over other companies. People in Asia want to buy Asian PCs running Asian OSes, they don't want to buy from US manufacturers and be dependent on the US or Microsoft. There've been numerous articles about this lately in the news and on slashdot.
It's a win for IBM, and it's a win for Lenova who goes overnight from a 2% market share to 80% stake in a 7% market share. IBM is at 5% market share and stable, and the decision isn't likely to impact that number much at all. They've been struggling to get any money out at all, with all the outsourcing, for years.
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.
Dang people are dumb. This post needs to be modded to +5 funny, especially since no one seems to have gotten the joke.
That's funny, when I close the lid of my Thinkpad R51 it goes to sleep immediately and when I re-open it wakes up ...
As far as connections go the only differences I can see on a cursory examination are an extra firewire port and a DVI port on the Powerbook, while the Powerbook gives up a PCMCIA slot to the Thinkpad.
Never used a Powerbook, just my impressions.
I happen to work at an IBM repair shop (IANAIBM-er though) and I can tell you in all honesty that the T42 is still as good as the other IBM laptops were/are. So you will take more of a risk getting a Gateway then you would take with an IBM. Of course I can't tell you what will happen to the quality level in three years. (If I could, I'd have a better paying job :-) ).
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
The missile defence program; new submarines; new fighter aircraft; the works. China can do it cheaper. Better work ethic; lower cost; better education. I say know when you are beaten and give in gracefully. It will avoid the coming unpleasantness around 2030 as China takes over global leadership. Just like people wonder how the Italians ever had a Roman Empire they will wonder how the US with its semi illiterate population was (in the last century) a great power.
But if you think allowing the manufacturing and other jobs to go to a Communsist country is just something we should get used to and accept, you're mistaken.
...Who might end up taking IBM's place for the high quality, no compromise in quality or service laptop? IBM definitely will lose it if they become just another part of the crowd versus the one who's willing to have the well-known US designed, serviced and controlled PC that doesnt cut any corners? There is a market for these machines, and IBM is screwing with a sizable amount of people with a lot of money. Not everyone wants a Dell or HP that has no corner left uncut in quality.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
WOW! That is stupidity in action. I must say that IBM selling this unit is in my opinion absolutely stupid. IBM is selling away its identity as a company. They are selling away their identity, REPUTATION, and oughtright POWER. You see, even if they went into producing quilting machines, they would always make big news because they created the PC and had a link to it. That was POWER, INFLUENCE, and REPUTATION with whatever this company did. They had a reputation of being computer leaders and inovators, even tho their PC unit was a back burner affair. Now they will not be associated with computer inovation or involvement, despite their main focus on service being hugely related to computing. Heck, they will now be associated with a boneheaded decision.
Now for the next year or so, everything they do will be looked at from down our noses as "how did they screw up this time?". After that we will probably start to forget who or what IBM was or stood for. Then they won't be able to capitalize in any way from their PC background. If they didn't want to produce PC's anymore, they should have just contracted out to say GIGABYTE or MSI and just slapped an IBM Thinkpad label on it. Basically unless they were taking a loss on this line (and a big one at that), the sale of this unit, name, and connection is a HUGE loss when you calculate all the intangible effects it produced. Heck, they even have a IBM Thinkpad following. A following that will have to decide if this China company will produce the same results.
This is a huge shame. Every time a company has done this they have lost their identity. Five years down the line they are just some company who has some interesting history on their ABOUT page. One that usually only peeks the curiosity of people reading through it, but garners no respect from it.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?