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."

Comments

Get a Gateway

[omarius]

That's a damn expensive IBM PC unit. The clones are a lot cheaper, people.

Re:Get a Gateway

[NotQuiteReal]

Gateway (NYSE GTW) Has a market cap of 2.4B, so IBM's PC business at 1.75B is cheaper.

I don't think of Gateway, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, or any other name brand as a "clone" anymore, and that's the problem - everyone else thinks of them as name brands too.

All my desktops are white-box pc's that I built myself - now that is a clone (although, oddly all the components are themselves name brand... hmmm).

Re:Get a Gateway

[badasscat]

That's a damn expensive IBM PC unit. The clones are a lot cheaper, people.

Uh, what? They didn't buy a PC, they bought a whole PC Business. Unless you mean the clone makers are also cheaper, but that doesn't make much sense either - Gateway's brand name is nothing compared to IBM's.

I don't suppose you've ever used a Thinkpad or you'd know why it's a sought-after business. I'd be surprised if they weren't still the top selling laptops (they may not be, I'd just be surprised if that's the case), and they're still by far the best built mainstream laptops you can get (don't even bring up Apple, people - if you do, you have no idea what you're talking about). They're also among the last major makers not to pre-load their PC's with large quantities of junk. You buy most Thinkpad models and you get a PC and an OS. What you do with it is up to you.

I think this is a sad day, quite honestly. Things change in the PC industry and nothing against Levono or Lunovo or whatever Legend's calling themselves these days, but I don't have much confidence that the quality of the Thinkpad line will be maintained. At best, within five years you'll see cost-cutting to the point where there's little to distinguish them from other laptops. I mean there's a reason IBM sold this unit, after all - they can't charge enough for these things to make a meaningful profit on them given the production costs, and they can't realistically cut costs themselves because the quality is the main reason people buy them. So, they've cut and run, and left Legend to do the dirty work that they couldn't - which is more than likely to basically gut the hardware and sell off all that currently bare desktop real estate until the line is profitable. I just wonder if anybody's going to still buy a Thinkpad under such conditions, because people buy Thinkpads now specifically to stay away from cheap crap.

I guess this is why they've only got a five year window to brand them as IBM Thinkpads - IBM doesn't want their name sullied as part of the deal. Which begs the question, what's really in it for Levono? What do they do in year six? So they end up with a bit more production capacity than they have now; is that worth billions of dollars? They're not getting any major branding out of this deal that I can see, or any IP, or anything else that they can really build off of. It seems very short-sighted on their part, doesn't it?

Re:Get a Gateway

[BoomerSooner]

I was going to buy a Thinkpad T42 but now I'll get an Apple Powerbook on it's next rev (January in all likelihood).

BTW Apple is #1 in Laptop customer satisfaction. I love Thinkpads (I have 2 right now) but I won't buy a Levono Thinkpad.

So long IBM, it was nice knowing you. Who would have thought Apple would out live IBM in the PC market? Didn't see that coming.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Anonymous Coward]

That woosh is the joke going over your head.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, what? They didn't buy a PC, they bought a whole PC Business.

*------- Joke.

O ----- You.
-|-
/\

Re:Get a Gateway

[phrasebook]

I love Thinkpads (I have 2 right now) but I won't buy a Levono Thinkpad.

What reasons do you have for that? You don't even know what they're going to be like. It's maybe a bit unfair to assume the ThinkPad standard will go backward under Lenovo. Or other reasons beside technical merits?

Re:Get a Gateway

[jm92956n]

I, too, have wondered why Lenovo would pay so much for IBM's PC division. I expect we'll see a new logo almost immediately: most likely the current IBM logo with a small "powered by Lenovo" line underneath. In a few years, the logos will be reversed, with Lenovo's name as the more prominent one. Within five years, the logo will have no reference to IBM. This is the route IBM took with Lexmark when they spun them off.

I think the laptop market is nearing saturation in the U.S. A few years back, we thought the desktop PC would die off; laptops would become so inexpensive and so powerful that there would be no reason to purchase a desktop. That notion, however, has proved to be untrue.

With IBM holding nearly a 20 percent stake in Lenovo, it's likely that they'll provide them with whatever relevant IP they develop. That's they key. IBM will still be financially tied to Lenovo, so it's in both of their best interests to insure their laptops and PC's remain competitive. I wonder, though, if IBM might eventually sell off their portion of Lenovo.

Re:Get a Gateway

[BoomerSooner]

The better safe than sorry reason. Paying a premium for a laptop isn't a problem. Paying a premium for an unknown item is not a good choice. I guess that is what I get for working in risk management.

When I worked at Andersen they used Compaq and IBM laptops. I got lucky and got an IBM. The compaqs were breaking so often that they were switching completely to IBM (then they fucked up and got shut down!).

Re:Get a Gateway

[mshaslam]

don't even bring up Apple, people - if you do, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Why ever not? The Powerbook is *far* superior for running OS X. It is also much shinier and has the word "power" in it's name. No laptop in the world offers the same shiny, OS X running, 'power' in the name features as the Powerbook. This 'Thinkpad' of yours has *none* of these features. Bah! It is clear it is you who does not know what you are talking about. Good day sir.

I said 'Good Day' sir!

Re:Get a Gateway

[EvilAlien]

Pssst... it was a joke.

Get it? Joke. Play on words? "PC Unit" being interpreted as one PC, not the entire business unit? Oh forget it...

Re:Get a Gateway

[Karmic Debt]

Uh, what? They didn't buy a PC, they bought a whole PC Business. Unless you mean the clone makers are also cheaper, but that doesn't make much sense either - Gateway's brand name is nothing compared to IBM's.

Hey Dumb Dumb ... he was just joking.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Yaztromo]

(don't even bring up Apple, people - if you do, you have no idea what you're talking about)

I take umbrage at that. You see, I used to work for IBM. I've had a number of ThinkPads over the years. I also currently own an Apple PowerBook. And I'd easily put this system in the same league as the ThinkPad (if not slightly higher -- where most modern ThinkPads are designed primarily as Windows systems, Apple's boxes are at least Unix based).

If you don't lock yourself into a specific architecture, you can see that Apple's PowerBooks easily rank up there with IBM's ThinkPads. Indeed, these are the only two companies for a very long time who have done any significant R&D into laptop usability. I'd pit my PowerBook against an Intel-based laptop any day.

I guess this is why they've only got a five year window to brand them as IBM Thinkpads - IBM doesn't want their name sullied as part of the deal. Which begs the question, what's really in it for Levono? What do they do in year six?

In year one I imagine they'll use the IBM name. In year two they'll introduce some models under their own name in certain parts of the world. In years two through five they'll brand their systems under both the IBM and Lenovo names at the same time (ie: both logos on the boxes).

The idea being they'll wean their customers into thinking of their brand name as being equivalent to the IBM brand name. They have five years to do so -- an eternity in Internet time.

The questions becomes -- will it be successful, or will five years from now people be talking about the "good old days" when IBM made their PCs with quality and usability in mind.

Lenovo is buying a lot of expertise for their money in this area, so maybe they'll be able to pull it off. Or maybe not. Personally, I'm an Apple guy now for my laptops, so I couldn't really care less :).

Yaz.

Re:Get a Gateway

[dextroz]

If you've bought other stuff in the US - especially plastic and 'die-cast' metal good in the US - most of them are (coincidentally) Chinese made and are chintzy compared to what you'd have got 20 years ago.

Don't believe me? Go and have a look at the detail in the dinky cars your kid plays with and then compare that with the ones you played with as a kid.

More importantly, observer the radiator and the doors. You'll know what I am talking about.

PS Not trying to be racist here, just giving an observation over how saving a little money here and there really hits on things ultimately.

Re:Get a Gateway

[bshensky]

I don't know about you, but I currently own a Thinkpad T22 and a Powerbook 17". Plus, I've owned 2 other Thinkpads over the last 7 years.

Quite frankly, my preferences between the two come down to this:

(1) The Powerbook is the better Road Warrior, with better overall thoughtful packaging. I'm productively running all different pieces of Oracle on PPC/OSX, BSD/Unix and Wintel in that square foot. And you really can't underestimate the WOW factor of that snazzy case!

(2) There will NEVER be another notebook brand that has the superb keyboards that the Thinkpads do. Those keyboards make the machine. Between the keyboard and the support network, it's easy to see why Thinkpads are such a consistent number one choice.

I'm glad I have both. Put me on a deserted island with a choice between the two, and I'm liable to hang myself before choose betwen the two.

If Levono is stupid enough to abandon the customer base they just purchased through increasingly inferior products, well, I'll just have to go get myself a job as a greeter at Walmart for the remainder of my days.

Re:Get a Gateway

[ckaminski]

And the only reason that is untrue is that LCD prices have continued to remain abysmally overpriced.

When you buy or replace a desktop, the monitor is a separate expense, unlike a laptop, where that expense is incurred for every unit. If laptops had docking ports for a universal LCD display, then per unit costs would probably drop.

That, and a laptop is still pretty much a prestige item, a status symbol if you will. It will always command a premium. A similar issue exists with Tablets. Display + Status == $HIGHER_COST. If you purchase a desktop with 15 or 17" LCD, you're going to be paying +/- $200-$400 extra. Compared to laptops of equivalent performance (slightly smaller disk drives, wireless connections built in), that's not much of a difference in cost. The only difference is that the LCD monitor is reusable when the desktop dies, the laptop is trash. :-/ Why not a Cardbus-like standard for LCD displays?

Re:Get a Gateway

[1lus10n]

My three problems with apple powerbook laptop are simple:
1. its fucking white. I hate WHITE. Its god awful bright and gets dirty easily.
2. They dont have a "middle" size powerbook. They go from tiny 12 to large 15+. Where is the 14 ?
3. What the hell is the deal with the speakers being next to the keyboard ? I hate the way it looks and feels.

Of course there are a ton of other problems ... like only have a single mouse button (I wouldnt be using OSX) etc etc that go into it. They are high quality, but they are geared towards "ooh shiney" types not power users. IBM's quality is the real key, if this company can keep it up they are golden. More likely they will drive it into the ground and try to profit from what the name used to mean.

Re:Get a Gateway

[arose]

(3) Trackpoint. Trackballs are too big and Touchpads suck.

Re:Get a Gateway

[kurt555gs]

I love my thinkpads, they are great as far as intel lappys go.

The PowerBooks are so far out in front of any of the wintel lappys though that there is no real comparison.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Txiasaeia]

Sigh. There's a difference between made in China and designed in China. IBM notebooks have (for the most part) been designed in the US; coincidentally, they are also the most reliable notebooks on the market. Hmm...

Re:Get a Gateway

[Yaztromo]

My three problems with apple powerbook laptop are simple:

Let's take a look at these reasons, shall we?

1. its fucking white. I hate WHITE. Its god awful bright and gets dirty easily.

All of the PowerBooks are brushed aluminium. They are silver, not white. You're thinking of the iBook.

2. They dont have a "middle" size powerbook. They go from tiny 12 to large 15+. Where is the 14 ?

Fair enough. Personally, I like the sizes they offer. I need the extreme portability, so I use a 12" model myself. It doesn't have the cool backlit keyboards that the 15" and 17" have, but other than that it's an extremely usuable size. I can't say I've ever found it to be tiny.

3. What the hell is the deal with the speakers being next to the keyboard ? I hate the way it looks and feels.

It's only that way on the 15" and 17" models. On the 12" models they are on the back (there are actually three), positioned under the hinge point so the sound reflects off the screen (thus allowing them to be completely hidden).

They are high quality, but they are geared towards "ooh shiney" types not power users.

Uh huh. You're talking to a certified "power user" here. I'm running a high end RISC-based, Unix-based laptop here you know. I also administer three different open source projects, and do software design and development consultency.

Sorry, but the term power user was invented for me. My desktop machines are all Intel boxes running various forms of Linux (and one lone OS/2 server box), but my laptop of choice is Apple's PowerBook.

Yaz.

Re:Get a Gateway

[gl4ss]

why wouldn't you buy a levono thinkpad?

it's the same fucking factories anyways.

or were you just looking for an excuse to go with apple?

Re:Get a Gateway

[dgatwood]

Let's look again.

2. 2. They dont have a "middle" size powerbook. They go from tiny 12 to large 15+. Where is the 14 ?

The 15 is the middle size. Apple also sells a lunch tray version. Don't believe me? Walk into the cafeteria at Apple some time and you'll see what I mean. 17 inches of usable food tray space. :-D

3. What the hell is the deal with the speakers being next to the keyboard ?

Simple. It gives you bass response that doesn't suck. Of course, some might suggest moving the speakers to the screen, but it turns out that clear speakers are neither. :-D

Re:Get a Gateway

[kfg]

A few years back, we thought the desktop PC would die off. . .

Who's we whitey? I've been pointing out all along that that idea is utter nonsense, just as is the idea that portable music players might kill off the home stereo rig.

. . .laptops would become so inexpensive and so powerful that there would be no reason to purchase a desktop.

They way they are used are rather different and each has it's strength's in it's, ummmmmmm, "home" market A laptop with a docking station isn't quite the same beasty as a desktop really, and a desktop isn't very portable.

And if the price of laptops came down dramtically that would be less reason to to ditch the desktop in favor of one, as it becomes far more finanically viable to own one of each instead of having to choose between them.

Just like with stereos and portable music players.

KFG

Re:Get a Gateway

[Yaztromo]

The 15 is the middle size. Apple also sells a lunch tray version. Don't believe me? Walk into the cafeteria at Apple some time and you'll see what I mean. 17 inches of usable food tray space. :-D

I should have also mentioned to the guy who levied the original complaints that if he's really wedded to the 14" size, the iBook is available in a 14" model.

Yaz.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Amiga Trombone]

The questions becomes -- will it be successful, or will five years from now people be talking about the "good old days" when IBM made their PCs with quality and usability in mind.

Lenovo is buying a lot of expertise for their money in this area, so maybe they'll be able to pull it off. Or maybe not. Personally, I'm an Apple guy now for my laptops, so I couldn't really care less :).

And, if not, it'll take about five years for the glow of the IBM brand equity to wear off should Lenovo fuck up.

By that time, IBM will have safely distanced itself from an inferior product, not to mention accumulated a tidy profit from their share in Lenovo.

IBM then simply dumps their interest in Lenovo, and washes their hands of the whole mess.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Knetzar]

I've noticed some of the larger IBM servers and racks come with a thinkpad keyboard. I wanted to buy one for myself, but they charge about $100. So next time yuour in the market for a server or a keyboard, you can still get it w/o the rest of the laptop :-)

Re:Get a Gateway

[Curtman]

Why not a Cardbus-like standard for LCD displays?

What's wrong with SVGA or DVI? Almost every laptop has one.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Amiga Trombone]

(2) There will NEVER be another notebook brand that has the superb keyboards that the Thinkpads do. Those keyboards make the machine. Between the keyboard and the support network, it's easy to see why Thinkpads are such a consistent number one choice.

One thing I don't recall seeing mentioned in the article is whether IBM held on to the rights of their intellectual property (keyboards and such). If IBM were to subsequently to begin offering a PPC based notebook (OS X or otherwise), would they still retain the rights to their more celebrated features?

Also, I wonder if the deal for the "Think" trademark is exclusive. Or will IBM retain the right to use it for other product lines?

Re:Get a Gateway

[chigun]

I was lucky to never get stuck with one of those POS Compaqs. I got a Thinkpad when I started at AA and thus started my love affair with the eraser-mouse. I'd use a keyboard with an eraser mouse on my desktop machine if I wasn't too lazy to google for one. Seriously though, the Thinkpads were/are a great line, but I've never heard of Levono so I guess I'll have to start looking for alternatives. Anyone got a suggestion (not Dell, Gateway, or Compaq)?

Re:Get a Gateway

[Brett Johnson]

My computer of choice is a Mac running OS X (and yes I am a power user - a software developer for 20 years). But I must say, the only Wintel machine I really appreciated was a ThinkPad 600e. Rugged as hell, great display, and I actually did like the trackpoint better than the trackpad. All the other Gateways, Dells, Toshibas, and generic white boxes I've had really were pieces of sh*t. [Yes, even the Dell, whose flakey power supply managed to fry 3 CDROM drives and a HDD.] The two Compaq machines I had weren't as terrible.

Re:Get a Gateway

[pyros]

1. PowerBooks are brushed Aluminum, iBooks are white. 2. iBooks come in 14", but you hate white. 3. I hate having the speakers partially muted because they're under my palms/wrists like on my thinkpad 600x and inspiron 2600. Plug in any multi-button usb mouse and the extra buttons will work.

Re:Get a Gateway

[phrasebook]

Yeah, obviously China has a reputation for poor quality, but that doesn't mean Chinese companies aren't capable of creating and implementing good design. People tend to judge on things like Matchbox cars - used to be solid and detailed when made in England, then became cheap & nasty when made in Macau or China. Which is very true. But hopefully Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's stuff will help it to come up with its own good designs in the future (although I keep hearing conflicting reports on where notebook design is actually done and who by).

Re:Get a Gateway

[bob beta]

Simple answer:

He saw an opportunity to astroturf for Apple.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Yaztromo]

(and yes I am a power user - a software developer for 20 years)

We really need to nip the perception some people out there have that Mac users aren't power users.

Macs are modern RISC-based, Unix-based powerhouses. They are every serious power users dream machines. They are built upon a vastly better technology base than Intel machines are.

Every day I see more and more power users making the switch to the Mac and OSX. It has a powerful (and free) development environment, and a full suite of standard Unix tools. It integrates with and plays extremely well with other systems.

Anyone who thinks that a modern Mac isn't for power users simply doesn't know what they're talkinng about.

Yaz.

Re:Get a Gateway

[NonSequor]

I, too, have wondered why Lenovo would pay so much for IBM's PC division. I expect we'll see a new logo almost immediately: most likely the current IBM logo with a small "powered by Lenovo" line underneath. In a few years, the logos will be reversed, with Lenovo's name as the more prominent one. Within five years, the logo will have no reference to IBM. This is the route IBM took with Lexmark when they spun them off.

Damn it! That was the uninformed speculation I was going to make! But it's really the only thing they can do.

I think they'll leave the IBM trademarks intact for the first six months to a year but still include the Lenovo logo seperately. Then they'll integrate the logos and start introducing new product lines with names that are variants on existing IBM trademarks. I'd guess that they'll use "Think-" heavily since ThinkPad is probably the IBM brand name that gets the broadest recognition. Then they can use these to transition to new brandnames not derived from IBM trademarks.

It would be kind of like when Palm (US Robotics at the time) lost the case against Bic and couldn't use the name Pilot anymore and they changed it to PalmPilot and eventually Palm. Using an intermediate brand name allowed them to change the brand name without losing all of the recognition the original had.

I'd guess that IBM is holding that chunk of Lenovo to maintain some influence over Lenovo since they'll probably use them as a supplier of PCs for their services business for some time to come.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Anonymous Coward]

ok.. you seem to be confused. first you claim powerbooks are WHITE when those are the iBooks. then you say there's no 14" model. there *is* a 14" WHITE iBook. 12" and 14" iBooks. then you have the 12", 15", and 17" powerbooks. hrrm.. lookie there, 15" is right in the middle of 12" and 17".

Re:Get a Gateway

[Savage-Rabbit]

The idea being they'll wean their customers into thinking of their brand name as being equivalent to the IBM brand name. They have five years to do so -- an eternity in Internet time.

I agree with you on the PowerBook & IBM Thinkpad probably being the best on the market. On the other hand Lenovo will have to live up to IBM's excellent design standard. If the next generation of TinkPads turns out to be the same sort of concrete slabs that makes most of the rest of the Inter PC based laptops out there they will become just another run of the mill manufacturer of cheap-n-clunky laptops. The whole reason alot of people buy the ThinkPad is because the latest generation is the only Intel PC based laptop out there that can hold a candle to the PowerBook in terms of design.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Associate]

IBM already contracts out it's manufacturing. All this does is make someone else accountable for the end product. I bet IBM will still offer 'service agreements' for certain Lenovo customers.

Re:Get a Gateway

[ddent]

Actualy my understanding is the biggest reason tablet PCs cost as much as they do (relative to notebooks) is MS's licensing of the tablet edition of XP.

Re:Get a Gateway

[cowbutt]

I was going to buy a Thinkpad T42 but now I'll get an Apple Powerbook on it's next rev (January in all likelihood).

BTW Apple is #1 in Laptop customer satisfaction. I love Thinkpads (I have 2 right now) but I won't buy a Levono Thinkpad.

Powerbooks are fine kit and no mistake, but don't fool yourself that you're buying Apple hardware - they're all made by the same set of Taiwanese ODMs that make PC laptops - Compal and Quanta, for instance. My "Toshiba" laptop is actually designed and built by Compal, as are many Dell and Elonex models.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Trackster]

[rant] I agree. I've read most of the posts on this story and most are ignorant accusations that Lenovo will bring down the quality of IBM products....because OMG! they're a CHINESE company.

Yet, if most of these posters took a look under and inside their laptops and even PCs (even the ones with "IBM" stamped on them) they'll likely find big fat "Made in China" stickers.

Folks, China is already the "factory of the world" and for far more than just toys and cloths. Update your mental databases. It's no longer 1980. Toys, apliances, electronics, PCs, car parts, partially assembled automotive units (i.e. suspension) and a host of things you use are made in China and will increasingly be so. In fact, it won't be long (if not already) before many of the cars you drive are entirely built there.

Being that most people who rant about Chinese quality tend to be 'Merkuns it's rather ironic considering the track record of U.S. manufacturing quality (particularly large corporations). Even Korea's Hyundai has surpassed the big 3 automakers in quality. Remember Hyundai? [/rant]

Re:Get a Gateway

[Alioth]

If you're not going to be using OS X, you're hardly the type of person Apple is trying to sell to anyway.

Personally, having used multi-button moused laptops for a long time, and now having the PowerBook with an interface designed for a single button mouse, I have come to the (surprise) conclusion that a single button mouse is superior on a laptop. There's limited space when you're using the laptop's keyboard, for example, in the seat back tray of a train, and a big single button is far easier to get with the heel of your hand whilst you're typing - rather than getting the right button of two which are half the size.

At home, you can always plug in any old USB mouse (and keyboard).

Re:Get a Gateway

[Trepidity]

Sorry, but the term power user was invented for me.

As coiner of the term, I can confirm this is the case.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Smidge204]

That's all fine and good, as long as they don't update the design at any point.

But sooner or later they will have to come out sith something new just to keep up with the rest of the world. Are they going to have the infastructure to design it well, steal the designs from elsewhere, or end up making cheap "die cast" hardware?

I think the 5 year limitation on the brand name might be IBM saying they don't want to be associated with the cheap junk they might be making down the road.
=Smidge=

Re:Get a Gateway

[1u3hr]

but I've never heard of Levono so I guess I'll have to start looking for alternatives.

Lenovo. They're a big name (the biggest) in China, used to be called "Legend"; good quality. Obviously a lot of the value of the purchase for them is to get the international IBM brand recognition. And you know that just about 99% of PCs and laptops (including Macs) are made in China or Taiwan?

Re:Get a Gateway

[1u3hr]

If you've bought other stuff in the US - especially plastic and 'die-cast' metal good in the US - most of them are (coincidentally) Chinese made and are chintzy compared to what you'd have got 20 years ago.

They're cheap and nasty because that's what the American clients specified.

Re:Get a Gateway

[59Bassman]

I think that perception is slowly changing. I went to SuperComputing2004 last month in Pittsburgh. Looking around, I was shocked at just how many of the laptops were PowerBooks. I tried counting at one point and ended up with about 40% of the laptops I could see being PowerBooks.

I also had the priviledge to talk to some folks from the DOE national labs. These folks can get just about any hardware toy they want for their systems. And interestingly enough, the vast majority of the keyboard jockeys were running PowerBooks, primarily the 15" model. So I spoke to a couple of them and asked why.

For all of them it came down to three things: 1) first and most important, a UNIX-based system that could easily interface with anything they needed to work on. 2) bulletproof hardware that "just works" and 3) MS Office. Managers love MS office. Consensus was that OpenOffice wasn't ready for primetime yet, and that by running a Mac you still had the ability to turn out Excel and Word docs and be absolutely, positively sure that your management chain could read them.

So I find myself at the Apple booth, thinking back 10 years to when I was a PC systems administrator. A friend was trying to get me to come over to the "dark side" and use Macs. I told him it would take a full frontal lobotomy before I even considered it.

The lobotomy happened, but it wasn't me - it was the MacOS. Now I'm setting up a G5 to be my primariy machine at work, trying to get a PowerBook from the company for travel, and saving up for a G5 at home as well. So I think the shift is happening among tech folks.

Re:Get a Gateway

[galaxy300]

This is a seriously nice laptop. Great screen, excellent performance, very well built. I would put it on par with a Thinkpad any day.

Re:Get a Gateway

[bshensky]

...you mean, like IBM did with their legendary "clicky" keyboards?

I've got a couple original IBM "clicky" keyboards - I'm using one right now.

Plus, a couple years ago, I bought, sight unseen, a couple "IBM" keyboards (likely manufactured soon after their foray into Lexmark).

These keyboards *look* EXACTLY like the originals, and have the IBM logo on them, but the keyboard feel is mushy, missing that "clicky" attribute that made the keyboards both so great to use and indestructible.

I *have* to believe these late model cheap ones were the result of cost cutting measures taken as "Lexmark" tried to be price-competitive for IBM.

So I venture to guess that IBM is not past allowing a third party to ruin a previously-great product.

Re:Get a Gateway

[LaCosaNostradamus]

I think the laptop market is nearing saturation in the U.S. A few years back, we thought the desktop PC would die off; laptops would become so inexpensive and so powerful that there would be no reason to purchase a desktop. That notion, however, has proved to be untrue.

Who's "we"? It must have been the same "we" that thought Internet retailing would prevail over brick-and-mortar stores, and that we would all retire at 45 fattened by Internet stocks.

Laptops have always been elite items. I will probably never afford one ... considering:

1. it's expensive, duh
2. the batteries die and cannot be cheaply replaced
3. the display dies and cannot be cheaply replaced
4. are you seeing a pattern here, yet?

Another case in point: dialups. Why do they still exist? Answer: Because they are a whole fuck of a lot cheaper than this elitist broadband stuff. $15/mo vs. $50/mo ... that's a no brainer for many Americans with their exposure to the real economy (i.e. constant threat of un- and under-employment).

America is the land of people drunk on spending. And that's the only reason to think that "we" thought that laptops would prevail.

It's high time for the yuppie class to admit there was no New Economy, and there never will be. People have to work to produce things, and very little work gets done from a laptop on some tropical beach.

Re:Get a Gateway

[razmaspaz]

I don't know how you can defend the Think Pad, with those latches and that silly little red button for a mouse. Every think pad I have ever used looks like something from the eighties, looks like it is going to fall apart and has that darn red button. I am afraid to touch it thinking it is the self destruct button. I hate that thing. If IBM could move their design into the 21st century that would be great. Maybe Lenovo will do that. Ditch the pointer thing and the weird latch mechanism and we'll talk.

Re:Get a Gateway

[harlows_monkeys]

The better safe than sorry reason. Paying a premium for a laptop isn't a problem. Paying a premium for an unknown item is not a good choice. I guess that is what I get for working in risk management

Uhm...Apple is the #10 personal computer maker in the world. Lenovo is #9. I'd hardly call them unkown.

Re:Get a Gateway

[jc42]

... other problems ... like only have a single mouse button ...

I have a PB, and I've wondered about the single button. If you try pressing it at different points, you'll find that it acts like a rocker switch. If you press the left edge, it goes down, you get a click, and the right edge goes up slightly. Similarly, if you press the center, you get a click, but the edges don't go down very much.

So it sure looks like it has at least three physically-different "click" states. What I wonder is whether the software can distinguish these. If so, it's really a 3-button mouse, and OSX is treating all three of the "buttons" as identical.

Anyone know about this? A program can distinguish the left-shift and right-shift keys, and also the left-CMD and right-CMD keys, as on most keyboards. Is there a way to get distinguishable left-click, center-click and right-click events from the button bar?

(Meanwhile, my wife has worked with CAD systems, and sometimes complains about not having a 16-button mouse. There are so many things you can do with one, especially if it also has a reticle. ;-)

Re:Get a Gateway

[Yaztromo]

I don't know how you can defend the Think Pad, with those latches and that silly little red button for a mouse.

Different models over the years have had different latching mechanisms. My brother has an inexpensive iSerial laptop, and on that model, the latches do indeed feel and look cheap, especially compared to the latch on my PowerBook.

As for the pointing device, I've always been a fan of the TrackPoint. You can easily manipulate the pointer without ever removing your fingers from the keyboard. My mouse of choice has long been the original IBM ScrollPoint mouse (the one with the TrackPoint between the two mouse buttons), as it's a much more natural (and precise) 2D scroller than a wheel is IMO.

I do realize it's a love-it-or-hate-it type device, but for the time when it was introduced it was a pretty big innovation, as suddenly laptops no longer needed either an external mouse or a built-in track ball (as trackpads had yet to be invented at the time).

Yaz.

Re:Get a Gateway

[harlows_monkeys]

Personally, having used multi-button moused laptops for a long time, and now having the PowerBook with an interface designed for a single button mouse, I have come to the (surprise) conclusion that a single button mouse is superior on a laptop

Normally, the best number of buttons is a matter of personal preference, but since we are talking about laptops, you are in fact wrong. :-) That is because, unlike on the desktop, using a third-party mouse on a laptop can be a pain. Thus, the right thing to do would have been to include two buttons in the hardware, and make the software default to treating them as one button.

Then, those that want two buttons could simply go to the preferences and change the setting.

Apple could have even made the cap on the buttons removable, and provided both a single cap that spans both buttons and separate caps for those who want to use two buttons.

I know that there is ctrl-click instead of a second button, but there are two problems with that. First, if you are trying to do a drag with the second button, it is hard to do one-handed, because you have to use two fingers for ctrl-click, and a third to drag. Second, there is only one ctrl key on the Powerbook keyboard, making ctrl-click hard to do with the right hand. Try playing World of Warcraft on a Powerbook sometime, and you'll quickly appreciate how much nicer a second button would be. :-)

Re:Get a Gateway

[mdf356]

And I find it ironic that the big 3 are still not the quality (or perceived quality) of Toyota and Honda, both of which manufacture in the US because they can get better quality here than elsewhere (and, I have heard, for less money than elsewhere).

The big 3 manufacture in Canada, Mexico and the US.

But yeah, there's a lot of sound and fury over selling the PC division. All that's changing hands is design and management; the manufacture of IBM's PCs was sold to China or elsewhere in Asia a few years ago.

Cheers,
Matt

Re:Get a Gateway

[razmaspaz]

I do realize it's a love-it-or-hate-it type device

I totally agree. I am in the hate it category. I just feel that its time is over, and IBM should move on to the trackpad. Mmm...trackpad... Oh well, to each his own.

Re:Get a Gateway

[jc42]

The idea being they'll wean their customers into thinking of their brand name as being equivalent to the IBM brand name. They have five years to do so -- an eternity in Internet time.

Well, I dunno about this. I just came out of working for a couple of years on a project to wean a big corporation (which shall remain nameless to protect the clueless ;-) from their old mainframe systems to a flock of networked linux servers. It was interesting to hear from the sales ("client liaison" ;-) guys what it took to persuade the suits to pay us to do it.

One "interesting" problem was that their people mostly have Windows 98 machines on their desks. These are the advanced ones, actually; many still use W95. I'm not kidding. They might have some XP boxes in another decade, but I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it.

Another interesting aspect is that their desktop machines mostly have an IBM logo. This is because the management are primarily of the school that consider "computer" and "IBM machine" to be synonyms. They look with trepidation at companies like Dell and Gateway, because they're not IBM, so their machines are just toys, not real computers.

How pervasive this view can be is indicated by the ruse that the sales guys used to get them to accept the idea of linux. They introduced the suits IBM's online sales sites, and showed them that "linux is an IBM product". No, I'm not kidding. They think of linux as an IBM business-management system. We actually used RedHat, and the question of how RedHat is related to IBM was glossed over. The management there mostly thinks they are migrating to the new kind of networked computing that IBM invented.

This management team is highly unlikely to ever sign off on a Lenovo purchase, because they'll always want real computers, and real computers come from IBM. A few non-IBM desktop and laptop machines may be purchased, but only for flunkies. Managers will want a real computer on their desk, and real computers have an IBM logo.

It might be interesting to see data on just how widespread this attitude is. I know I've seen lots of anecdotal evidence that a great many business schools still instill this attitude in their students. This is mostly done tacitly, by never mentioning any other vendor. Microsoft can sell to their graduates mostly because there's a great deal of confusion about whether Microsoft is a part of IBM. (After all, you can see from IBM's web sites that both Windows and Linux are IBM products. ;-)

And I'll say again, I'm not kidding.

Of course, outside North America and Western Europe, we may well be reaching the point where a phrase such as "a giant American corporation like IBM or Microsoft" is used to scare people. So in the other 80% of the world, Lenovo may well be the future.

Re:Get a Gateway

[metamatic]

2. 2. They dont have a "middle" size powerbook. They go from tiny 12 to large 15+. Where is the 14 ?

The 15 is the middle size.

Personally, I think 12" is the middle size. My complaint is that Apple don't make any *small* laptops to compare with the Sony VAIO 505, Panasonic R3, etc.

The 17" I refer to as the SUVbook...

Re:Get a Gateway

[John Harrison]

Note that the HQ of Lenovo will now be in New York. It seems that for the time being Thinkpads will continue to be designed in the USA.

Re:Get a Gateway

[Craevenwulfe]

Doesn't say much for the market then. BGA'tastic.
Out of interest where do you see they are best for reliability?

Re:Get a Gateway

[stalky14]

I hate both of them and want the trackball back. I love my iBook's ability to automatically disable/enable the trackpad when I plug/unplug my USB trackball.

Re:Get a Gateway

[orac2]

I went to SuperComputing2004 last month in Pittsburgh. Looking around, I was shocked at just how many of the laptops were PowerBooks.

I've seen the same shift in hard core tech circles: at MacHack a couple of years ago, I met a bunch of people clearly new to Macville: initially they'd just been looking for unix based laptop and had problems finding laptops that would play nice with linux and figured they'd get ibooks or powerbooks and just ignore the GUI (but then they got sucked in). More recently, when I visited JPL, OS X machines were definitely becoming the engineers machine of choice. I've also heard this from vendors of numerical software, that their technical user base cares much more about the availability of Mac versions of the software than it used to.

Re:Get a Gateway

[slapout]

Yeah, but imagine a beowulf custer of those...

Re:Get a Gateway

[dextroz]

My bad! That's what I meant, I did state that explicilty in another post somewhere.

Re:Get a Gateway

[rudabager]

Yes all the "parts" are made in china or taiwan, but there are cheap parts and quality parts. IBM has "always"(hyperbole) used the highest quality "parts" in their product. If IBM were sold to anyone even another American company there would still be cause for concern. After all we know that even some American companies put out low quality products.
*cough* microsoft *cough*

Re:Get a Gateway

[cduffy]

Laptops have always been elite items. I will probably never afford one ... considering:

Having one laptop I can take with me between home and work is a helluva lot cheaper than having two machines with similar characteristics (1920x1200 LCD monitor, low enough power consumption that I can afford to leave it on over night at home) at each place I spend my time. Heaven forbid I actually need to travel to a job site or get some work done while on vacation.

As for replacement part cost, I've yet to have a laptop problem that couldn't be solved either via warranty service or for less than $100, and this is my second one.

Another case in point: dialups. Why do they still exist? Answer: Because they are a whole fuck of a lot cheaper than this elitist broadband stuff. $15/mo vs. $50/mo ... that's a no brainer for many Americans with their exposure to the real economy

$50/mo? Are you insane?

Low-end broadband service costs $25/mo. Split the cost with your neighbors and you're each paying $12.50 -- less than the $15 you quoted for dialup.

People have to work to produce things, and very little work gets done from a laptop on some tropical beach.

Quite a strawman you've got going there. (I know yuppies. I sometimes go to their parties. But... yuppie class?! I drive a '92 Jetta, and before that a '86 Honda. "Yuppie"?! Jeesh).

Re:Get a Gateway

[Txiasaeia]

My father in law had a Thinkpad 250C (486 processor, 8" screen, circa 1991) that he used for several years, then passed down to my wife who then passed it on to me. It lasted for about 11 years before it finally died. That's reliability.

Keyboards on Thinkpads cannot be beat either, and as far as notebook computers go, that's the deal maker or breaker. Customer support is fantastic and extremely quick, which means that even if there is a problem they fix it quickly.

Like I commented in another thread, I'm really sad by this whole sale - I just bought a new IBM X31, and now I don't know what I'm going to replace it with seven or eight years from now ;)

Re:Get a Gateway

[PantsWearer]

There's a major difference between the "big 3" manufacturers and Toyota and Honda: the "big 3" use union labor. I've worked as a computer tech in a couple of assembly plants and union automotive labor isn't there for quality.

I'm not exactly sure how Chrysler handled their plants after the merger with Daimler. Mercedes plants located in the US were non-union, but Chrysler was prohibited by their union shops to run non-union shops.

I'm not against unions overall, but there are many industries where unions are not necessary anymore. Unions were originally created to keep workers from working extra long hours or overly dangerous jobs for nearly no pay. There are jobs that still need unions since they generally get paid dirt for professional level work. And then there's the police who probably need a union, but can't have one. Auto workers on the other hand, work to quota and stand around the rest of the day and in some cases get profit sharing no matter the quality of the work they produce.

Re:Get a Gateway

[LaCosaNostradamus]

one laptop I can take with me between home and work

But that wasn't the assertion in the parent posting. Laptops were alleged to replace all computers, yes, even your machine at home.

Laptops are a niche product. No more, no less. And niche products are expensive. You probably paid a premium for the mobility. And that's just fine ... as long as you admit that you DID pay a premium.

$50/mo? Are you insane?

Get out much? Fifty bucks is the price of market-leader broadband in Toledo OH ... purchased by thousands. You may be able to wrangle a "deal" (i.e. it has all kinds of conditions designed to trip you up) here for DSL at $30/mo, but then so can you wrangle a "deal" for an $8/mo dialup. Dialup still wins the cost contest, hands down.

Remember, Yuppie, America simply isn't a couple of square miles here and there of built-up downtown areas, bristling with wifi.

Quite a strawman you've got going there.

Call it what you will, but the irrational exuberance of the 1990s is over. Now it's time to pay for burning investment capital like it was cordwood. For instance: How's that job coming along, pal? Enjoying some job security? How's it going being able to afford a house? Liking the price of gas lately? How about that heating bill, huh?

On average, you have been hit with the overall reduction in the American standard of living somewhere. Either you work longer hours, or gave up raising a family to pursue jobs, or gave up a big car for a fuel-efficient one ... but you did get hit, somewhere. And the impacts are spreading. For example, I'm now finally seeing a widespread unemployment fate for those with Bachelor's degrees. All that 1990s smugness has finally risen like a tide of bullshit and is drowning the BA's. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

P.S. I'm not buying your company's fucking stock, either. It's time for your class of person to learn what's it's like running a real business, day by day, for decades ... not just a pump-and-dump scam that runs for 24 months before the collapse.

Re:Get a Gateway

[jepaton]

This wouldn't be slashdot without the animated ASCII version. Written in duct tape (perl), Unix only (due to clear).

#perl
use Time::HiRes 'usleep';

$_="Joke\n O \n -|-\n / \\\n";

for $i (0 .. 10) {
system(clear);
print;
usleep(100000);
$i==9 ? s/^.*/ *Whoosh*/ : s/^/ / ;
}

Re:Get a Gateway

[cduffy]

But that wasn't the assertion in the parent posting. Laptops were alleged to replace all computers, yes, even your machine at home.

Laptops are a niche product. No more, no less. And niche products are expensive. You probably paid a premium for the mobility. And that's just fine ... as long as you admit that you DID pay a premium.

Sure, I paid a premium, but it doesn't mean they're that much of a niche. I'm thinking of buying a used laptop for my SO to use at home in place of the current house computer, since their power consumption is so much less -- should bring the electric bill down not to be running my 350watt monster all the time.

Sooner or later, I do expect to see low-power-consumption systems with LCDs become the norm, as soon as the price of LCDs drops some more. And once you've got cheap LCDs... well, you're pretty damn close to having cheap laptops too.

How's that job coming along, pal?

Nicely, since you ask. I'm expecting a raise inside the next month.

Enjoying some job security?

More than I ever have. Hell, for the first time ever, I've got an annual retention bonus.

How's it going being able to afford a house?

Just bought one, since you ask. Paying off the furniture is a bit uncomfortable, but it's otherwise going fine.

Liking the price of gas lately? How about that heating bill, huh?

Dirt cheap, the both of them. That's one of the things I like, having moved from California to Texas.

you work longer hours, or gave up raising a family to pursue jobs

I'm working shorter hours, mostly because I now have (the beginnings of) a family, whereas previously my job was my life. Sure, it's still more than 40 hours a week, but that'll change once my company's a bit less understaffed -- weeks if not months.

...gave up a big car for a fuel-efficient one...

I've never owned a fuel-inefficient vehicle.

P.S. I'm not buying your company's fucking stock, either. It's time for your class of person to learn what's it's like running a real business, day by day, for decades ... not just a pump-and-dump scam that runs for 24 months before the collapse.

With you all the way. I'm not in it for the delta between the buy and sell prices, I'm in it for the dividends. "My class of person" still has it pretty damn good, thank you very much. Now, the yuppies whose parties I go to, they don't have it quite so good -- the expensive cars and big houses they bought on credit during the boom are coming back to bite the ones who didn't cash out early enough. That's their problem, though, not mine.

Re:Get a Gateway

[ckaminski]

Try buying a laptop without a display?

What I meant was a standard LCD connection that would let you plug an aftermarket 18" LCD panel into the laptop, and hence, buy a laptop without an attached display.

Ala PCMCIA/Cardbus with expansion cards. Yes, it's possible. Not, it's not economical or marketable, which is why it doesn't exist.

Re:Get a Gateway

[ckaminski]

Remember that it's a touch sensitive 8x10" panel, in most cases. Those aren't cheap. Even at a full retail OEM price of $200 for XP Pro that doesn't explain Tablet PC costs in the range of $1200-$1500 USD.

Re:Get a Gateway

[ddent]

"The cost of a tablet PC is $200 (7,000 Taiwan dollars) more than its notebook counterpart. Of this difference, the hardware cost is only between $30 and $60. The majority of the difference comes from the OS license," said Wang. "We have tried to negotiate the fee with Microsoft several times in vain. It's very regrettable."

(Source: Acer: Tablet PC fees hard to swallow)

Re:Get a Gateway

[Trackster]

I'm afraid you're looking in the wrong places. Subpar quality in the Big Three has less to do with unions and more to do with management cutting corners at every turn to save a few pennies.

Those union workers are just that: workers, no different from Toyota's workers or Honda's workers or Nissan's workers in the U.S./North America.

If the workers you've seen "aren't there fore quality" then it has absolutely nothing to do with unions and everything to do with the fact that...They're not managed for quality.

Re:Get a Gateway

[1lus10n]

brushed Aluminum is still ... to damn ... something. I just prefer darker colors. Always have always will. I could deal with a dark titanium/gray color like what my cell is (nokia).

Ibooks are crap, no different than any hp/sony/gateway/whatever. To date I have used one laptop that impressed me an IBM thinkpad T42p. I have used many laptops (though I have only owned 2) and most of them (including ibooks ... from a few years ago) felt cheap. I dont want a plastic laptop. Just my humble opinion that if I am paying 1k for something that I want it to be a good quality product. That includes the feeling of the product.

Re:Get a Gateway

[1lus10n]

I never said they were trying to sell to me, as a matter of fact my post implies the opposite.

I use enlightenment. Just about anything else annoy's me unlike anything on this earth related to computers not made by microsoft. I find icons and toolbars irksome and unsightly. I need to have edgeflip. I want window shading and icon box's. I want to be able to force my window manager to behave how I want, not how some usability guy in (wherever apple is located these days) wants it to, or make me take the long hard road out of hell to get it semi-usable.

I use my thumbs on the mouse buttons on my current laptop so I dont have an issue (at least not a major one. Playing games like this leaves the side of my thumbs rather sore).

It's all personal preference. To me macs are not appealing.

Re:Get a Gateway

[ckaminski]

I stand corrected...

Re:Get a Gateway

[Panaflex]

The T42 runs Linux beautifully too.. only issue I had was the wireless (fixed with the intel driver) and hard drive corruption under Fedora (fixed with a kernel parameter)

Pan

Re:Get a Gateway

[evilviper]

Whoever modded this as a troll really needs a class in being a moderator...

If you don't agree, why doesn't ANYONE provide some counter-examples? This is based on my own experience.

Re:Get a Gateway

[1lus10n]

The t42 I was using had gentoo on it. No problems so far as I know but I only borrowed it from a friend for a week. I didnt use the wireless although its good to hear that Intel finally got around to releasing a centrino driver ...

My current laptop is POS 2+ year old compaq. Its better than nothing ...

Re:Get a Gateway

[1lus10n]

ibooks are not the same as powerbooks. I am looking for a quality laptop, not some crappy piece of plastic with a special color. (which white qualifies as, but not "special" in a good way.)

I prefer 14" or 15" non-widescreen. I want a laptop not some monster desktop replacement. The apple just doesnt fit my needs .... the IBM does. Its not a knock on apple ... made my mother buy a powerbook for her new notebook .... so I am aware that they make quality products. Mini-coopers are quality cars. Doesnt mean I would pay to drive one though.

Re:So wait.

[foulballs]

IBM is focusing on servers and customer services. Their PC business has been floundering for a while now.

Reuter's story

[wyldeone]

Reuter's story on this is here.

Re:Reuter's story

[tksh]

And here's Financial Time's story.

It's interesting to note that Lenovo will move its HQ from beijing to New York and its current president will be chair while IBM's PC division head will be the new CEO.

Re:Reuter's story

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell is slamming this sale. Here's the article:

Dell slams expected IBM-Lenovo deal

Here is a quote I love from the article:

Dell attributed his competitors' problems to outsourcing.

"It's been a long time since our leading competitors actually made a computer," he said. "They have outsourced manufacturing computers a long time ago, but Dell continues to invest heavily in the manufacturing and design of computers."

At least Dell doesn't think outsourcing is all it's cracked up to be. Even seems to think it caused IBM's downfall in the market was because of this.

Re:Reuter's story

[Txiasaeia]

"At least Dell doesn't think outsourcing is all it's cracked up to be. Even seems to think it caused IBM's downfall in the market was because of this."

And yet, Dell's tech support is in India, whereas IBM's tech support is in the US. Hmm...

Re:Reuter's story

[kaustik]

And me with no mod points... Good point.

Re:Reuter's story

[Knetzar]

You sure about that? The IBM has buisness units all over the world and I wouldn't be surprised if a few of their call centers were not based in the US.

Re:Reuter's story

[Amiga Trombone]

Interesting. The Reuters story states that Lenovo takes ownership of the "Think" brand name, whereas the news.com article states that IBM only grants them the right to use it for 5 years. I wonder which it is? That could be a critical factor in future branding of IBM products.

Somehow, I doubt that IBM would have forfieted their right to the "Think" meme altogether.

Re:Reuter's story

[Amiga Trombone]

Dell may have a point there.

But going forward that will be Lenovo's problem, not IBM's.

Re:Reuter's story

[dago]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that "IBM India" call center isn't located in US ...

Re:Reuter's story

[Skuld-Chan]

Actually IBM has a lot of call centers in both countries - do a search on google and you'll find plenty of articles like this one > http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33346.html.

IBM doesn't just run call centers for their tech support on their own products. They used to do all the helpdesk support for Nortel a long time ago for instance (note: I only know this because while working at Stream for a totally different contract a customer incisted I stay on the line while they call their help desk involving a printer problem with the product I did support)

Re:Reuter's story

[hackstraw]

And yet, Dell's tech support is in India, whereas IBM's tech support is in the US. Hmm...

IBM is known for "bigiron" stuff that works well with support that is borderline insane. Example, OS/2 is still supported.

Dell is known for cheap, decent quality PCs. Example, "Dude, your getting a Dell!"

Re:Reuter's story

[Ravnen]

And yet, Dell's tech support is in India, whereas IBM's tech support is in the US. Hmm...

I don't know if it's the same thing, but the link in the parent post says this:

Dell has some first-hand experience in the problems that can accompany offshoring. A year ago the company moved customer support operations for its Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks back to the U.S. after corporate customers complained about the quality of service they were receiving from international facilities.

Re:Reuter's story

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

"It's been a long time since our leading competitors actually made a computer," he said. "They have outsourced manufacturing computers a long time ago, but Dell continues to invest heavily in the manufacturing and design of computers."

I find this enormously funny.
Dell-speak translation:
IBM designs their own computers, and builds many of the parts, but has others actually assemble the parts. Dell finds people who build design and build computers and parts (often IBM, in fact), buys the parts and designs ("investing...") and then assembles them into a computer. The places where Dell "invests" in the design is in a snazzy Dell bezelplate, or shrinking the printer cartridge size to better rip off the consumer.

Re:Reuter's story

[rah1420]

"It's been a long time since our leading competitors actually made a computer"

Last time I cracked open a Dell it was when my daughter accidentally dumped Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup into her keyboard. I found standoffs and little plastic parts Superglued in place on her ostensibly new Dell LT.

Ever since then I've taken Dell computer assembly practices with a HUGE grain of salt.

Re:Reuter's story

[jc42]

Somehow, I doubt that IBM would have forfieted their right to the "Think" meme altogether.

Hey, I still have one of those gray IBM "THINK" signs from the 70's.

Right now, it's sitting on the window sill in our downstairs bathroom.

Re:Reuter's story

[nadyne]

Not all of IBM's tech support is in the US. The last time that I called tech support, I was connected to someone in Bangalore. Ever since IBM moved [at least some of] its tech support overseas, everyone at my office whinges if their ThinkPad dies or Notes goes belly-up.

Hardware support still seems to be exclusively in Atlanta, but software support seems to be either Bangalore or Toronto. I haven't connected to anyone in Atlanta or Boulder (the previous two main sources of software support) for software support in at least a year. /nm

Re:Reuter's story

[Txiasaeia]

Well, guess that explains it - only had to deal with hardware a couple times, never with software.

Quality

[splitretina]

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.

Re:Quality

[liangzai]

Try http://www.lenovogrp.com/ (or http://www.lenovo.cn/ if you know Chinese). I think Thinkpad and other IBM gadgets will decrease as much in quality under Lenovo as Volvo has decreased in quality under Ford's oppressive measures (or Saab has under GM's). It's just a transaction of money, estate and control, the quality will depend on wise management, regardless where the production is.

Re:Quality

[ilyanep]

I can make another metaphor : Symantec has definately killed Norton. The suite they offer now (2005) stinks, but I want to avoid going into too much detail.

Aside from being chinese (no offense to any out there), Lenovo is a different company which doesn't share the original company's viewpoints. This has happened time and time again, this won't be an exception.

Re:Quality

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

"I think Thinkpad and other IBM gadgets will decrease as much in quality under Lenovo as Volvo has decreased in quality under Ford's"

So quality is going to go massively up, and the computers will become very trendy and liked instead of mocked by the masses? Sales will increase, and people won't think of their products as boxes anymore.

Gee this is horrible.

Re:Quality

[nxs212]

was that supposed to be sarcastic? IBM's "quality" has been falling at terminal velociy for at least the last 3 years.
Their laptops used to kick ass but starting with model T21 we started having so many failures and problems with them that we purchased 3 spare units just to give out to clients while their broken units were sent for repairs or awaiting replacement parts.
Does anyone know when they stopped making all their parts in Japan and outsourced to Malaysia?

Re:Quality

[johnny_sas]

ovbiously you never used the old iSeries - used to do support on them (among other thinkpads) when they first came out - boy what a pain they were.

Re:Quality

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

According to the article, Levono is the PC manufacturer fomerly known as Legend. Not exactly known for their high quality in the past, but hopefully they can provide the quality to go along with the IBM name..

Re:Quality

[quarkscat]

This story reminds me (okay, so I am long in
tooth) of Kaypro (back in the day). They
announced a new "transportable" with a lot of
cool new features way too early -- it destroyed
their current H/W sales as people held onto
their money until the new products arrived.
The drop in sales destroyed the company.

I can imagine that corporate buyers are either
rushing to purchase the last remaining stock
of IBM's laptops & workstations, or are quietly
kicking themselves for believing that old adage
that "nobody gets fired for buying IBM", and
now looking at Dell and HP as the alternative
vendors of choice.

Re:Quality

[volve]

I'm afraid popularity does not directly correlate to quality.

Although 10 points for being a wonderful consumer.

Re:Quality

[ambienceman]

Actually, I'd rgue that in many ways, Saab's quality has increased since being acquired by GM.

Re:Quality

[ckaminski]

Hey, if eMachines can manage to fix the quality issues, why not give Levono the benefit of the doubt too?

Re:Quality

[network23]

I think Thinkpad and other IBM gadgets will decrease as much in quality under Lenovo as Volvo has decreased in quality under Ford's oppressive measures (or Saab has under GM's).

Actually, there is a huge difference between how Ford is treating the Volvo brand (a jewel) and how GM is mis-treating Saab (let's make lots of crappy asian cars and slap the SAAB name on them).

Re:Quality

[MsGeek]

The iSeries ThinkPads were actually rebadged Acer laptops. 100% designed and made in Taiwan. The only ThinkPad (at least until now) that IBM allowed someone else to design. That was a decision I thought they lived to regret.

My ThinkPad 600e was designed by IBM Research Triangle Centre in North Carolina, US. Its parts were pretty much all made in Japan. It was assembled at IBM's Maquiladora in Mexico.

If Lenovo can continue to have the Research Triangle guys designing for them, and they have good enough quality control to make sure they are built to IBM specs like they did in the Mexico plant, they could conceivably pull it off.

Still...pour out a little liquor (away from my ThinkPad if you please) for our dead homie, IBM Personal Systems Division.

Re:Quality

[gl4ss]

well.. i suppose that analogy would work -- EXPECT that thinkpads are already manufactured somewhere in far east by contractors.

Re:Quality

[Knetzar]

Wasn't eMachines bought by compaq, which was then bought by HP? If that's the case then eMachines buying Compaq or HP's PC unit would be a better comparison.

Re:Quality

[bob beta]

Symantec has definately killed Norton.

Setup.exe killed Norton. Or, to be more clear, Norton Utilities died at the point when it became important to run a setup.exe program to 'install' it on a computer. Norton was a DOS tool for digging around inside and fixing files and drives.

Peter Norton is just a bitmap on a box and has been for over a decade.

Re:Quality

[metlin]

You know, we have folks from NASA who frequently give presentations on various cool technology stuff and the like.

I noticed that in all the shuttlecraft/space station pics, the systems used for controlling various things were all IBM laptops.

ThinkPads all the way, no question. I asked the guy about it and his response was, "It's robust, it's reliable and it's IBM".

I'm quite certain that Lenova couldn't *ever* have that kind of a brand-name.

IBM has grown to earn the respect, and while Lenova may buy IBM's business, they will not buy IBM's respect. That needs to be proved and earned.

Re:Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll expect it... ok...

Re:Quality

[ball-lightning]

So quality is going to go massively up, and the computers will become very trendy and liked instead of mocked by the masses? Sales will increase, and people won't think of their products as boxes anymore.

Repeat after me: Boxy but good. While I was getting my 14 year old Volvo 240 from my local mechanic (got a tune-up), I asked him how some of the newer Volvo's were holding up. Pretty much he told me the S80's were just about the biggest peices of junk money could buy. Time will only tell for the rest of the models...

I love my 240, starts every time, and just keeps going (and I've been hard on the thing). Sure, lots of people made fun of them, but who cares? Most of those people bought Ford's or Chevy's that gave up the ghost a few years later anyway. One of my friends bought a brand new Chevy Cavalier last year. Damn thing stalled out over a pothole (it is an automatic). Later on, it stalled out while going around corners, also losing all breaking (her words, not mine). Honestly, some of the American cars I've seen have been of incredibly low quality. Ever been in a Ford Expedition? The Interior is like something you'd expect from an expensive child's playhouse or something...

Re:Quality

[DNS-and-BIND]

Here in China, Lenovo makes crappy laptops. I played with one in a store, and it was scary. Lightweight breakable plastic, the foldable hinge looked like it could break at any moment, and I could have peeled off the trim with my fingernail. I don't want to think what the insides looked like. They weren't even particularly cheap, $1100 for the entry-level model.

The worst part is that Chinese business culture will now dictate IBM's PC business. In other words, if they cut corners and ship a crappy product, it's your fault for not detecting it. They don't feel a shred of shame for doing things like this, hell, I should know.

Re:Quality

[EvanTaylor]

no, eMachines bought gateway.

Re:Quality

[ttys00]

Mod parent up.

My father has a 2003 Volvo V70, and a 1980 240 wagon with 250,000km on it. He has problems with the V70, but the 240 doesn't have any.

Re:Quality

[rubyfreak]

Both yes and no. The classic 900 (introduced in 1979, before the GM days) was incredibly robust, my dad used to drive around in an '84 sedan with 360,000 km on it. Now he's passed it onto my brother, and apart from some rust it's still in great condition - the engine is as good as new! But the Opel Vectra-based GM900 introduced in 1994 was initially a piece of crap, due to hasty development. Took them until '95 or so until all issues were sorted out (and by then it was a great car!) but in that time the brand had already lost a great deal of its reputation. But the 9-5 is a whole different story, both excellent quality and wonderful to drive... for once GM got everything right :)

Re:Quality

[SenorCitizen]

"I think Thinkpad and other IBM gadgets will decrease as much in quality under Lenovo as Volvo has decreased in quality under Ford's" So quality is going to go massively up, and the computers will become very trendy and liked instead of mocked by the masses? Sales will increase, and people won't think of their products as boxes anymore.

Umm. If you happen to remember, the Volvo-Ford merger happened in 1999, and in 1999 Volvos weren't especially boxy... it just happens to be *your* image of the brand associated with the 240/740 cars. And from what I've heard, the build quality hasn't gone up, at least. This isn't Jaguar we're talking about.

The lineup in 1999:

S/V40
S/V70
S80
C70
C70 Convertible.

Re:Quality

[dosius]

s/Kaypro/Osborne

Moll.

Re:Quality

[thepoch]

My family owns a Volvo S40. It sucks. Engine shakes like a diesel engine, and yet we know we bought a gasoline 4-inline engine. We looked under the hood and yes it is a 4-inline gasoline engine. And yet it shakes. Badly. We've complained to Volvo. Their service sucks. Strangely, a one-year older model doesn't shake as bad. We tricked their sales to drive to us another unit for a test drive. It's a turbo 4-inline engine. Still shakes as bad. It shakes until the interior is vibrating and you can already hear it and get a headache. Imagine this in stop-and-go traffic.

Second problem... their doors seem empty. When I close them, there's an empty tin can sound. Whereas on our Toyota Corolla Altis, it's a solid thud.

So no, Volvo's quality, under Ford's ownership, did not go up. Maybe the higher end models. But the lower end S40, pitted against Camrys, Accords, Cefiros, in pricing, is nowhere near the quality of the Japanese brands. Sure it's trendy. And sales may have increased under Ford. But it still a horrible car.

Sorry had to rant when I read Volvo and up-going quality in the same post.

Re:Quality

[anum]

Couldn't agree more! I too, love my 1990 240 w/ 140k miles. It might drink a quart of oil every couple of months but it starts every morning and never fails to go when I ask it to.

My dad didn't believe me when I told it was only a 4 cylinder. 14 years old, heavy as can be and just enough acceleration to get me ahead of the pack.

Best purchase I've ever made... $750 three years and 40k miles ago, woot!

Re:Quality

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Should have gone with a boxer-4 configuration for the engine, the shaking shoulds like the engine is unbalanced, perhaps the ignition map is wrong?

Re:Quality

[thepoch]

Volvo service has done everything... from mounting additional engine supports, to changing and rebalancing the radiator fan, to changing transmission configurations, to making the idle rev a little higher, to changing other stuff I have no idea about. The head service guy was handling the issue. He's straight from Sweden, so I suppose he's capable in terms of servicing Volvo's. It has lessened since, but I still feel it when in stop and go traffic. Horrible really. Can't possibly recommend a Volvo after this experience. On the other hand, it is understandable that Volvo's expertise is in 5-inline engines. But still, it's unacceptable to sell a car of this quality.

Re:going going gone... so sad

[spike hay]

IBM PCs have the same insides as Dells or Compaqs.

What about workstations?

[secondsun]

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.

Re:What about workstations?

[sapbasisnerd]

My understanding is that the current Intellistations are made by the server division rather than the PC division (which makes sense as they are basically just servers with high end graphics cards) so they will not go to with this deal.

Re:What about workstations?

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

I have a thinkpad 500, 25mhz 486 i think. Pull it out sometimes, still boots up and runs.

Re:What about workstations?

[asselin]

That's correct; Intellistation is not being sold.

Apex buys Sony next?

[Fubar411]

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.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[Nixoloco]

"We believe a joint-venture structure in PCs makes sense between the companies, as the buyer would collaborate with IBM design teams for a period of a few years and the buyer would assume control of manufacturing," Steven Fortuna, an analyst with Prudential Equity Group, wrote in a report Tuesday.

Maybe we'll get a few more years of quality...

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[anactofgod]

Odd already are that the laptop you are typign on was not manufactured by IBM, but by some contract manufacturer in Asia. IBM has been divesting itself of PC and laptop manufacturing facilities for quite a while now.

In fact, if one actually read the article, one would see that point being made in...oh...about the thirteenth paragraph. One would also realize that, inspite of the headline and /. synopsis, it's not an actual "sale" of the PC unit. IBM is forming a joint venture with Lenovo, which means that IBM will continue to be involved in the PCs and Thinkpad business for at least a few years.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

I think you are looking at this wrong like so many others. They bought IBMs PC devision, that will Lenovo will basicly become IBM PC devision. They will take up the quality IBM has, not bring down IBMs quality.

They did this to gain all the quality. Besides things like thinkpads arn't even designed much by IBM, it's some asian company that makes them for most everyone else.

I expect them to be much like when IBM spun off the printer devision which became lexmark. Lenovo will re-orginize, probably just scrap much of what they had. Probably rename under a new catchy name, and grow to be a big time player. People just don't think IBM when it comes to home computers anymore. They will go after that again which IBM has long since ditched.

I guess thing will now be listed as "Lenovo Compatible"

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[TuballoyThunder]

I hope you are right, but I really do not see that happening. Lenovo didn't buy the PC division for the quality, they bought the name and access--and they get the name for only five years. It will take a radical paradigm shift for Lenovo to adopt IBM's design practices, particularly when it was those expensive practices that motivated IBM to sell its PC division.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[madmancarman]

I expect them to be much like when IBM spun off the printer devision which became lexmark. Lenovo will re-orginize, probably just scrap much of what they had. Probably rename under a new catchy name, and grow to be a big time player.

I wasn't aware that Lexmark sprung from IBM's printer division, so I hope that this Lenovo purchase goes better. Lexmark makes some of the worst inkjet printers I've ever encountered. Our school district made the mistake of purchasing around $18 worth of Lexmark printers (5700s) when we ordered Dells back in 1999. Within a year, nearly half of them were dead, and all were out of warranty.

We were actually able to get one of the engineers to come up to our school since we're located near Lexington, KY, and he was the one that told us the problem was due to a manufacturing flaw in the motherboard (faulty controller chip?). He offered to drive some of the printers back to Lexmark, put them in for repair on his account - he could "vouch for" up to eight printers at a time, regardless of warranty - and then send them back to us. However, the whole process would take months, and eventually we just gave up. We ended up with a wall of dead Lexmark printers on shelves waiting for the Disposal of Assets forms to come back so we could throw them away, but after waiting for three years, we eventually just took them all down to the dumpster.

I know that inkjet printers are generally terrible, but I can never recommend Lexmarks because of that experience. Also, we have something like 13 computer labs in the high school where I teach, and the labs that have the most problems are the ones with whitebox PCs from a crappy local company in our business/vocational labs, and the IBM PCs in our science lab. We've soldered off and replaced so many goddamned bad capacitors from IBM motherboards that we're never going to buy IBM again.

With any luck for Lenovo, this purchase might bring IBM's name brand back into the forefront of American consumers' minds, but I for one have no interest in anything associated with IBM.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[iocat]

Actually, upon closely RTFA, they *bought* the Think trademarks -- "ThinkPad" is now theirs. But they can use "IBM" on them for five years before they have to start calling them something else. I'd bet $500 easy that the name of the company becomes "Think" or "ThinkPad" or some derivitive name w/i the five years.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM used to do R&D and design for Thinkpads, then contract out the construction. Lenovo (a.k.a. Legend) will be doing the design now.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[iocat]

Ironically, while they're known for totally shitty inkjets, they make really nice but expensive laser and color laser printers. Weird.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[Gates82]

I purchased my thinkpad two years ago and the parts where assembled in Raliegh, NC at the IBM PC plant their. The parts come from abroad, but the design and assembly takes place in the US at and IBM facility.

--
So, who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[Kris_J]

Lexmark laser printers aren't any better. Their control chips to prevent use of "remanufactured" cartridges, then using the DMCA to intimidate any companies still trying to offer refills is, IMHO, despicible. A9 for "lexmark DMCA". Our local recycled toner cartridge supplier recommends pretty much anything over a Lexmark.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[toddmori]

Well, except for the exploding chip issue on the Fuser Controller of the Optra S 2450 that would generally let go right around 120,000-150,000 pages

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[Cecil]

They will take up the quality IBM has, not bring down IBMs quality.

For now... but like he said, Lenovo does very little R&D. In 5 years, will Lenovo still be building cutting edge, top-quality laptops? Not unless they ramp up their R&D, or the IBM purchase came with a box full of development secrets from the future.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[Lariano]

The hard drives in the ThinkPad have for the last year been manufactured by another department IBM sold off, now called Hitachi Global Storage Technologies http://www.hitachigst.com/. These are and will continue to be developed independently from anything Lenovo does, and it's more than likely that Lenovo will continue using these hard drives. So the Lenovo ThinkPads should support about the same falling distances as the ones by IBM.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[consumer]

Quality? My IBM ThinkPad is the worst laptop I've ever used. It has had two drive failures in a year, and it uses some bizarre wireless chip that is unsupported by most Linux distributions. I'd rather have a Gateway or Dell any day.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[Jahf]

Most of the analysis I've seen says that Lenovo did this to gain the IBM brand specifically so that they can market in areas that hadn't heard of the Lenovo brand (or were distrustful of it). Very little has been said about the idea that Lenovo is doing this to improve their product lines or enhance R&D.

That doesn't make me feel that this is going to bring Lenovo up to IBM's standards (some people may dislike IBM's PCs but I have been a big fan of the Thinkpads since the 570 model and have 2 Thinkpads right now). This makes me feel that IBM branded PCs and laptops are going to slowly lose ground and become garden variety machines.

I -reeeeeally- wish that IBM had sold their PC line but kept control over the Thinkpads.

Oh well.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[ubernostrum]

and it uses some bizarre wireless chip that is unsupported by most Linux distributions

What's the chipset? Or, failing that, what model Thinkpad do you have?

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[anum]

All your quality belong to us?

I can assure you that they didn't buy IBM's "quality" whatever you think that is. They bought IBM's reputation (including its reputation for quality, I grant you).

IBM has almost certainly contrated out all of its PC designs for some time now. Their quality control and demanding specifactions are probably all that separates a Thinkpad from a Gateway from a Dell.

If Levono can maintain that then we will all be recommending them in the future. If not then they will milk IBM's reputation dry and move on.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[amw]

Our school district made the mistake of purchasing around $18 worth of Lexmark printers (5700s) when we ordered Dells back in 1999

Well, at least you didn't waste too much money on them.

I've used precisely one Lexmark printer in my life, several years ago. Not only was it slow, it also slowed the PC down horrendously (it was highly Windows-dependant). However the quality of them may have improved since, the mud still sticks.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[brucmack]

I believe the fall distance has more to do with the design of the laptop than the design of the hard drive. I couldn't find information on the shock absorbers, but wouldn't it make more sense if they were around the hard drive, rather than inside it?

Also, the motion sensor designed to stop the hard drive after sudden movement is definitely a separate component.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[CoolToddHunter]

That was two years ago. As a resident of that area, I can attest that IBM no longer manufactures anything in RTP. However, they still do design here.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[consumer]

It's the Atheros chipset, in an R40. You have to get Madwifi for it, which is not part of Fedora Core 3.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[madmancarman]

Well, at least you didn't waste too much money on them.

Actually, it was $18,000 - I must have trimmed the 0s off in editing.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[madmancarman]

What exactly were you expecting from your $18 investment then?

I originally wrote $20,000, then I thought about it and remembered it was closer to $18,000, so I modified it and missed it in proofreading. I guess that's what I get for trying to be accurate.

Re:Apex buys Sony next?

[nadyne]

That's what happened (on paper) with the sale of the hard drive unit to Hitachi, but that doesn't seem to be the actual outcome. /nm

ThinkPad Universities?

[Fyre2012]

Makes me wonder what my school, University of Ontario Institure for Technology, will be doing considering they use ThinkPads exclusively

Re:ThinkPad Universities?

[Deathlizard]

I work for a Thinkpad University. We just became one this year and this came up in our meeting Monday.

Basicially, With the official announcement now out, what was a done deal for who we were going to buy from next year has instantly became a toss up all over again. At this point, relibility and customer service (the biggest selling points for IBM) is now questionable, and we don't need the students (who are already ticked off that their paying more because they had to pay for a laptop now) to start pointing the finger and shouting "Dude! you should have bought a Dell!" all day.

Frankly, Thinkpad's are Rocks. We've seen pop, flash floods and even a candle spilled in these things and they still keep going. I cant imagine a comparibly priced competitor holding up to this much abuse. Frankly they should have sold everything else but the Thinkpads. Those were worth every penny hands down.

Re:lenovoepad?

[SnowZero]

I'm banking on "Thoughtpad". They can use it after the 5 years is up on using the Think brand, and it carries a convenient past tense.

Will miss not having a T1000 eventually...

PS/2

[m93]

Gee, I guess that whole PS/2 thing WAS a bad idea after all........

Re:PS/2

[koehn]

You must mean OS/2. But they didn't sell that off. I don't even think they could give that thing away, much less sell it.

Re:PS/2

[empaler]

I actually still have my OS/2 Warp installation CD - which they gave away ^_^
I found it as I've just moved, but I doubt it'll survive another move. Anyone in/near Copenhagen want a piece of history? Write me. (No box or manual, but I think I have the Bonus Pack there, as well)

Re:PS/2

[bishmasterb]

Actually, I think he did mean PS/2. PS/2 (Personal System/2) was a huge hardware initiative by IBM launched around 1987 or so, in an attempt to create a closed hardware specification that IBM could control.

Re:PS/2

[m93]

That is precisely what I meant. Check out the Wikipedia entry on IBM and PS/2 for details. It was a monumental failure.

Re:PS/2

[Noginbump]

"Wow, some of these kids don't remember the PS/2 series!"

I remember Wal-Mart trying to unload some old PS/2's when Packard Bell 486's were all the rage.

I had a 5150, with the uptown 160K floppies, and the mono-green screen.

Re:PS/2

[tepples]

I remember Wal-Mart trying to unload some old PS/2's when Packard Bell 486's were all the rage.

Irony: The GameCube competes against the Sony PS2 and runs at 486 MHz.

Re:PS/2

[whiteranger99x]

Irony: The GameCube competes against the Sony PS2 and runs at 486 MHz.

Except those 486s in those Packard Bells would've ran a smidge faster :)

Re:PS/2

[hackstraw]

You must mean OS/2. But they didn't sell that off. I don't even think they could give that thing away, much less sell it.

No, I believe he did mean PS/2.

Oh, and you do realize that many banks use OS/2 and many if not most ATM machines currently run OS/2 right? And its supported until 2006?

Re:PS/2

[LordBodak]

In addition, a lot of corporate phone systems run on OS/2.

Re:PS/2

[nothingtodo]

Ah yes, the PS/2 line. Still very easy to work on once you know the basics of them. I like the 95xx series with their IML partitions and you can't beat the autoconfiguration they do. I still have several 95A servers I play with time to time. OS/2 is a perfect match for them as well. 100% reliable and bulletproof.

driver and support site?

[mrbcs]

I'm curious what effect this will have on the support website. I thought IBM did a great job of fixing their driver site in the last couple years.

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.

Re:driver and support site?

[ArsonSmith]

Yea their site was horrible, now it is OK.

Re:driver and support site?

[costas]

The NYTimes article on the deal says that IBM will continue providing support for its PCs.

Re:So wait.

[spike hay]

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.

Chinkpad

[Anonymous Coward]

My Thinkpad's now a Chinkpad?

Ok Ok .. 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!

Anyway .. hopefully the chinese can make do well with this. Thinkpads really rock.

China is coming up really fast .. 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).

Re:Chinkpad

[johansalk]

I'm not white and I totoally agree with you. I've experienced the least racism from Whites; a rare event in fact. OTOH, I've experienced racism on regular, consistent basis from other minorities.

Re:Chinkpad

[suckmysav]

Oh? Care to point to any anglo-saxon perpetrated genocides in the last, oh, let's say, century or so?

There have been plenty genocide attempts made by slavs, asians, arabs, jews and germanics. in the last century.

Re:Chinkpad

[suckmysav]

No

Most interesting "wild speculation"

[Coryoth]

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.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[somethinghollow]

I'm going with alliance. It'd be stupid for Apple to be assimilated by IBM when Apple is on the rise and not appearing to peak any time soon. Besides, they've already partnered with IBM for chips. Why not let IBM help Apple sell more computers so that they can sell more chips to put in those machines. That seems perfectly logical. IBM, IMHO, is getting a bit of an old-and-crusty feel to it. It'd do them some good to get a little more hip. Besides, all the Unix/Linux experience they have could help Apple, and eventually help the open source through Darwin.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[stevesliva]

I think it's dumb speculation. IBM is focusing-- as it always has-- on business. It's divesting personal computers that have become consumer commodities. Why would it purchase a company whose stock has risen a huge amount based entirely on the profits of a personal music player?

If not for the stock premium caused by the iPod it might make sense to buy a company known for its superior product design, as IBM focuses on proving more value (and charging higher premiums for it) to clients than the commodities themselves provide, but here it is selling a well-regarded laptop line for a bargain... why would it turn around and by one for a huge premium?

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[mnmn]

Your comment suddenly made me realize something.

Add up these facts:

Apple is powerpc

IBM is powerpc

Apple is OSX based on FreeBSD

IBM spent $1 bil on Linux last year

Apple competes with Intel and Microsoft

IBM competes with Intel and Microsoft

Microsofts apps depend on Intel (Wintel)

Intel Sales depend on Microsoft OS and apps

Intel is a monopoly (they still are, declining)

Microsoft is a monopoly

IBM and Apple are losers in these monopolies

IBM has been releasing apps for Linux on pSeries

Apple has been pushing apps for UNIX on PPC

IBM supports OSS community, increasing free apps

Free apps can be compiled on any arch.

Making sense now?

No?

Say Linux goes a bit more mainstream, Opensource apps increase in numbers, especially for powerpc, both IBM and Apple win, Intel and Microsoft lose.

This is more true of servers than desktops... for now. IBM can take the server share (cheapest pseries now is $6k, with very few under $10k, Apple the desktop share). They both have been depending more and more on opensourced apps and OSes, and have had past alliances (PReP machines), that worked. Both created successful computer lines and are confident in doing the same again. Both have been highly marginalized by Wintel Inc.

IBM is pretty much getting rid of x86 on desktops, keeping only the x86 on servers. With AMD as a good option, they really dont need Intel for anything now, havent been relying on Microsoft either for much beside xSeries OSes (online catalog shows SLES and Redhat AS as options alongside Win2003).

The whole industry, at least the bigger players are moving away from the wintel alliance, and we can expect a showdown. Wintel wants the entire market to itself, everyones threatened. Sun, SGI, Novell have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, no reason for them not to join. Apple and IBM must do something while they still have the kick.

Tell me if I'm way off my base here. I have a premonition of a tech sector mortal kombat with entire vertical architectures against each other, x86+win32 and other arches+other oses. I see IBM moving away from x86, at least from Intel... Athlon64 is too good a deal to turn down.

Am I wrong or is the Intel+Microsoft alliance just not that threatening?

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[pipingguy]

Why would it purchase a company whose stock has risen a huge amount based entirely on the profits of a personal music player?

I would *love* to see an IBM-Apple alliance.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[Infonaut]

I'm with you, Coryoth. IBM and Apple are doing fine in their current relationship. Apple uses IBM chips. IBM pushes businesses to realize that Windows isn't the only OS on the block, which benefits Apple.

But IBM and Apple are both smart enough to realize that merging two companies with their own unique cultures is a difficult, sometimes impossible task. Bigger is not always better, as IBM learned during their dark years. A loose alliance based on mutual respect is likely far better for both companies.

Rumors about Apple mating with other companies have been around as long as the Mac has existed. Sun, Disney, Sony, IBM - I wonder who it'll be on the next iteration of the rumor mill.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[Whyrph]

If this gets me apple notebooks with two mouse buttons and a trackpoint, then sign me up!

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[thogard]

I would love to see an IBM badged mac just to give a new meaning to the phrase "IBM compatible computer"

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[mrchaotica]

That's a great revelation, but you missed the article. Anyway, yeah -- I'm hoping the same thing too, and I'll bet you a million bucks somebody at Apple and IBM has had the same thought.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[mrchaotica]

Now that's insightful!

[by the way, at least on a 12", one mouse button isn't a problem due to the proximity of the modifier keys]

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[EnronHaliburton2004]

They claim that IBM may be interested in buying or allying with Apple

Wow, I'm remembering the "1984" commercial from Apple, with the lady throwing the hammer through the giant IBM TV screen, borrowing heavily from the classic book "1984".

If IBM buys Apple, that'll make many heads spin.

The system will eat itself, in some cases.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[iocat]

A PowerBook with a track point and two buttons would bring me back into the Apple fold faster than you can say "Wozniak"... or even "Jobs"

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[Amiga Trombone]

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.

What might slightly more sense would be IBM and Apple forming a subsidiary as a joint venture, and creating a standard business desktop/notebook line, and possibly both of them re-branding it and selling it under their own brands. This would address the issue of the Mac being a single-source vendor, and allow for product cycles and features that more closely reflect the needs of business, without diluting Apple's brand equity in the consumer/specialty market.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM and Intel are more friends than enemies. Looking at the future roadmaps for their x86 servers, they are all Intel based.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[mysticwhiskey]

Ahahahah. Ahaha. Ha. Ahem... See, you were trying to jump on the "prolonged-in-joke" bandwagon, but it had already left. And in your haste, you misspelt the name of the country, too.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[cowscows]

Six Flags! Their theme parks have had great sucess using looney toons and nickelodeon characters. Imagine what they could do with a brand as recognizable as Apple!

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[greenguy]

I wonder who it'll be on the next iteration of the rumor mill.

OSDN?

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[Politburo]

Your comment suddenly made me realize something. Commas rule.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[shadow303]

It is already taking on new meaning. Can anybody point me to a cheap mainframe clone?

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[PhotoGuy]

Your comment suddenly made me realize something.

Add up these facts:

Apple is powerpc

IBM is powerpc

Apple is OSX based on FreeBSD

IBM spent $1 bil on Linux last year ...

Sheeesh, dude, I'm lost already, can you draw me a logic diagram for this?

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[jafac]

While I'd certainly give this "rumor" more creedence at this time than at ANY time in the past. . . you must acknowledge that Apple-IBM merger rumors are about as old as dirt.

There's one MAJOR reason why I believe this will never happen.
IBM is a Business-oriented company. (The "B" stands for Business, you know). Old-guard, East Coast, suits, ties, white shirts.

Apple is a consumer-oriented company. iMacs. iPods. Turtlenecks. Birkenstocks.

There may be a technological synergy there. There is. It's undeniable. But culturally, and perhaps more imporantly, STRUCTURALLY, these two companies are incompatible as hell. Apple is geared towards developing products for consumers, selling them to consumers, and supporting consumers. IBM is geared towards developing products for businesses, selling to corporate customers, and has a HUGE consulting and field support unit for supporting corporate customers (and integrators). On the surface, they seem to complement eachother. In reality, it would be like trying to jam a triangular peg into a much smaller round hole.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[jafac]

now, if I *were* to speculate on an Apple/IBM merger, I would say that rather than merge, IBM would, instead, work a cross-licensing deal with Apple.

Take two cups of Mac OS X desktop system technology.
Add a Power-based IBM hardware platform at 4 Ghz.
Gradually stir in a half-pound of highly refined Linux/Java/XML business infrastructure.
Network with your choice of IBM mainframes, Power 5-based line of servers, or x86-based servers, running Linux.
Let simmer for about 5 years, and serve to Corporate America's 50 million desktop systems.

All they really need to complete this recepie would be:
1) A decent database. (I'm not a DB/2 fan).
2) A decent Office/Groupware suite (definately NOT a Lotus Notes fan).
3) A more popular LDAP solution.

This is a recipie for Mac OS to make inroads into the Corporate Desktop market. But I doubt Jobs will license Mac OS X to IBM. Even with very restrictive terms. There's synergy here, IBM would have zero chance of cannibalizing Apple's home market, and we know that Apple currently has about zero exposure in the business world. So it's a win-win situation.

IBM's going to lose to Microsoft if they relegate themselves to being a "servers" company. Like Sun and Novell. Microsoft controls the client, and if .NET doesn't run on your server, yer fucked, unless you can remove Microsoft's client/desktop dominance.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[phuturephunk]

You're a Mac user aren't you? If you consider hedging all your bets on a personal music player that is driven by marketing hype alone (more feature rich, higher storage models can be bought from other manufacturers at a lower price, with the same quality) as 'on the rise' then you deserve what the guys who ran the bubbl-era bombs got.

Re:Most interesting "wild speculation"

[somethinghollow]

Yes, I am a Mac user. That has no bearing on anything, though. I'm also a Linux, Windows, and Symbian OS user. To respond:

You're a geek aren't you? (It's okay, I am too.) If you consider hedging all your bets on a personal music player that is driven by features alone (better marketed, more user-friendly models can be bought from Apple) then you deserve what all the beta-max buyers got (and maybe the laser disc buyers, too).

Sure, iRiver is great. It plays all kinds of formats, has a big hard drive, etc. But I've never seen an advertisement for it. In a nation of consumers, people buy what they recognize and what is trendy. Further, in a nation that is (surprise) mostly non-geek, people want things that are easy to operate (and iTunes+iPod is as easy as it gets). While Windows hasn't held up its end of the deal, it got to where it is now somehow.

But what iPods have to do with Macintosh computers escapes me. You seemed to change thoughts after the parenthesis closed. I'm not hedging any bets on the iPod. Apple may be on the rise because of the iPod (which is what I think you were suggesting), but they are still selling more computers. If you are selling more of anything for any reason, it's not the time to get out. You sell when you peak, not when you are rising (see what IBM did recently with its hardware operations?). If you disagree with that, be glad you are not a stock broker...

That's why I think a partnership would emerge rather than a buy out. Even if Apple were dying, I think Steve Jobs would do his best to ride the ship into the water before he'd give up. The shareholders might say otherwise, but Jobs ego is too big to just hop ship and swim to shore.

Huh?

[gremlins]

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.

Re:Huh?

[Amiga Trombone]

The main thing IBM is getting is freedom from Microsoft. As long as they had the PC line they couldn't totally piss off MS as they could raise the price on Windows to the Normal level. (MS have done this once)

Considering how many people I've seen making this statement in this thread, I have to wonder if perhaps this was part of the intent.

Microprocessors is a more profitable business to IBM than PC's were. IBM has all the reason in the world to facilitate Apple's success. Especially since they no longer compete in that space. All upside for IBM, and no downside.

Re:Huh?

[Amiga Trombone]

Damn that cut and paste! The comment I meant to reply to was this:

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.

Shoulda previewed!

Re:Huh?

[ganiman]

I always thought Apple made the best laptop overall, and that IBM made the best x86 laptop. It wouldn't be such a bad thing to see them merge.

Re:Huh?

[otisg]

Actually, this has been my question all along. No IBM PC Unit means no ThinkPads, I guess. But what happens to the ThinkPad line in general? Will the new owner keep making them?

I was about to buy an IBM ThinkPad, but now I wonder if there is any point in doing that. It would be stupid to do that now, wouldn't it?

Re:Thinkpads

[leonscape]

Thinkpads are one of the best. Since they've sold that as well, this could be really bad news for getting a quality laptop.

Can someone please clear this up?

[ShallowThroat]

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.

Re:Can someone please clear this up?

[stevesliva]

This past year IBM's Technology group and their Systems group were merged into the "Systems & Technology Group" (yeah, I know, astoundingly creative) to get better synergy between the semiconductor (technology) and server (systems) parts of the business. The PC division being sold definitely does not include the technology/chips group, whose assets alone greatly exceed $1.25B

Re:Can someone please clear this up?

[sapbasisnerd]

Is IBM's microprocessor division a part of the PC division? No, as of a few months ago it is now merged with the server division. Before that it was a separate "Technology" division.

I won't be the first

[Tragek]

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.

Re:I won't be the first

[binary42]

The last conference I went to there was a flood of white notebooks (guess who). I am not compairing the two... it was just an observation. I did not have a laptop at that time (I used my sharp zaurus SL-C760).

Re:I won't be the first

[CAIMLAS]

I'd personally love to get an iBook or powerbook for my next laptop. The problem?

Their keyboards suck, horribly. As do all Apple keyboards (with the exception of the "really old" ones). They're too soft and the key spacing or bevel is peculiar and/or uncomfortable which leads to fat fingers on my part.

I'll likely buy my next laptop from "IBM" as well, simply due to the superiority of the keyboards on Thinkpads vs. any other laptop I've ever seen. That purchase will likely be made in 1.5 years or so, provided nothing better has come along, and the Thinkpad line hasn't been drained of quality to bring it down to the level of Dell or Gateway.

Design is set Im sure

[hypermike]

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.

Re:Design is set Im sure

[CAIMLAS]

Dude, seriously. Upgrade that piece of shit with some more memory. It's completely obscene to run anything faster than 300MHz with less than 512M in Windows, particularly Windows XP.

Re:Design is set Im sure

[mrchaotica]

Powerbooks are about as good as Thinkpads, and can run Warcraft also....

Re:Design is set Im sure

[hypermike]

Very true, I think Ill be going with a 15" incher as soon as I save some loot. So expensive! Though it is nice that they hold their value. I would get an IMAC G5 but after owning a laptop as my main workstation for so long its too nice to be le to sit on the couch. :P

Re:Thinkpads

[Osty]

Where the best.

Were the best.

Wear the best?

Re:going going gone... so sad

[spike hay]

Do Dell computers use Dellium 4 CPUs and Dell RAM?

No, they pretty much just assemble the computers from components. Pretty much the same components that any decent quality manufacturer uses.

Levono, Lenovo, same thing?

[wasted]

...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.

Re:Levono, Lenovo, same thing?

[WIAKywbfatw]

It's a basic rule of marketing on the internet nowadays: don't just register the domain name that reflects your company name but also register any domain name that people are likely to mistakenly enter when they want to find your website.

For example, Gillette have registered gilette.com (one "l") as well as the gillette.com (two "l"s). Although, strangely in Gillette's case, rather than redirect gilette.com to gillette.com, they have the former effectively mirroring the latter.

This is simple brand protection: remember, Gillette doesn't have a trademark on every possible misspelling of its name so there's nothing to prevent a rival from registering domain names based on those and redirecting them to its own site, so Gillette registering and using these sites themselves is the best way to cover itself. Same thing here with Lenovo/Levono.

Re:going going gone... so sad

[phalse phace]

Sorry, but Dell does not manufacture their own PCs.

I'll help you pronouce it

[Anonymous Coward]

eye bee em

Third Base?

[wasted]

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.)

Something seems off...

[mrscott]

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...

Changing IBM's relationship with MS

[PornMaster]

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.

Re:Thinkpads

[idarmadi]

I agree. ThinkPad are durable and excellent in quality. It's a matter of QC. Hopefully Lenovo can raise its QC level.

I wonder if they'll start marketing computers

[Nine Tenths of The W]

With the Dragon chip

Something is fishy here

[Spiked_Three]

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.

Re:Something is fishy here

[CAIMLAS]

Yes, I was thinking the same thing myself. That, and that the terms of the agreement seemed a bit odd - specifically that the purchasing company would be allowed to use the IBM and Thinkpad names for 5 whole years!

Then again, it might just be that IBM is quick and efficient about this kind of thing, and wanted off the ship -yesterday- and wasn't willing to wait any longer.

Re:Something is fishy here

[mm0mm]

My guess is that the deal has been going on since last year, but all the media attention was focused on IBM's another *deal* with this clown, so no one noticed it until now.

Freedom from MS

[bstadil]

The main thing IBM is getting is freedom from Microsoft. As long as they had the PC line they couldn't totally piss off MS as they could raise the price on Windows to the Normal level. (MS have done this once)

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

Re:Freedom from MS

[Jameth]

Wow, I suspect you just hit that one on the head. MS is one of the few tech companies that is a bigger fish than IBM, and IBM doesn't like that.

Re:Freedom from MS

[T-Ranger]

This is a question of debate, and perspective. MSFT has a higher market cap then does IBM. But for virtually any other business metric, IBM is on top. More revenue, more profit, more employees, more locations. Bigger IP porfolio. Far, far, more lines of products.

In the desktop PC world, Microsoft may be able to push around anyone, including IBM. Anywhere else, IBM is king. This whole sale is due to the very low margins on desktop PCs, I read somewhere it only brought in about $75mil/year in profits -- far to little for IBM to bother with. If IBM starts a serious Linux push -- they already have the technology in place, just marketing time now (.. the same OS, on your departmental server to your mainframe, backed by IBM...) then they would undoubtably piss of Microsoft. And that very slim margin could evaporate overnight.

Re:Freedom from MS

[Amiga Trombone]

The main thing IBM is getting is freedom from Microsoft. As long as they had the PC line they couldn't totally piss off MS as they could raise the price on Windows to the Normal level. (MS have done this once)

Yes, but that was found to be a legally actionable item in their anti-trust case. I believe they're now prohibited from doing that.

Re:Freedom from MS

[sydbarrett74]

Absolutely. Mod parent up. I view this as a way of IBM disentangling itself from messy conflicts of interest. They haven't been a big player in the PC market since the 80's. Time to shoot this lame horse.

Good riddance now if only dell would die

[child_of_mercy]

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.

Re:Good riddance now if only dell would die

[cduffy]

We, too, buy from a beige box company. They're not local (we're in Austin, TX; they're in Sunnyvale, CA -- Dell is actually local for us), but the price, quality and reliability are impressive. There are cases where we wanted specific components (ie. 3ware controllers) that Dell refused to provide; Colfax hasn't had a problem, so we've got exactly the hardware we specified, and far cheaper.

We've had one system we had to send back because it was getting a consistant fatal machine check exception while our install process (custom; memory, CPU and network-intensive) ran. They've gone to substantial efforts to try to reproduce the issue -- far more effort than I can believe any larger company would have. All in all, I fully agree that buying from a beige box OEM is well worthwhile.

Re:Good riddance now if only dell would die

[child_of_mercy]

For bulk rollouts (100+?) you're probably right.

Quality mechanical parts and Manuals.

[twitter]

Man I hope the quality of IBM Thinkpads doesn't drop. Thinkpads are (in my opinion) the best laptops you can buy.

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.

What if IBM just buys Apple's hardware division?

[bubba451]

What if IBM just buys Apple's (computer) hardware division?

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.

This sucks

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

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.

Protip:

[sockonafish]

Buy Apple stock now.

IBM is now fully committed to the PowerPC platform.

Re:Protip:

[Dani Filth]

Sell Apple stock now...remember how hard you got fucked during the dot com downward spiral.

Re:Protip:

[the_womble]

A stock nrokers proverb "where theres a tip theres a tap" - i.e. if some one tips a share they have a lot on tap to sell if it rises. That said I assume msot people know by now that following stock tips based on forum positings is a very bad idea.

Re:Protip:

[masterQba]

or sony shares, or microsoft shares...

Re:Protip:

[RAMMS EIN]

``IBM is now fully committed to the PowerPC platform.''

I don't see how that would actually be good for Apple. At best, it changes nothing. At worst, IBM will move into Apple's market.

Re:Thinkpads

[TuballoyThunder]

Argh. I fear that the Thinkpads are going to become more like the Dells (which IMHO feel pretty flimsy). Every Thinkpad I've used has been rock solid and reliable. Every Dell I've had feels flimsy in comparison. I knew I should have gotten an X40 when I had the chance--I guess it is time to look at Apple.

Re:lenovoepad?

[Stevyn]

I just hope there was a clause in the contract that prevented them from using "TinkPad"

this is some bullshit

[grahagre]

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).

Re:this is some bullshit

[grahagre]

dude, i was just making a comment about the story and how it applies to me. if you feel it was irrevelent or pointless just skip over it and stop complaining. many people are in the same boat as me, as where to turn.
besides say something were to happen to the powerbook, i'd probally have to send it to this third rate company and deal with them. one of the reasons you buy a pb are because of the customer service. i mean really what the fuck about the three year warranty i bought with this thing?

if i buy a 2400 dollar laptop i'll bitch about it all i want.

Re:What if IBM just buys Apple's hardware division

[Jameth]

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.

Quality, but not recency

[PhYrE2k2]

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

Re:Quality, but not recency

[mm0mm]

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 (emphasis mine)

huh? Fast and buggy processor for the "home/home-business" market? I don't think so.

There are not many home/soho users needing just-came-out-yesterday processors and don't-have-driver-yet ATI/nvidia card on their laptop. What you are talking about is the gaming market, where users are obsessed with Alienware laptops and results of benchmark tests on Tom's Hardware. Regular home users seldom care about specs and marketing hypes by Intel/AMD/ATI/nVidia.

Need a threesome

[HarveyBirdman]

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."

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.

Re:Thinkpads

[Cobalt Jacket]

I have a ThinkPad T40p. One day, I dumped a whole glass of water on it. The ThinkPad kept running. I turned it off and removed the battery and disassembled it to dry it out. That's when I realized that the ThinkPad had designed-in channels for liquid to flow. It avoids any of the sensitive parts. I just used some paper towels to dab out the water, and let the keyboard dry. Powered it on and it worked like a champ.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

International Support -- Only Toshiba left?

[B4RSK]

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

Re:International Support -- Only Toshiba left?

[way2trivial]

neh, check out fujitsu....

Re:International Support -- Only Toshiba left?

[suckmysav]

It's a pity that Toshibas total piles of crapola though, eh?

Re:International Support -- Only Toshiba left?

[B4RSK]

I'd take Toshiba (business models) over any other wintel notebook except IBM. Sometimes over IBM too, such as my with my Libretto.

Some of the stuff Toshiba (and IBM for that matter) put out for home consumer use is very poor though.

Ian

Re:International Support -- Only Toshiba left?

[B4RSK]

I have heard that Fujitsu does some decent stuff in Europe with their partner there. But here in Japan, Fujitsu stuff is (IMO) crap.

Overpriced and the service sucks. I cancelled our Fujitsu service contract a couple of years ago and we no longer buy anything from them.

Ian

An aside

[empaler]

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.

Re:An aside

[ahodgson]

Massive government subsidies of food production have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism.

I'm ready!

[metalligoth]

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?)

and just as my school renews its ThinkPad contract

[FooAtWFU]

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?

and lose the whole widget thing?

[johnpaul191]

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.

Re:and lose the whole widget thing?

[mrchaotica]

What do you mean "other platforms?" Apple could let IBM make OSX-compatible computers without having to let everyone else do so too, and they'd be PPC computers anyway. In other words, IBM could lock down their platform just as much as Apple locks down theirs. No driver problems.

Re:and lose the whole widget thing?

[johnpaul191]

they could..... they tried it when Jobs was away and it didn't go well at all. if they impose much stricter controls on the clones at some point you wonder why they would even bother?
right now the G5 production is not enough to keep Apple supplied. if it turned into a fight over who got the limited chips for their machines, it would turn ugly fast. look how often resellers now say they are getting far less inventory of some items compared to Apple's own stores.
I also don't see why IBM would want to make consumer desktop machines running OS X. maybe some crazy supercomputer type thing that Apple helped with the software..... but that doesn't make a lot of sense either.

Re:and lose the whole widget thing?

[mrchaotica]

IBM making "consumer desktop machines running OS X" wasn't what I had in mind. What I had in mind was IBM making managed, business desktop machines running OS X with an OpenStep interface and selling them only to businesses in lots of 100 or greater. See how it's not a competition with Apple now? Also, these kind of machines would be using the low-end G5s, like the ones in the iMac, so availability shouldn't be as much of a problem.

Basically, the idea is PPC architecture, so IBM can use their own chips, OS X so they have "usable UNIX" and Mac program compatibility, and an "industrial" interface so that they're less desirable to consumers. Basically, something like a modern version of the NEXTStation, or a cross between a small-form-factor ThinkCentre and an iMac. See how it's different from the old clones now?

Re:Thinkpads

[RandomJoe]

I've seen this great appreciation for Thinkpads frequently, and I always wanted to ask - so now I will. At work we used to get Thinkpads in my department, until Corporate came along and mandated Dells for everyone. While the Thinkpads were great computers, the batteries positively stank. Not a one of them lasted more than a year, after which we were lucky to get more than 5 minutes run time.

Contrast that with a 233MHz Dell Latitude I bought after it went off lease (other departments had them long before we did), and the battery in it STILL lasts a good 1 1/2 hours today. And this appears to be a common trend, as more and more of the Dells are getting bought and kept after the lease is up. We've had one or two completely bad batteries, but that's out of dozens throughout the office.

So, does Dell just have some voodoo magic with their C-series batteries, or did we really manage to get nothing but bad IBM batteries in our Thinkpads?!? Or do most people just replace their laptop batteries yearly and not think twice?

IBM Workers

[Ween]

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.

Re:IBM Workers

[OneFix]

But will the new company take over all of the leased buildings that IBM has in RTP...what about all the contractors (IBM's workforce is made up of about 80-90% contractors)...what about IGS...IGS currently does work for PSG (specifically on the web site front...most of that has moved to IBM India now...but Lenovo will obviously have their own web team...

Think of it this way...another company has just bought your division...are you going to tell all of your employees that their jobs may be in jeopardy and potentially loose the deal by having a mass exodus of talent as well as all of the bad press it would generate...

And IBM being made up of mostly contractors is exactly how this will pan out. In the news, IBM won't be laying off thousands of employees, it will be companies like Ciber and CTG...And it won't even be that way...IBM and Lenovo will simply not renew contracts...contracts are all temporary...regardless of anything that anyone at IBM would have you belive...

Re:IBM Workers

[Anonymous Coward]

80-90% contractors? It was never close to that high, at least in PCD. And it's been quite a lot lower for several years--they hired a bunch and laid off quite a lot of the rest about 2 1/2 years ago. 10-15% would be a more realiztic figure, at least when I left 6 months ago. That's just a ridiculous figure to be quoting.

On the IGS comment, first of all, you're right--IGS has moved most of their development/support for PCD to India or Mexico. And don't cry for IGS--PCD won't. They provided less-than-their-best service to internal clients for the same money. Frankly, IGS would RATHER deploy their best people to external clients that bring in "green dollars" rather than internal "blue dollars."

Again, your irrational and flat-out incotrrect assertion that "everyone's a contractor!" drives your erroneous conclusion. Ain't true, ain't close to true.

As to the conspiracy theory "they won't tell people for fear of bad press...", well, IBM's done this before, so there's something like a track record here--2 years ago when they sold the hard disk business off. Frankly, this is a pretty good case study on how the PCD spinoff will go. Oh, and by the way, the "we're selling off the hard drive business because we don't make any money on it" was the writing on the wall for PCD employess "Hey, we don't make any real profit on our division either...."

By the way, the woman quoted in the thread parent is Fran O'Sullivan, and she is indeed the general manager of the Personal Computing Division.

Re:IBM Workers

[nothingtodo]

Heh, at least when I was there, it was always secretly mentioned that the PCCO (or at least the consumer group) was always in the red. I'm not surprised in a way to hear this, but is sad to hear the Thinkpad will be made by others. I always like them myself and treasure my obsolete 760XL.

Re:Thinkpads

[iocat]

Yep. I may try to convince management to speed up my next laptop purchase, but other than that, if the ThinkPad tanks (which I suspect it will), I'll bit the bullet and learn to use a track-pad on a PowerBook.

Um.

[mcc]

Except, of course, for all of those x86 based machines in their server line.

Re:Um.

[sockonafish]

I'm a silly Mac user and I equate PC with x86. I am also not liable for any money you may lose on an Apple investment.

Re:going going gone... so sad

[danielrose]

pity you have to call india for support tho..

Was this really a wise idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The IBM game

[clem.dickey]

1. Merges divisions A and B to create "synergy."
2. Split the AB divison to improve "focus."
3. Repeat steps 1 through 3.

Re:The IBM game

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderated Funny? Heck, I work at IBM and that just happened to me...!

Re:The IBM game

[Pathetic Coward]

4. Profit!

h4xx0red by teh M1ddL3 k1ngd0m!

[Nine Tenths of The W]

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?

Re:h4xx0red by teh M1ddL3 k1ngd0m!

[thejoelpatrol]

You paranoid tinfoil fetishist.

ThinkPad design is in Japan

[shanen]

No, the manufacturing of ThinkPads is distributed to various companies (though I think some are made in Japan), but all of the design has been done in Japan up to now. Certain subsystems have drawn on work done elsewhere, mostly research, but the designs and testing are done here (since I'm located in that selfsame part of Japan).

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.

Re:What if IBM just buys Apple's hardware division

[bubba451]

That would be like Cray selling off their supercomputer division. Apple is primarily a hardware company, and OSX is just icing on the cake.

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.

Don't forget Apple

[mrklin]

Apple provides international warranty and support.

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

Re:Don't forget Apple

[B4RSK]

True... Unfortunately Apple is not an option (yet?) for many in the corporate world.

Compaq laptops have come a Long Way...

[One Childish N00b]

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.

RIP IBM

[bmgoau]

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

Re:Note that

[Omniscientist]

My AMD is assembled in Malaysia, but its schematics aren't designed over there. Even though Lenovo will be getting their own tech support from the design crew at IBM you have to wonder if new parts will be any good? Also was the main point of Lenovo buying this to get the IBM name? Is there a patent IBM has in how they assemble their laptops?

Maybe it is US Dollar?

[trident3]

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?

Cringe

[Deliveranc3]

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.

Well, I'm sad

[gmknobl]

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.

There is just one thing I have to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

All your IBMs are belong to Chinese!!!!

Not really rocket science

[tsangc]

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.

Re:Not really rocket science

[bluesword]

Kirk: My God, Bones, what have I done?

McCoy: What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live.

Mainframes all the way

[qedigital]

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!

Re:Sucks!

[norkakn]

I really love how china's "communism" involves every horrible part of capitalism. I think that fascism is a much more accurate word for that fucked up government.

Re:Thinkpads

[mm0mm]

Probably the charger/AC adapter is the one that caused damages on IBM's battery units. Might be design flaw, but IBM should be able to take care of it by offering replacements.

Sad news?

[Richard_J_N]

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).

Re:going going gone... so sad

[1lus10n]

Really ? What dell laptop is it that has an all aluminuim case ? Built in biometric security ? Nobody I have seen is worried about the loss of desktops, its all about the laptops. IBM's laptops are head and shoulders above other PC manufacturers, the only brand that comes close is the apple powerbook. Who the hell wants a white/silver laptop anyway ?

Expect a new IBM Battle Plan:

[onpaws]

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 $$$.

Re:Sucks!

[grcumb]

Are you basing this assertion on experience? I've been living outside of North America for a while now, and don't know whether Lenovo sells PCs there. I know they didn't when I left.

My experience with their PCs was surprisingly good. I was asked to configure several PCs given as a gift by the Communist Party of China to some local dignitaries in the Pacific Islands nation where I live. When I saw that they were designed and manufactured in China, I was prepared to deal with anaemic, poorly configured machines of slipshod construction.

I was quite surprised to find out that the opposite was true. The machines were built with quality components, solid cases and performed better than many name-brand PCs I've used in the past *cough*Gateway*cough*.

I looked at two laptops and three PCs altogether, and didn't find much to complain about.

That said, I'll add two strong provisos:

1)If I'm asked for tough consumer PCs that are going to last, I typically recommend IBM. I don't think I would place the Lenovos I saw in that same category. Not until 4 years have passed anyway. 8^)

2) The PCs I looked at were 'special' presents for visiting dignitaries. It could well be that they were constructed according to a higher spec and standard than the off-the-shelf offering.

Re: third-largest PC maker in the world

[Kris_J]

The two companies announced a plan to form a complex joint venture that would make Lenovo the third-largest PC maker in the world, behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard

Holy crap, are these really the big three? No wonder name-brand desktop PCs aren't worth bothering about anymore. Looks like the future of PCs belongs to companies like Real Machines.

Re:lenovoepad?

[gabbarbhai]

Nah. It'll be called Thunkpad.

:-( Aww...

[Refrozen]

This is really sad. I can't believe they sold out. It's just hard to believe.

End of the line?

[Doc Ruby]

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?

Re:Thinkpads

[ckaminski]

I'm partial to HP's myself, and yes, the newer Dell Latitudes. Granted, I had a bad experience with some Dell Latitudes in 2001/2002 where we had to replace 200 out of 450 motherboards, but the last Latitude (cpx, IIRC) I was given was a joy to use.

Personally I think the Thinkpad's ergonomics sucked, but I haven't used a recent model (>2003). For the longest time they were the only holdout in the market going to the Touchpad... those little clits are a pain when typing (I'd always be hitting them, and in X that sometimes means entering data into the wrong window...).

Can't knock the robustness tho. Got a number of 486 and pentium Thinkpads that have survived everything short of a shotgun blast.

Too bad, but that's the business world.

[ErichTheRed]

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. :)

Down with Big Brother!

[Xenex]

IBM stopped making personal computer before Apple. I'm sure there's some kind of ironic victory here somewhere...

Re:Down with Big Brother!

[Malor]

In 1984, we were sure Apple would wreck IBM. They told us so in the Superbowl!

In 1994, we were sure that IBM would wreck Apple.

In 2004, we now realize that we were smarter 20 years ago than 10. :-)

(and yes, I realize that IBM isn't 'wrecked', but it is very, very amusing that the ever-dying Apple outlasted IBM in the personal computer market. :) )

Good Laptops, not so good hard drives

[citadelgrad]

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.

Re:Good Laptops, not so good hard drives

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Of course they use Hitachi drives, HGST used to be IBM's storage division. Hitachi drives ARE IBM drives. Outside of the "Deathstar" quality problem they had with desktop drives a couple years ago, HGST hasn't had major quality issues. I don't think Travelstar drives have had a higher than normal failure rate. And don't forget, other manufacturers including Dell have also used Hitachi notebook drives.

Re:Good Laptops, not so good hard drives

[citadelgrad]

Good point. I totally agree that others use Hitachi drives. Damn it, why don't they use Seagate drives? :p

Re:Sucks!

[dcam]

Agreed.

I bought my first laptop 6 months ago, a T41. It is an excellent piece of hardware, and I am very satisfied. Particularly when compared to the Dells and Toshibas I have seen and worked with, both in hardware and software spplied with the machine.

What concerns me is that support may be an issue over the next 2.5 years, given that I expect to replace it in that time.

Who to switch to?

[spacemky]

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.

IBM'ers rejoice, here comes the variable pay!

[jrao]

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.

But Theo loves you.

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

All hail de Raadt.

PS: And no, I wouldn't want a PRC outfit supplying any DOD contracts.

Re:Sucks!

[808140]

I can't believe this crap got modded insightful. It's quite clear that Alomex has no personal experience whatsoever with Lenovo. Lenovo (Legend, Lianxiang) is a very high quality company, that has managed to essentially monopolize much of Asia's laptop and desktop PC market for quite sometime now.

The reason you don't know much about them if you live outside of the greater China area is not because they're of poor quality, it's because the guy who runs the company has his head screwed on straight. I saw a very interesting interview with him when I was in Hong Kong a few months ago, where he was asked if he was going to take his products global. He said that it was definitely on his mind, but that he wanted to develop a strong lead in China, which he perceives as the 21st century's major market, before moving into Europe and the US.

Lenovo laptops are of high quality make and are priced very competitively. They're very widely regarded here (Shanghai) and my personal experience with them is that they're put together very well, better than say, Sony laptops.

The Chairman Mao dig is just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard. All it does is demonstrate that Alomex has never been to China and knows diddly squat about it (and if that's not the case, then he's a troll, plain and simple.) Chairman Mao has essentially no credibility in China (which isn't surprising at all) and while the CCP may continue to give him face in certain respects (it's not considered polite to speak ill of the dead here) any marketing rep worth his snuff knows that it's absolute suicide to try to connect your product with Mao and come out on top. The common people (especially in the demographic that buys computers) were mostly pretty badly burnt by the Cultural revolution and as that wasn't very long ago it remains fresh in people's minds.

China is, at this point, anything but communist. Anyone that makes this accusation is just showing himself to be a bubbling moron.

Lenovo, in particular, is not a state owned company (there are very few of these anymore, and the Chinese government is dumping them/privatizing them as quickly as they possibly can), it's profitable, successful, and international.

With their local connections, they will do well. I own a Thinkpad X40 and I personally am not at all concerned that quality will drop. Thinkpads are expensive machines, and if Lenovo keeps them at their current price, they'll be able to make an absolute crapload of money without dropping the quality at all, based on their current offerings.

This China trolling from desperate Americans worried about losing their economic and technological dominance in the near future needs to stop. I'm American, and let me tell you, no amount of whining is going to stop the PRC. The sleeping dragon is waking and the world, as Napoleon predicted, is trembling.

insert question marks

[bobdole369]

Who the Eff is Lenovo? Or Levono for that matter (it's spelled both ways in the post.)

IBM PC is not IBM Research

[ciphertext]

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.

Re:Thinkpads

[flynns]

Where the best.

There best.

[cue Young Frankenstein: "WEREVOLF???" "There wolf. There castle."]

Perhaps...

[Reteo Varala]

...IBM has a different platform in mind?

Re:Thinkpads

[hof]

I dropped a venti latte (hehe) and a heineken (not at the same time) on my X31 keyboard and immediately turned it upside down (while it was still running). Nothing happened!

but what ? Are you being racist ?

[anti-NAT]

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.

Re:but what ? Are you being racist ?

[Mant]

Chinese electronics is generally known for being cheap. Now, this may be the exception, but it will be hard to convince people of that. That's isn't racist, just making a generality based on experience (rather than prejudice).

Now, if after being shown the quality is as good they refuse because it is Chinese, that may be racist, unless they have other reasons (like wanting to buy domestic to support domestic companies and jobs).

Re:but what ? Are you being racist ?

[anti-NAT]

Please re-read the grandparent post. Chinese ownership was the concern of the original poster, not Chinese electronics.

Racism is fundamentally about making generalisations about behaviours and ethics purely based on race. The original poster has just racially slurred more than 1 billion people.

I find that unacceptable, as should the other 4 or so billion of us.

Re:but what ? Are you being racist ?

[mrscott]

I didn't mean to imply racism, actually. Just that a Chinese-owned IBM product line, on the surface, doesn't sit well with me. Basically the potential for quality issues indicated in other posts. If they have the same quality and support, great. But I don't think I'd buy a large quantity of anything from the new company until I see that.

Re:but what ? Are you being racist ?

[anti-NAT]

Just that a Chinese-owned IBM product line, on the surface, doesn't sit well with me.

So, would you be happy with a "Jewish-owned" IBM ? The nazi's wouldn't have been ...

Why are you only questioning the value of this deal based on the racial background of the organisation who are buying it ?

I didn't mean to imply racism, actually.

You might not have meant to, but you actually did.

Re:but what ? Are you being racist ?

[mrscott]

Actually, questioning it being owned by a company in a country with a (unfair or not) reputation for fairly low quality products in a lot of areas. Last time I checked, folks were still entitled to their opinions.

Re:but what ? Are you being racist ?

[anti-NAT]

Actually, questioning it being owned by a company in a country with a (unfair or not) reputation for fairly low quality products in a lot of areas.

"lot of areas" doesn't mean all areas. So your labelling of "Chinese", without any qualifiers, is making a generalisation base exclusively on racial origin. That's being racist.

Unless you can prove that not one person of Chinese origin on this planet doesn't believe in aiming and achieving quality, you are guaranteed to be wrong about your generalisation that "Chinese people" don't believe in quality.

Contrary to your opinion and generalisation, I personally know of at least one Chinese person who believes in aiming for quality.

Last time I checked, folks were still entitled to their opinions.

Absolutely. And people like me are still allowed to be offended by them, and be able to express that offense.

Becoming a player in China

[hrvatska]

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.

Stock market responce.

[eadint]

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

Re:Stock market responce.

[squarefish]

ibm's stock took a decent drop yesterday, but it's just coming back from the surge that was caused by the original sales news. we'll see what happens today- I have to sell all my stock today anyway. I'm buying a condo!!!

woohoo

ROI on Quality not worth the price

[adesai9]

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

Re:Thinkpads

[cuban321]

You know you can turn that mouse thing off in the BIOS right?

I personally love the nub mouse.

Your sig (Re:Huh?)

[zsau]

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.

Re:Thinkpads

[idealego]

Sounds like the IBM's were older then the Dells? Maybe the IBM's use NiMH batteries while the newer Dells used Li-Ion batteries.

Here I come Apple

[doormat]

IBM Thinkpads were the only top-tier notebook in the US, and now all thats left that I would like is an Apple iBook.

Re:Lenovo is a joke

[empaler]

If it's a joke, what is it?

SCO, of course

[G3ckoG33k]

Let us hope they will not end up with a poorly written contract, written in Chinese...

two options

[jameszhou2000]

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?

Re:Thinkpads

[Formica]

The same thing happened to my A31p, except it was milk instead of water. Milk was running out the bottom edge of the laptop, so I immediately unplugged it and removed all the batteries. When I disassembled it, I discovered the same thing you did - the liquid couldn't reach the motherboard. It ran past the keys, down a channel to the bottom, and out the vent holes. I cleaned up the milk, and put it back together, with no problem.

Wait so your saying?

[skids]

That they blew their money. As in "Big Blew"? ...ugh. That one hurt me as much as it hurt you. Sorry.

soooooo....

[torrents]

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...

Re:going going gone... so sad

[munkee]

Bzzt Wrong. Dell doesn't make it's own Laptops. RTFA

Re: third-largest PC maker in the world

[Kris_J]

Yeah, I should have loaded the page before I linked to it. Had a nice article in a magazine, thought they'd be a bit more mature.

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.

Thank goodness....

[bob beta]

....that I have all 640K of RAM installed in my IBM PC Convertible, then, if things are shutting down there...

IBM sold their soul to... Legend!

[sethstorm]

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.

How do you spell 'driver download' in Mandarin?

[j.leidner]

Now we all need to download new drivers from www.thinkpad.cn...

Re:Get a Chinese Apple

[Bugpowda]

Yeah no doubt. Forget that Chinese plastic crap...

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"

Re:lenovoepad?

[shufler]

Dinkpad, Drinkpad, Minkpad, Linkpad, Finkpad, Winkpad, Rinkpad, Pinkpad, Zincpad, Kinkpad, Sinkpad

There. I think I've covered them all, I don't want to see any more posts around here spouting "clever" names that rhyme.

Future of ThinkPad users is....Apple?

[borud]

I was kind of hoping that IBM would keep manufactoring laptops :-).

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)

Where did you get your income numbers?

[xswl0931]

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.

I guess there's only one hope now

[jonfields]

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)

Cell ?

[MGrie]

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?

Re:Cell ?

[EmagGeek]

TFA says that IBM did this so that they could focus on their other businesses, which include computer support. I assume that because they will have a ~20% stake in the new company, and also because the PCs will still carry the Think(TM) branding, it would be in IBM's best interest to continue to support the PCs.

Sold for a tax writeoff, no joke, see link

[kraksmoka]

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.

"made in japan" was derogatory back in the 70's

[james_34567]

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?

Stupid move from a branding point of view

[Nice2Cats]

I can see getting rid of the desktop PC business, but it is simply stupid from a branding point of view to hand over their ThinkPad line to a Chinese company. Where I work, ThinkPads are a status symbol and living proof of IBMs claims of superior quality. There are the first, most important, and in most cases only IBM product that average people come into contact with. They're throwing away one of their most important marketing instruments here.

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.

Brilliant move, if all you want to make is cash...

[Fantastic Lad]

The Chinese market is bloody enormous, and it's all going high-tech. If the world doesn't erupt in flames, then a LOT of laptops and personal computers are going to be sold in China.

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

Re:Thinkpads

[thepoch]

I have a Thinkpad T30. I had the urge to throw it in a dumpster once. But didn't. What the hell were you thinking???

because it was pretty damn good

[RMH101]

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.

IBM official announcement ?

[yorugua]

http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/announcement.html

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.

Re:IBM official announcement ?

[Wolander]

After that IBM = It's Better Manually Now, we have IBM = It's Better Mandarin

Soul Selling to China != Innovation

[sethstorm]

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.

Re:Thinkpads

[ladybugfi]

Yep, I think the REAL question here is whether the laptop design team(s) will stay on and continue under new management. And whether the new management is committed to implementing those smart designs instead of just churning out generic cheap laptops.

Clear business synergies...

[Ingolfke]

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.

False Advertising in the Future?

[Andy_R]

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?

Re:False Advertising in the Future?

[Anita Coney]

It's not false advertising for a company to sell its trademark. It happens all the time. Have you seen all the Harley Davison crap out there? It's pretty obvious that the owners of Harley Davison treats its trademark like most people treat toilet paper.

And besides, IBM has not made its own computers for years. They're all made in China by third parties. IBM merely slaps its name on them. As does Dell, HP, etc. Nothing is really changing.

Re:False Advertising in the Future?

[GauteL]

Brand name products are often produced by a third party and then branded afterwards. This is nothing new, move along, nothing to see here.

Re:False Advertising in the Future?

[Andy_R]

IBM currently designs, specs, supports and provides a warranty for the machines it slaps it's name on, none of which will (presumably) be true of Lenovo machines a few years down the line.

I think a consumer who (quite reasonably) expected the design, specification, warranty, backup and support of IBM to be part of what they were buying when they bought an 'IBM Thinkpad' would have very good grounds for a compensation claim when they discover that IBM take no responsibility for the machines at all.

This is going a whole lot further than simply changing the location and ownership of the factory!

Re:Get a Chinese Apple

[curious.corn]

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...

IBM won't buy Apple if it has to bid against...

[unfortunateson]

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).

This is what they always say.

[Pathetic Coward]

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.

It's way too early...

[CFBMoo1]

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?"

Re:lenovoepad?

[bheading]

You have your own indestructible polyalloy cyborg from the future ? I like it.

Re:Thinkpads

[RandomJoe]

Some of the oldest ones, that's quite probable. I don't remember now. But the last few of them definitely did have LiIon, which was why I was so disappointed with the lifetime. And the Dell 233 was a year or two older than the newest of the IBMs we had.

I now recall noticing a (perceived?) difference in how the two brands charged the battery. The IBMs all seemed to go to "charge" (the LED changed to orange) every single time they were plugged in and stay that way a while, even if they hadn't been run on battery. The Dells won't show a solid battery light (indicating "charging") unless the unit had been run for some time on battery. Perhaps the IBM charging strategy was just harder on the battery. Of course this has probably changed by now, it's been a few years.

Re:Thinkpads

[chris_morgan47]

as a one-upper, i dumped a pint of pale ale on my t22. took the battery out, replaced the keyboard for $10.50 on ebay and it works great.

Re:Thinkpads

[hey!]

Also from the not recommended to be done intentionally file. My T20 was once perched on a piece of equipment on a lab bench, while I was running a massive database update. My foot snagged the power brick and it 4 feet to a concrete floor, with the disk running at full tilt. It literally carommed off the floor.

The result: a thin hairline crack in the case. The computer went on for another year of service before I handed it down. It's still being used.

On the other hand -- we have a bunch of T30s at work. One day I was trying to optimize one of them a bit, when I realized that only half the RAM was visible. After some futzing around I figured out that the forward DIMM slot was non-functional. After checking the other T30s, I found out that the slot was not functional in ANY of them. It turns out that for quite some time, IBM was shipping T30s with defective main boards. It was never publicly admitted. We could get the main board replaced, but it would require down time for an engineer so we decided to live with the problem.

Lenovo ??

[Andy_R]

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 ??"

Re:Thinkpads

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

I have a ThinkPad T40p

Me too, those are pretty solid machines. I dropped mine from a few feet up onto a concrete floor - no problems whatsoever.

Not to mention my 9 cell battery still powers the machine for a good 4.5-5 hours depsite being just over a year old.

Re:Thinkpads

[SpaceLifeForm]

How to prolong lithium-based batteries.

I sympathize with you

[Nexus7]

The reason you're modded as 'Troll' currently is that you dissed an Apple product.

I agree with you.

Sit down, shut up and listen

[affa]

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.

Re:How does that go again?

[timts]

what do you mean?

chinese people own most of those companies, some of them are partially owned by foreingers.

one of the biggest thing I heard about this deal is that the new CEO of lenovo was IBM vice president.

this is a big and risky move for lenovo to enter US market, also they will carry IBM logo for 5 years.

I dont worry about quality, but I do worry about lenovo management, while DELL has 4 day of avg warehousing, they still have 22.7 days.

employment op?

[WarpedCowOwnzMe]

Want my resume? mattberan@gmail.com

Re:Sucks!

[Alomex]

This China trolling from desperate Americans worried about losing their economic and technological dominance in the near future needs to stop. I'm American, and let me tell you, no amount of whining is going to stop the PRC. The sleeping dragon is waking and the world, as Napoleon predicted, is trembling.

China is coming strong and just like the 20th century was all about a transition of might from the British Empire to the USA, I fully expect the 21st century to be the same but with USA to China instead. (China already has us by the balls with the large amount of US debt they hold).

Having said that, I fully expect the quality of the Thinkpads to drop. Mark my words. They will now have to do their own R&D and employ expensive design labour fource in the US. My own experience is that PRC firms don't know how to do that (yet).

You must be selling Apple stock

[AHumbleOpinion]

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.

Re:You must be selling Apple stock

[AHumbleOpinion]

Only Apple can make players compatible with the iTMS and DRM'ed AAC files

First, you assume that the current installed based of AAC files is relevant. I would argue that only a small number of early adopters are using iTMS and that the vast majority of the public is still untapped(*). ITMS may owns the early adopters not the public at large. But I am willing to pass on this point. The thing that really kills your argument is that even the DCMA has exceptions for interoperability. A non-Apple player decrypting a DRM'd AAC file, purely internally, producing no DRM-less data visible to the user, and strictly for the purpose of audio playback would seem to be a textbook case or approved interoperability. Sure Apple would threaten to sue, but they would lose.

(*) My car's cd-player recognizes MP3 and WMA but not AAC, same for my living room DVD player, these devices, not handheld players, are far more likely to decide any format war. Again, Apple owns the market because it is new and largely untapped. Personally I rip to MP3 using iTunes and only use iTMS for previewing. I love my iPod, I wish Apple well, but even early iPod adopters are not necessarily locked to Apple.

Re:Get an Apple

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

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...

Re:Thinkpads

[urlgrey]

It's this kind of solid design that I've seen in their true workstations and servers, too. I just recently bought a used high end IBM workstation, and it has some of the same excellence in enginnering that the ThinkPads do. A bit pricier than some of the counterparts for sure, but it is the best workstation I've ever owned.

I for one was really saddened to see this sale happen.

[sigh]

Tradewars2002

[happyfrogcow]

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.

Chinese Acad of Science: Legend: Lenova

[skippywalker]

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."

Re:lenovoepad?

[Artifakt]

Blinkpad!
Col. Klinkpad!
Drink Pink Ink? Shades of Dr. Seuss!

Another way to look at it

[Duhavid]

Could be to look at this as outsourcing the management team. The work sounds like it has been outsourced for a while now.

ThinkPad name

[dbacher]

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.

Re:Get an Apple

[snapperOrgans]

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.

Re:Sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the dollar collapses the rest of the way we'll have to manufacture our own stuff again anyway, since we won't be able to afford China's (Mexico's or [insert job siphoning foriegn country]) at that point. It will be cheaper to build it here again.

As the dollar falls, so will the value of the debt China holds, and as it does, the price of goods manufactured in other countries, including China, will spiral upward out of control.

I'd consider making your electronic purchases for the next 5-10 years in the very near future folks...

I'm not worried about losing our technical dominance. With increased technology export controls about to become very thoroughly enforced, and the falling dollar, combined the two should make offshoring stuff a little less lucrative for both manufacturing and technology.

The falling dollar is just the first sign that the US trade, labor, and debt issues are in the process of fixing themselves. I just hope China's banking system can handle the inevitable losses on their T-Bills and other investments. Their manufacturing sector would be impacted rather severely if the banks didn't have the money to finance them because of devalued debt owed by the US.

Hopefully the resulting economic depression won't last as long as the last one. We have been living on borrowed time since before the Carter years. When it catches up with us it won't be pretty.

l8,
AC

Re:lenovoepad?

[10am-bedtime]

actually i fancy "thoughtpad" would be timeless and thus quite fetching, if you read "thought" to be a noun. like a "thoughtpad for blasting off into the innovative beyond" (hmm, missing something there...). can you see why i don't work in marketing?

The Thinkpads are just as good as they were before

[Poingggg]

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 :-) ).

Re:Volvo S40...

[network23]

Twenty years into the future, Volvo will still be a company that makes cars as well as a well-recognized and honored trade mark.

Just a few years into the future, SAAB has stopped making cars and the trade mark will be pimped trying to create an image of security, design and creativity around the plastic and ill-built crappy GM cars.

It's a pity that SAAB wasn't bought by Chrysler. At least Chrysler has balls.

Our shit doesn't stink....

[/dev/trash]

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.

Re:lenovoepad?

[SnowZero]

Well, not really. I just have an arm and a broken CPU. When I asked the suppliers where it came from, they said "don't ask".

Re:Sucks!

[Alomex]

My post was rated Troll, even though this week's issue of The Economist says pretty much the same thing.

But Lenovo may make things worse, given cultural differences between Americans and Chinese, big differences in pay and the need for interpreters at every meeting. Vincent Yan, finance director of TCL, which is going through the same experience with the French, has admitted that the cultural gap proved wider than expected. The more disruptive the IBM acquisition proves for Lenovo, the better it will be for Dell, a true global champion.

IBM is stupid and sells

[Lotharjade]

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.

Re:Sucks!

[Doc Ruby]

The scary part of the increasing Chinese influence in the world is that they are not really "communist" (Marxist, etc) but "Communist": a fascist mafia that consolidates all corporations in a universe of industries centrally planned for the benefit of the plutocrats, mostly hooked into the Red Army for assurance of discipline and nationalist edge.

Just because the company is not literally "state owned" doesn't mean it is "independent", and not just in the indirect way that American corporations are "dependent" on (eg) the state education and transportation systems. The Japanese MITI of the 1960-80s has nothing on the Central Committee in "coordinating" state and industrial strategy to conserve political power and "harmony". I don't doubt that Lenovo can make a great Thinkpad - fascists in Italy, Germany, Argentina and most other places (except Giuliani's New York City) have made the trains run on time. Whining, of course, won't stop the "P""R"C. But American whining spreads a lot faster than actual stories of Chinese threats to American economic independence, and our consequent freedom. I say let a thousand whiners whine, and let the dragon spin its web of sweet lies to protect its horde.