Lenovo & Customer Perception

music_lover writes "According to this article, Lenovo is losing current ThinkPad series customers to HP, Toshiba and other notebook vendors because of customer perception. Apparently, customers don't feel comfortable purchasing from a Chinese PC manufacturer now that the ThinkPad brand isn't supported by IBM anymore. Could this really be perception? Quote: "Despite the overall poor performance, Lenovo has still not gained the mindshare or the respect that the ThinkPads command. In fact, it has, to some extent, alienated ThinkPad's fans and taken a sales hit. In my immediate vicinity, those who owned ThinkPads have now traded up to an HP or a Toshiba. None of them went back to their ThinkPads. After asking for a clarification, I was told, "Who wants to buy things from a Chinese company?" That said, our corporate parent has continued to buy/use Thinkpads; the ones that I've seen do just fine, and they've added new machines and a parternership with AMD.

Comments

Quality still as good?

[t482]

Friend of mine just got a new T series laptop and the keys fell off. After 10 Thinkpads he thinks the quality isn't quite as good and that they are cutting corners to make more money.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

Performance

[therage96]

For me, its not the fact that they are a Chinese manufacturer, but rather the performance of their computers is just not there.

Its the same as it was when Thinkpad was still an IBM product, they were tight little systems with perhaps a few cool features (butterfly keyboard anyone?), but when it came to the actual performance of the machine, competitors always beat them and at a cheaper price too.

Now if this is still true or not, I'm not sure, but that is my "impression" of the Thinkpad brand still leftover from the old IBM days.

Re:Performance

[OS24Ever]

Who cares if it's a little slower. I much prefer the fact that a 280lb geek could step on one closed 600E on the floor at 2AM and not break the screen, or a hatchback is opened and your bag was open and your T21 bounces out onto the pavement and you open it up and it works fine, or a X40 gets a full bottle of Jones Berry Cola poured into it and other than a black cherry-licious smell it keeps working (ok so I replaced the keyboard a few weeks later)

Now a 32 oz glass of tea into a T21 didn't fair nearly as well, but that's a lot of liquid. I was impressed I yanked the power cord in like 0.2 seconds but it kept running on that little thing called a battery.

Hard drive was fine though.

Slight Disclaimer: I work for em, and no matter what happens to them they get repaired, but so far I've not managed to do much to them that requires it, and I'm not gentle with my systems. I shudder to think if I treated the Dell, HPs or Toshibas (little while since I've used on of the Toshibas though). I see bits-o-plastic everywhere.

Re:Irony

[fafaforza]

Sure, ThinkPads for years have been manufactured in the same places that other laptops are. But with Lenovo's purchase, the design and decision making would likely move from US engineers and designers and to Lenovo's.

Would that make a difference? I tend to think so. IBM didn't rely on the ThinkPads for most of its revenue. As a result, there was a slow cycle of development where proven things were kept in the laptop and it hadn't changed in many major ways for years. Still black, still the same awesome keyboard, still the trackpoint.

Now with Lenovo, you have a hardware company that is keen on outperforming its rivals and being the biggest PC supplier. I haven't been considering a new laptop purchase, but from what I've seen on Lenovo's website, they are already adding gimmicky things like white marks on the top to indicate where various ports are, making bulky wide screen models, etc. How long til the built-in multi card readers, and blue neon lights all around the case? The risk is that with a reliance on the ThinkPad brand, and a market share to grow, the T line will start undergoing very short developmental cycles with lenovo throwing in any new ideea they think up and seeing how it works out, breaking what makes ThinkPads ThinkPads. At that point, you might as well get an HP.

It has nothing to do with the China issue

[duffbeer703]

Companies bought Thinkpads because they were IBM customers, and their IBM rep sold them some IBM "solution" that covered everything from software & services to client devices. You see this alot in big banks and government agencies. They would sell Thinkpads and PCs at a heavy "discount", and recoup the "discount" in rollout costs or by not discounting some enterprise server or software.

Now that Lenovo is a different entity, your Websphere, Tivoli or mainframe salesman cannot pad his commissions by moving a few hundred Thinkpads at a heavily discounted price. Hence the drop in Thinkpad sales.

Re:misconception

[darkmeridian]

I guess the misconception is that the engineers are also overseas and therefore the quality of the goods are going to go down. [sarcasm]You see, the Chinese are only good at following instructions given to them by the Americans.[/sarcasm] But look at the Thinkpad/Lenovo T60: they are still very well-built machines, when compared to even the Powerbooks.

It's terrible to think that a great brand is going to go out of existence because of unwarranted xenophobia. Imagine if we're stuck with Dell!

My experience

[timeOday]

When my 2.5 year-old IBM T40 recently flaked out, it was repaired on warranty - including a new motherboard, keyboard, and CD ROM drive (I use the laptop all the time and it was basically shot). So long as they carry on IBM's obligations and the quality stays high, I'm seriously tempted to stay with the Thinkpad series. The T60 looks to be a great machine, the only complication is that MacBooks can now boot windows too so those are tempting.