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Rethinking the Thinkpad
Octiaviane writes to tell us that XYZComputing has a review of Lenovo's Thinkpad X60 with a look at not only the current specs but the evolution of the Thinkpad line. From the article: "One constant which has remained throughout the evolution of the notebook computer is the Thinkpad. Processors and operating systems have changed, designs have been updated, and ownership has changed hands, but the Thinkpad remains. This product has never stopped being a top choice for demanding consumers and corporate buyers, whether they are looking for size, power, or features."
Thankfully they don't seem to have changed the apparance yet. IBM Ugly doesn't get many plaudits, but it definatly says "this is a laptop with which I could beat you to death for your stupidity and using your rubbish little Acer as a shield isn't going to help you one bit".
Beep beep.
That excerpt from the review made me not click on the link. The reviewer blatantly admits bias to the whole line of laptops instead of concentrating on reviewing the latest model...
That was one of the most painful articles I've read in a while. It's hard to take a review seriously when there's a typo or missing word in almost every single paragraph. It was almost like I was reading slashdot...
The current Lenovo ThinkPad ads in Melbourne have either a man saying something about how he wants to change the world, not back up his data all day, or a female, staring vacuously into camera with a smile that could start drooling any second, saying "I don't care how it works, as long as it works". If my pee-pee was a woo-woo, I'd be hunting down their marketing department with a sledgehammer in each fist. How fucking patronising.
.. I'd use to put my jack on if I ever got stuck in a muddy field. It would survive - they are seriously robust pieces of kit. Having said that, I'm happy with my dual core VIAO now, about the only thing I miss is the keyboard LED.
At least it finally has a Windows key..
Insert
I'm a road warrior and I've been using Thinkpads only since '99 and never looked back. A-series, T-series and now a Z-series thinkpad. Even though my current thinkpad is one of the first models designed and produced by Lenovo it's still a real thinkpad.
:-(
Why I love them:
[1] High mechanical quality, e.g. look at the hinges holding the display, that's solid metal! My last one, a T41p looked like brand new after 18 months and I used it every day for at least 8 hours, look at a typical Sony/Dell/HP after that timeframe!
[2] best keyboard in the industry, actually I even prefer my Thinkpad keyboard over Cherry keyboards
[3] the thinkpad light above the display (I love it), the docking solutions are very advanced, support is great
I personally don't care whether it has the latest GPU, fastest harddrive, etc. - and - I'm not gonna buy a glossy screen either.
BUT _please_ give me a new thinkpad X-series tablet! I absolutely need a higher resolution than 1024x768. I would immediately (tomorrow morning, before breakfast and shower) buy a X61s tablet with resolution > 1024x768, core 2 duo and 3rd generation mobile data service (e.g. HSDPA).
But, as far as I know, it's not gonna happen. The x60/x61 tablet will still have 1024x768
IBM made some great machines and it seems that Lenovo has continued to support quality over looks. Unfortuneatly, Lenovo will have less oportunity than other brands due to the US govenrment outlawing them (the purchase that is) in Federal facilities.
Forgive me for being slightly off topic, but the discussion regarding the thinkpad has got me to thinking. The thinkpad has come in iterations that are physically robust and sturdy, but still are (to me) a little too fragile. Most laptops are far worse, and it's always a little nerve racking to carry around a $1k piece of equipment which appears as if it would shatter if dropped from more then four feet.
I've never had a laptop where I didn't wear out the keyboard in less then a year. Screens go bad too easily (and I'm scared to death to let anything touch them). Batteries, while they have improved over the last decade, still have far too little life in them.
Yet, with improving technology and manufacturing, the focus seems to be on faster processors and high performance graphics chips (which in turn eat up more power). How is it that there is no market out there for a good, cheap notebook that does the essentials (runs a browser and an office suite) that's as durable as a, well, an actual traditional paper notebook?
I'd love something that I can throw in a backpack or satchel and not have to worry if it's going to get broken by other books, or scratched to heck, or have the screen go bad from being crushed. Something that can last 15-20 hours between charging, so I don't have to always be looking for a power port. I don't need it to play games or do any high end video work. A decent, durable display that'll do 1024x768 would be fine. I don't need excessive power; a 1.6ghz processor with 128m of ram and a 50gig hdd would be more then enough. Finally, put in a keyboard that is indestructible.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I'd be more then willing to sacrifice performance for durability. Am I the only one who thinks this way? Or are there laptop manufacturers out there who make decent, cheap machines that are built like tanks, but don't necessarily have a higher end hardware inside?
The Internet is generally stupid
This product has never stopped being a top choice for demanding consumers and corporate buyers, whether they are looking for size, power, or features.
Or just a single feature - like the TrackPoint... Few other brands have them nowadays.
Multi Search
They'd make a 16 bit version and call it a Thunkpad.
Task Mangler
Thus far, I have been very happy with what I have seen of Lenovo's actions. The newer Thinkpad models are better specified, a little cheaper and the warranty conditions have improved. I am actually more likely to buy Thinkpads now than when IBM was running the show.
Fortunately for you, you're not. I've become so accustomed to using the Tracknipple that I actually become infuriated when I have to use a touchpad... so hideously inefficient!
Meow what do we have here?
You should teach the idiots how to use the TrackPoint correctly, then. You only need one hand. Index finger is on the TrackPoint and the thumb is on the buttons. You can press any of the three buttons with your thumb and it's easy to hold them down while you're dragging something. The contours on the buttons make it real easy to press, too, not like the sunken buttons on the Dells.
The first thing I did on my Thinkpads was disable the horrible trackpad thing.
---John Holmes...
Based on the some of the latest feedback of the problems that people have with the T60's it seems clear that Lenovo's plan is to niche the Thinkpad into the corporate market where it can be supported and doesn't have to handle the media/entertainment features that home users want. On the other hand the Lenovo N series is better suited to home users anyhow. I have Thinkpad T40 and a Lenovo N100 so I feel I'm qualified to have an opinion about this.
I run Windows 2000 on my ThinkPad and the drivers and programs for that OS are still being kept up to date. When I did a reinstall of Windows 2000 a few months ago, I just installed vanilla Windows 2000, loaded the ThinkPad update program from my archive, ran it, and all the drivers necessary to support the ThinkPad hardware features were downloaded and installed.
Nice, very nice.
I've also been a dedicated ThinkPad user since 2000 or so. I've owned three, all X-series to cut down on the weight of dragging my laptop around and to allow me to actually get work done in coach class. However, unlike some of the other posters here, I have had some mechanical problems with the ThinkPads; I've had to replace keyboards on two of them, the screen hinges on my current one (#3, have had it 2-3 years at least) are loosening, and the screen frame itself has popped a rivet. Beyond that, I have found in the last year or two that more and more when I travel on business that what I really need is a portable desktop system, i.e., lots of memory, lots of disk space, lots of processor power, and a large screen. This, of course, is mostly the antithesis of the ThinkPad X series. Beyond that, I've just been a little bit leery of how well quality has been maintained in the IBM -> Lenovo transition.
..bruce..
I did buy such a "portable desktop" laptop this week: a Fujitsu Lifebook N6410. Dual core T2400 @ 1.83 GHz, 2GB RAM (upgraded myself from 512KB), 80 GB hard drive + second hard drive bay (uses SATA laptop drives; be warned that it doesn't come with the bracing frame for the 2nd hard drive; I'm still working on that), full size keyboard + numeric pad, 17" display, stereo speakers + subwoofer, 256MB nVidia graphics (128MB dedicated/128MB shared), lots of ports, DVD-write drive, etc. Size of a boat anchor, weighs a ton, only lasts about 2 hours on battery, so it's definitely not my light, lithe ThinkPad X41, but it's right up there with all my desktop systems, and it's definitely easier than packing one of my Shuttles + a flat screen in a suitcase (which I've done before).
I'll see after a few trips whether and how much I miss my ThinkPad.
By the way, if you're looking at high-end laptops like this, avoid the Toshiba Satellite P105. I bought one earlier this week from Best Buy (the P105-S9312, w/2GB of RAM and a 200 GB hard drive), got it home, and promptly ran into problems: slow, flaky performance, occasional kernel faults, etc. I let it run all night and in the morning found it had powered itself down. When I powered it up, it went through three different kernel faults during bootup, rebooting each time, then finally got itself into WinXP--only to start reporting problems with previously working software. I tried four (4) times to do a system restore using the system restore disc--and had it fail each time. When I took it back to Best Buy to get my money back, I found that someone else had come in that same morning to exchange the same model. Not a good sign of high quality assurance. YMMV.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
But Lenovos abyssimal behavior regarding their ecological responsibilty renders them a company which just wound up on my eternal shitlist of companies from which I never ever buy anything.
Lenovo, say hi to the likes of Sony and Air France.
Slashdot covered this recently.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I did basic hardware repair on thousands of Thinkpads around '03-'04, mostly T21, T22, T23, T30s, and 40/41s, as well as the X series, 20-30-40, and some of big yet delicate A20s and A30s, as well as some models I've forgotten the names of. My favorites are the old T2x, and the X20's. But I have a hard time viewing them as durable, as all the ones I ever saw were screwed up in some way. All the models have their stress points where the plastic always gives, and none took spill damage well. A lot of it was just wanton customer abuse, of course. Still, I saw several T-series come in after getting backed over by a truck and still boot. They weren't my favorite jobs, though.
However, Greenpeace cheers for HP and Dell, who generate far more e-waste than any other PC makers. They churn out disposable, cheap PCs with short life spans, often using far more toxic CRT displays to hit the low price target. HP was rated good on "Chemical Management," despite missing their goals last year. Meanwhile, Apple was rated "partially bad" for not having as many published goals, when in reality they had already banned use of those toxics, including Hexavalent Chromium and others.
If you like facts, here are more examples of how the Greenpeace report was misleading and incompetent.
It's really too bad the Greenpeace report was thrown around without any criticism from the mainstream media or even from bloggers. Even Slashdot refused to cover it. Everyone is afraid to say anything about Greenpeace, but ignoring their misleading and irresponsible report on the grounds that it's politically incorrect to critique anything calling itself "Green," actually waters down the efforts of real environmentalists and those interested in forwarding the state of the art in clean and responsible business and manufacturing.
Incidentally, the Greenpeace report was written by a SVTC member. That's the group that targeted Apple last year in a campaign against the iPod, saying that people would throw their iPods away when the battery ran down. More about the Toxic Trash campaign on Apple