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Replacing a Thinkpad?
An anonymous reader writes "As a very happy Thinkpad T20 user (still working after 7 years), I always planned on replacing it with another Thinkpad T-series. However, Thinkpads are now produced by Lenovo, a Chinese company, and I can't quite bear to buy Chinese while the Burmese military are shooting at monks with the Chinese Government as their biggest backer. Maybe this is silly, as whatever I buy is likely to be made (at least in part) in China... but still, what are my options for something as well built as the Thinkpad T-series?"
I've repaired and issued a lot of laptops in my day and I'm not aware of a true competitor to the T series in terms of chassis design. The current T lineup is really nice, but expensive. I'm starting to think I'll get myself a Dell 1420n with Ubuntu for my next box. Granted it's not a rugged laptop but I don't really need that kind of durability. You could consider the Toughbooks, but I really don't have any practical knowledge of them.
You do realize Lenovo is selling the Thinkpads now because... *drumroll* they were the company that made them all along?
Check ebay for a used thinkpad. IBM still made them in 2005, though they were made in a Chinese factory.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Expensive, but well built and assembled mostly in the US to my knowledge. I recommend doing more research and not just taking my word for it. :) Good luck.
http://www.mpccorp.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPC_Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
The last lot of Lenovo desktops we brought were made in Hungary. Get one of them instead...
Very little compares to the durability of the ThinkPads, at least in the non-rugged category. You pay dearly for them, but they last forever compared to other notebooks.
Even Dell's Lattitude business line still feels like a toy. Dell really improved their notebooks over the last iteration, and they're still crap. HP's business line (not the consumer junk with the blinky blue lights and 17" monitors) is the only one IMO that comes close to IBM/Lenovo's case design and construction.
If you really want rugged or semi-rugged, you probably need to look at the Panasonic Toughbooks. They're solid, but they're 20% heavier than they should be and you compromise on case design for durability. (Side note, if you buy the true rugged Toughbook, it's assembled in the US (probably for military contract requirements.) You pay accordingly too...list on some of the rugged models is in the $2000-$3000 range.
Your other choice might be a MacBook Pro, but those aluminum cases don't look like they can take a beating the way the old ThinkPads can.
(By the way, everything's made in China now. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be paying the cheap prices you get for hardware now.)
I love my T60, too, by the way. Runs great with Ubuntu as well.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
We use Apple MacBooks at our middle school and they've held up really well. No one is harder on computer equipment than little kids. The laptops have been real durable. So from personal experience, I'd recommend an Apple MacBook. You might like Mac OS X, but if you don't, you can always load it with Windows and/or Linux.
What about South Africa? The extensive boycotts there were instrumental in ending apartheid.
According to wikipedia, the Chinese government owns a large share of one of the companies that owns stock in Lenovo, and so it effectively owns 27.5% of the company.
If the original poster is advocating for responsible consumerism, and suggesting that we look up the shareholders of a company and only support the company if we support the shareholders, then I'm all for it. However, it sounded like the original poster was saying: "Lenovo is Chinese. China is bad. Therefore, I don't want to buy a laptop from Lenovo."
First off go to notebookreview.com to see which Laptop suits your needs. In your case, I would seriously look at a Fujitsu Lifebook. They are excellent machines, an E series or S series would be the perfect thin and light for you. But they are assembled in Osaka, Japan and NOT in Third Word mainland China. Checkout Panasonic Toughbooks although they are somewhat pricey. I believe Dell Latitude are assembled in Malayasia. HP Compaq are made in China. I think Samsungs are put together in Korea (although loads of Samsung products, especially Consumer Electronics are made in China). I really hope these Burmese Generals end up in front of a firing squad. I also hope no more monks or civilians get hurt. The way fucking Russia and China have backed the Burmese Junta sickens me. These two countries spawned Stalin (Georgian) and Mao. The biggest butchers in history. They also backed Pol-Pot in Cambodia in the 1970s. Maybe the Russians and Chinese are the greatest threat to the Free World and not some deluded Muslims.
I have moderator points, and i'd much rather mod the story as Troll or Flamebait, than go through and mod up all the comments pointing out the flaws in this guys logic behind avoiding lenovo.
Agreed. I was a guest of China for a couple of weeks (adopting a girl). My translators (who shall remain nameless) told me how bad/corrupt things are. It was very dangerous for them to even tell me and my wife, but they wanted to make sure as many people as possible knew how bad it was. I fear for their lives.
Check out the Panasonic Toughbook lineup. Our police force uses these and I assure you they are rugged and they work anywhere. There are different types of ruggedness: like the fully one, I know for a fact works even in -50c, rain, etc. (our police force uses these) and then the semi-rugged kind which may be more practical for an office setting. Although, I think they're a bit expensive, if you were planning on getting a Thinkpad anyways, its build quality is up there. Also, Panasonic Toughbooks are not manufactured in China and are made by its parent company Matsushita.
IBM has 20% of Lenovo, so if you buy from them, 20% goes to IBM (more or less). Besides, what development/r&d you really think Dell does on their laptops? If there are any two companies that do research, IMHO, are Lenovo and Apple.
You could get an Asus laptop. Owned by the Taiwanese, and made in Taiwan (or at least that's what's stamped on the bottom of mine).
Why just buy from not-China when you can buy from their enemies?
++ this
Not buying a laptop from a country doesn't hurt the people whose actions you object to, but rather the people who make the laptop (who, by and large, have a way better standard of living working in assembly plants than they did in rural, dirt-poor farms).
I was waiting for one of you uneducated morons to pipe up.
The Sudan and Burma are loaded with oil. Burma also has massive reserves of hardwoods, precious gems and several other resources.
These are the reasons China is neck deep in both countries and the primary arms suppliers to both governments. India just signed oil exploration agreements with Burma and Russia is negotiating with them for Natural Gas rights.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Since you mentioned shoes, I'll say that New Balance makes most of theirs in the US (and clearly labels which they are). In addition, they seem to hold up very well. I usually wear out shoes quickly (read: I'm a fat motherfucker) but the New Balance ones seem to last about twice as long as comparable "sweat shop" shoes.
Their T2010 is touchpad-less like ThinkPads.
That's quite an assertion there. When you give money to a Chinese company, that income is taxed by the Chinese government and part of the purchase price goes directly to support the atrocities committed by the Chinese government. This isn't speculation, this is fact.
At what point does anybody's race enter into this?
Is this a news report or a trailer for a motion picture?
Of course not. Unless you mail order it from Beijing. Where are you going to buy it? In the US. At least half the money will stay in the US. From Wikipedia
Buy a second-hand Thinkpad in the US, then 100% of your cash will stay here.Assembled is correct. My Dell Dimension came from an assembly plant in North Carolina. The Dell parts, however, are almost all stamped or labelled Foxconn -- a Chinese manufacturer. The drive is a WD (I think); I don't know where that's made. The processor is an Intel, the silicon is processed in a Fab in the US, but is packaged in asia somewhere (Malaysia?) ....
Well, I don't know what a nice guy like me is doing in a thread like this-- slow news day I suppose. Anyhow I'll go ahead and pitch in a few cents.
You won't find anything directly exported from Taiwan intentionally labeled as "Made in China". No way. Not by a long shot. The "Made in Taiwan" label is a big deal here. There are ads on TV all the time showing examples of Europeans and Americans using low quality flimsy products like umbrellas that fall apart and then focusing in on the label that says "Made in Taiwan" with the idea that these commercials are meant to shame local manufacturers into improving their quality standards to raise the brand value of the "Made in Taiwan" label. It works. People get pissed when they buy local stuff that sucks and shopkeepers catch hell over it if it says "Made in Taiwan". Generally stuff made in Taiwan isn't as cheap as mainland stuff. For mainland stuff it's expected to be low quality just as "Made in Japan" is assumed, sometimes dubiously, to mean quality. Sometimes in certain product categories nobody cares as long as it more or less works and the price is right.
There are some product categories where Taiwan is still weak though.Capacitors is one. There are great electronics shops here and you can get Taiwanese caps for a few cents or Japanese ones for about five times as much.Local solder is also like a third the cost of imports even from China. Lots of electronics stuff from Taiwan is just dirt cheap but good luck reading the freakin' manuals. Gotta love a Chinese spec sheet. Even standard units like ohms get translated into characters that mean something totally unrelated but sound like oh mu. Everybody can guess that one right?
Anyway, back to the thread here. You're right that China Airlines is a Taiwanese carrier and both sides have their own China Telecom and China Rail, China post and other similarly named industry players, but that does not extend to labeling Taiwanese goods with a tag that says "Made in China". That would not happen. Thats not to say that there aren't Taiwanese operated and owned factories in mainland, but if a product is made in Taiwan and exported from Taiwan you can be certain the tag will say "Made in Taiwan" and not "Made in China".
BUY AMERICAN ONLY!
... a lot of it for pennies on the dollar, after the previous owners either sold out to China or went out of business (no real difference there, when you get right down to it.) Much of that hardware we are no longer capable of reproducing. They may or may not have need of it themselves, but because we don't have it anymore we can't make anything with it.
... I'm sorry to find out I was wrong.
I agree with your sentiment, but that is no longer possible for an increasing array of products. China has, deliberately and with malice aforethought, stripped us of much of our key manufacturing capability (much like Japan before it, but only on a vastly grander scale.) China has systematically purchased as much heavy equipment and machine tools from U.S. manufacturers as it can get its hands on
Good for China. Not so good for us. I grew up thinking we were smarter than that
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
off-topic, but I can see the iPod factory from my school classroom window in Shanghai (at least, all my classmates tell me that).
OSx86 FTW