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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'm certainly not buying American until the government allows freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. Oh wait... they do!
Ascribing moral equality between the governments of China and the USA is an insult to the innocent people executed and imprisoned by the vile, corrupt government of China.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
NPR did an interview with the author of "A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy" and they admitted that it was almost impossible to avoid goods from China. It's a very good interview if you want to reduce your purchases from "Made in China".
While I will admit it is tough to not buy products made in China, I have found that with the exception of sunglasses and most electronics, I can buy the products I need which aren't made in China.
Granted, I'm the exception to most Americans in that I don't want or need a ton of stuff so I'm probably not a representative sample, but if one were to take the time and not buy products which are made in China, it can be done.
It's almost comical when I and my parents are out somewhere because both my dad and I look at where products are made. In fact, my dad refers to WalMart as "The China store". I'm sure some day someone in a store will ask what we're doing as we look at the labels on products. When that day occurs, I'll be happy to tell them why we're looking at the labels.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I too work in a steel mill, and I have to recommend the Toughbooks. We've had a couple of them survive being dropped into vats of molten metal. The hard part was removing them from the steel slab afterwards as the oxy-fuel cutting torch set a bit of the magnesium casing on fire on one of them.
Boy, was that a strange meeting with the fire dept...
As a side note... From my experience, more Americans know about these atrocities than Chinese. It's depressing, really. It's also depressing the number of new Chinese immigrants who are totally blown away by Canada's democratic government, since they thought (or were taught) that they had democracy all along.
Depends on where your from, my relatives in Xin Hua and Guangzhou are acutely aware of the deficiencies with their government. They are aware of the bad things that go on but persist to live a quiet live to avoid that trouble. But they're in a different socio economic class then the rest of China. They're owners of factories, doctors, accountants, the upper middle class of china. Their proximity to HK might be part of it too.
They have had brushes with some of it. My uncle was offered a promotion to Dean of one of the medical schools in the region. He had been a professor for a long time and was about to retire. He smelled a fish and took early retirement instead. Turns out they were attempting to find a scape goat for some embezzlement that happened. The person they did promote was arrested for embezzlement.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
One the truly puzzling things about most Chinese that I meet is there bottomless capacity to defend the snake of a government they have - even the ones that have already immigrated away. I find that the upper-middle class tends to be the worst - the ridiculously rich are too educated to fall for the government's lies, while the poorest suffer too much to believe anything the government says. It's the people who fall down the middle that actually believe the things the government teaches them.
I've known many Chinese who admit their government's deficiencies, and admit that officials are almost always corrupt and self-serving. But for some reason they still declare their allegiance to the government, claiming that as a Chinese by blood they cannot possibly turn away from the Chinese government. This puzzles me greatly, since I've long ago refused to consider myself a supporter of anything BUT a Western democracy - if the government is shooting your kind by the hundreds, is corrupt, etc etc, what kind of loyalty do you owe to them? It seems very ego-driven, and amounts to stubborn refusal to admit that perhaps the West has a better sociopolitical system.
In a sick way, it's like Stockholm syndrome... a whole race of people who are culturally conditioned to remain loyal to their government, despite the innumerable atrocities that are committed against them in front of their own eyes.
As another side note... it's depressing the "history" they learn in their schools...