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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?"
Where exactly do you think the other laptop manufacturers make their gear? A hint: "Designed in California, Made in China", and that is just one of the favourites around here on slashdot.
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?
avoid Dell, too, since the American government is doing such horrible things around the world. Yes, it's flawed logic. Move on.
>> Thinkpads are now produced by Lenovo, a Chinese company
If that was your problem, you should never have bought a Thinkpad ever. They were always manufactured by Lenovo which has always been a Chinese comopany, the country which it belongs to has always been the same. Can I call this a sudden attack of morality?
Aside from the obvious hypocrisy mentioned above, I am sure you will get a lot of suggestions from the cult of Mac, but believe me - its hard to find a replacement for Thinkpad. No matter how slick other notebooks may look, in terms of fineness, usability and sheer joy of typing (yes, thats critical factor for me at least), nothing comes near.
This is cynical of me, but your private little boycott is not going to do the monks any good. If you buy a new Thinkpad now, it'll outlast the problem in Burma. Just buy another one. Lenovo has always produced Thinkpads, it's just that IBM doesn't support them directly anymore. Thinkpads are still the most reliable laptops in the market.
Ian
Buy a newer, but still-made-by-IBM-not-Lenovo Thinkpad off eBay?
I certainly wouldnt want to by anything from the USA while children are dying of cholera in Iraq because the USA backed regime has blocked imports of Chlorene.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
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
What is wrong with your T20?
I have an X23 that I refurbished. Maxed out the RAM and put in a new hard-drive. I can't see any reason to replace until it dies.
Eventually I will replace the spinning hard-drive with a flash-drive. I'd love to find a way to replace the CCFL backlight with LED were that possible, to make it even more long-lived.
The American fascination with tossing perfectly adequate technology into a landfill is apalling.
After Tiananmen Square I stopped buying Chinese. In the last few years it has been almost impossible. If the main thing isn't made in China, components are, and that goes for almost everything. I am sure my shoes are made from the finest Falun Gong hides. In terms of a laptop, I don't any that would have most of the parts made in China. Not much has changed in terms of Chinese regard for human rights, but no one seems to care much as long as they can get what they want cheap, regardless of the treatment of the labour that produces them and the regime that allows it.
We used to liberate people, now we liberate markets.
That reducing the wealth of people in an area makes them more subservient and dependent on the wealthy? In this case, the state... Sanctions ironically simply cement the power of the powerful.
You make people more independent by making them wealthy.
Deleted
Most companies, even Lenovo, use ODM companies to make laptops. Some of these companies are Chinese, but Taiwan is also a major competitor. Look for names like Quanta, Compal, or ASUS if you want to go with a Taiwanese company instead of a Chinese company. The ODM relationships are not advertised, so you will have to do some digging. Join forums like notebookreview.com and ask people to tell you where their laptops label says it was manufactured if you want to be sure.
I carried my little white 2001 iBook in a gym bag back and forth to the office for 4 years, before retiring it for it's final year to home only as a couch computer. It finally gave up the ghost after 5.5 years, and two drops to the linoleum covered floor in my living room -- once from 2 feet, once from three and a half. I wish Apple still used the bullet proof glass for iBook cases. That iBook sure took a beatin' before it belly-uped .
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
an abacus. They're great for math, unless you've developed something against the ancient Babylonians while living under your rock. The fact is that you're looking at Chinese mad goods no matter what you buy, you said it yourself. You're either going to buy an OLPC when they're available (at only slightly less power than you've already got) or buying Chinese. Don't like it? Who do you think made that T20 for IBM before?
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
In America, you can have a website and a donate money to form an organization saying "Bush sucks". In China, if you did that, you would wind up in jail.
This is my sig.
I got my T-40 from this place.
http://www.usedpc.com/
It was flawless, and I buy used laptops exclusively.
I was not aware the the new Lenovos were like the 'T' series, more like the old 'R' series, am I wrong?
They Live, We Sleep
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.
Then go to http://www.xogiving.org/ and order up a couple of XO laptops so the poor kids in Burma have a shot (pardon the expression) at a real future. If you like, you can sign up to buy a pair of XO laptops, one for a poor kid in some third-world country and one for your own kid or a neighbor or even for yourself. You'll pay less for those two XOs than Microsoft gets for a retail copy of Windows, and they'll do a lot more good (and, um, work a lot better ...)
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.
Don't take this as trolling against Mac, but in my experience, they're nowhere near as durable as a ThinkPad. For example, my primary home laptop is an old ThinkPad A31, which is over five years old. It lasted me throughout college, and survived numerous drops, liquid spills into the keyboard, hits, etc. It still runs better than most of my friends and colleagues brand new laptops.
By comparison, my little brother brought his brand new MacBook Pro to school with him last year, and after his first semester, the keyboard had completely died from a beer spill. Now, while this is obviously a stupid move on his part, that's not the point. My ThinkPad stood up to numerous beer spills, and kept on ticking. From what he told me, Apple wanted $1,400.00 to fix his computer (I never verified this myself, but he insists its true). Instead, I had him order a new keyboard online for $75.00, and after 45 minutes of work (my first time taking apart a Mac laptop, cut me some slack -- and yes, they are impressively designed), I had it fixed for him.
Anyways, this is one example of a major difference in durability between a MacBook Pro (a great computer, in its own right), and a ThinkPad. At least, an old ThinkPad. I'm not sure if the new ones are built as well.
The other kicker, for me at least, is the lack of a TrackPoint. I personally can't stant touch pads. That alone is a difference maker right there.
November 6th is not a good day for me. I have to work. Could you reschedule it for a Sunday?
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?
It didn't need to be said. And it does not even come close to telling the entire story. Almost all Iraqi arms under Saddam were French and Russian made.
That the US backed Iraq due to *the enemy of my enemy* policy is no secret. And I personally do not like that type of policy, even if the enemy was Iran. Do you have any idea what actually went on in Iran and how disgusting of a government that is even to this day?
However, as much as I don't like it I'm not going to pretend a case can't be made for it.
Bottom line is, just because you can copy-n-paste an article from the internet doesn't mean you understand anything about the the article. And it doesn't mean the article is with merit.
I personally find most of the touting of US-Iraq relations prior to GWI to be very simplistic in nature. It's rare to see someone discussing it in detail and in regards to the region and world as a whole over the lsat 40 or 50 years.
Life isn't always so simple that a trite copy-n-paste can make a good point on your behalf.
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.
...is there no one left on Slashdot who grasps the concept of sarcasm?
> The US has their problems, but if you want to compare them to China, it's not even
> close. Where are the listings for the Chinese government's transgressions?
Forgive me for not having an orgasm of patriotism at the revelation that we're not the
single most oppressive regime in the world. Lowering the bar much?
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
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?
Most of the Taiwanese OEMs have practically all of their manufacturing facilities in China, but at least they aren't directly involved in feeding the Party hierarchies. One or two of the Taiwanese manufacturers have kept their facilities in Taiwan though. Google should help identify them.
The Japanese makers have likewise most of their factories in China, but there has been a recent trend to look at other less hostile and more democratic Asian countries to host more of the manufacturing.
Some China trivia: How many knew that the "peoples' liberation army" (PLA) is "constitutionally" loyal to the Chinese "communist" Party instead of the state or the "government"? Or that the current CCP and PLA head honcho Hu Jintao (aka "president of the PRC") was nicknamed the Butcher of Tibet thanks to his bloody crackdown on Tibetan demonstrators in Lhasa while he was the Party supremo there in the late 80s. In the immediate aftermath tens of thousands of Tibetans were forced to watch how the Chinese executed their freedom-fighters in a sports stadium. That bloody act loyal to the Chinese communist Party helped fast-track him into the top Party leadership. What if the Burmese generals were massacring monks and civilians in a neighboring country..?
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
How confidently you speak for the one point two million corpses in Iraq, plus the four million or so refugees. You must have mad psychic powers.
"Well, at least they don't shoot demonstrators in the US. "
You mean recently I presume?
Need Mercedes parts ?
So by this metric, if the US simply executed its criminals w/o trial, we would be the BEST country on the planet.
Awesome
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Did it occur to you that some of us voted for him *precisely* for that reason?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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".