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Change the ThinkPad and It Will Die
ErichTheRed writes "Here's an interesting editorial piece about the ThinkPad over at CNN. It mirrors what many ThinkPad devotees have been saying since Lenovo started tweaking the classic IBM design to make the ThinkPad more like a MacBook, Sony or other high-end consumer device. I'm a big fan of these bulletproof, decidedly unsexy business notebooks, and would be unhappy if Lenovo decided to sacrifice build quality for coolness. Quoting: 'Before doing anything drastic, Lenovo would be wise to review the spectacular rise and fall of Blackberry-maker Research in Motion. The mobile handset manufacturer tried to take on Apple by launching a number of products aimed at the retail consumer after the launch of the iPhone. It released the devastatingly bad Blackberry Storm as a response to the iPhone and later the Playbook to take on the iPad. The Storm failed because it was hastily put together in a mad dash and lacked the signature Blackberry QWERTY keyboard ... The Playbook failed because the Blackberry ecosystem had at the point of its launched more or less collapsed, making the Playbook just another iPad clone no one wanted. Meanwhile, the original Blackberry was left to wither away as the company focused on chasing Apple and wasn't updated in a meaningful way, making it look just old and tired.'"
Not the stand up meetings, or scrumaster training, but just the part where your development is an iterative process with constant feedback from end users.
I work in wireless and have many friends who were fans of the original Blackberry's. I could easily have told themt the Storm was a failure out of the gate, and they could have gone back and added their signature keyboard to it and tried again.
If Lenovo wants to "improve" the thinkpad, they should make a few hundred, and give them out as a loaners for peoples' systems that are in for repair, under the condition that they fill out a form at the end that asks whether they'd like to keep the loaner instead of their repaired system. If you don't break 50% on that form, you go back to the drawing board. The Storm wouldn't have broken 10%.
I love technology.
You pick up a blackberry. It feels like a cheap plastic piece of shit.
You pick up a acer. It feels like a cheap plastic piece of shit.
You pick up a HP. It feels like a cheap plastic piece of shit.
You pick up a (insert anything electronic and mass produced that the bean counters got at). It feels like a cheap plastic piece of shit.
This is because.. they are cheap pieces of shit.
Pick up a nice Thinkpad. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit. Especially the old ones.
Pick up ANYTHING APPLE. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit.
If you are in charge of decisions at a large company publicly traded and cannot figure out what you do to your product image.. those little cents you save here and there, all turn your products in to cheap feeling plastic pieces of shit. Your brand also turns into a piece of shit. I feel sad for HP. At least SGI died.
Rant off.
..don't panic
I've had couple of generations, and our current model for my wife's use is an X301. We love its industrial ruggedness (for a non-ruggedized machine) and its very light weight for its size.
But, I've owned Toshibas, Dells, and a Gateway, so I'm not opposed to other brands. When we bought the X301 it came with a free Ideapad S10-2, which is what I have on-hand as a quick-availability machine in the living room. Build Thinkpads like the Ideapads and you'll lose us as a customer. Even though the X301 was very expensive ($1700 if memory serves) I'd still rather buy quality an reliability in a package that looks businesslike and doesn't scream, "steal me!" over most of the stuff out there. If that paradigm changes, I don't need to keep buying.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
People like nice stuff. And Apple is convincing more and more companies that people are willing to pay for nice stuff. Though Apple is exceptionally good at balancing nice and cost.
I just saw one of the new thinkpads and I thought it was actually a step in the right direction. Nice keyboard, nicer lines.
I think you can have a good build quality and not make it look like crap. Apple makes the best operating and best looking hardware in the same packages.. so why can't someone else?
I think lenovo has already hurt the Thinkpad, it does not look, feel or act like the robust 'tank' of old...
My macbook pro feels more solid than the lenovo which is only about 1 year old now. And I put 16GB into the macbook, so, not that big a deal to load up other laptops with more RAM (I do video work which can get pretty RAM intensive)...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Headline says Thinkpad, over 50% of summary was railing on RIM. What the fsck am I reading?
since ThinkPad hasn't been an IBM product nor brand since 2005
If your Blackberry Bold is feeling as solid as an iphone, something else is leaking into your food..
..don't panic
They already have a line of non-Thinkpad notebooks and ultrabooks under the name "Ideapad" and THAT is the line they like to mess with.
I specifically just bought a *THINKPAD* Twist because I wanted the removable "hard drive" (actually SSD, but whatever), a real ethernet port, and other ports, pop-out keyboard for easy service, etc. I was willing to pay more for a Thinkpad over something like their IdeaPad "Yoga" because I wanted those features and the (supposed) better quality and performance options.
I see no reason why Lenovo would need to muck around with the Thinkpad line when they have the Ideapad line. It would be disastrous to tamper with the Thinkpad line too much- I buy them at work for the same reason I wanted one for home.
I have a T60 and a T420s (and I've owned a T23, T40 and another T60p). The T420s has an abysmal screen, extraordinarily weak speakers, a lesser keyboard, poor battery life from day 1, terrible bluetooth range (noticeably worse than the T60), and the keyboard damages the screen like so many low quality laptops (I keep a sheet of A4 paper in mine to prevent this). Who cares about the Thinkpad brand? It's effectively dead. They're terrible now.
I think I can honestly say that I have had Thinkpads for 20 years and I have never had a bad experience on them (other than having a six year old system at one point that could run Cygwin but basically nothing else - the story about how I got the replacement made me a legend at work) - they have travelled literally around the world at least twice and have almost as many frequent flyer miles as I do.
They're great road warrior machines, well built, well thought out (their docking ports are worth every penny) and, amazingly enough, they're probably the only brand that didn't loose their quality when they were bought out/sold (I'm still pissed at what happened to Alienware).
Hopefully they'll keep a few of the old ones around so I can stock up before they try to emulate Apple.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
You can keep your Apple products if you like getting something twice as good for only 4 times the price. For a device I may only use 1-2 years, I don't need it to be rugged, beautiful, sexy, or magical. I need it to be functional and inexpensive.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Lenovo was one of the few vendors to retain the standard 2x3 key configuration for the Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys. This made it very easy to feel your way to these keys rather than a very unhelpful linear layout. It seems the newer models no longer retain this intuitive and most basic configuration. That was enough to hold my attention in the past even if it meant less CPU or other features that, in the end, don't matter that much to 95% of users (please don't yell at me, I know there are plenty who want the fastest, biggest, etc) But now, I can get any old laptop. They're all the same.
Pick up ANYTHING APPLE. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit.
You're right, it feels like an incredibly overpriced piece of shit.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is pretty much the worst take on the RIM situation I've ever read. If they focused on the traditional blackberry and made it more blackberry than ever they would still be an electric typewriter in a word-processor world. They failed by not putting out a product that provided the seamless highly-flexible high-end experience of an iPhone coupled with legacy application support, drop-from-five-feet-onto concrete ruggedization and enterprise integration. Losing the keyboard reduced my typing speed but gave back much more than it took, that would never have been a problem except to some niche die-hard's. RIM is garbage because they stopped making competitive products, plain and simple. They would have lost customers a lot quicker if it weren't for BES deployments too.
Rant off.
I'll take you up on that offer. Why are people so concerned with how things "feel"? It's a phone. It doesn't "feel" like anything. You feel. The device is.
Which leads to the second part: it doesn't "feel plasticky", nor does it "feel cheap". It is plasticky and you think it's cheap because you have equated plastic to inferiority. Which isn't necessarily true. If you have a mobile device that tends to get dropped (or even flung) quite often, guess what sort of body will be better at absorbing shocks: plastic or aluminum.
Plastic can be a wise decision, and because of fashion or just plain wrong generalizations (plastic is - historically, even - often used as a cheaper alternative to better materials) it's apparently now acceptable to "feel" something as "cheap", and that's it. Review sites do it all the time. No further investigation needed; it "feels", therefore it is, in a bizarre twist of Descartes. Give me data, not worthless subjective assumptions. They feel stupid.
A few months back I bought a Lenovo with a wireless card with a glitch so I did the first thing I have done with every other laptop I've ever owned when presented with this problem: I ordered a new wireless card. What happens? I get a post error about an unauthorized wireless card and the Laptop refused to boot until I removed it. Until Lenovo gets it through its head that if I pay for it than it is MY laptop and only I have the right to determine what cards are "authorized" I will not buy another Lenovo product.
But then you put it down anything less than extremely softly, and the screen breaks. For Apple prices, they should come with Gorilla Glass.
Though Apple is exceptionally good at balancing nice and cost.
No, Foxconn is. Sweatshops tend to do that.
I've had a T60 for 7 years, including all through college. The things are tanks. It spent class after class being thrown around in my backpack and on the ground and kept trucking. After 4 years of abuse, the plastic over the vent cracked a little. And it's missing an arrow key, but that was due to a milkshake incident (which is survived without flinching) and me misplacing the key. I upped the RAM to 2.5GB in 2007, swapped in a 7200rpm HDD in 2008 and put Windows 7 on it in 2009, which runs quite beautifully. The only issue I've had is the battery went from providing nearly 7 hours on a charge (with tweaked settings) when I first got it to less than 30 minutes on a charge two years later. I bought a replacement battery for ~$45 and that's provided a steady 4 hours over the last three years. I eventually had to replace the ac adapter too, which had taken more abuse than the laptop.
This past year, I got my parents a refurbished IdeaPad... not quite as sturdy as the Thinkpads but still leagues ahead of other laptops in the same price range. As long as they keep their basic design, my next laptop will definitely be a Thinkpad.
> ... was left to wither away as the company focused on chasing Apple and wasn't updated in a meaningful way, making it look just old and tired.'"
Which is the same thing Microsoft did chasing Apple, most recently trashing the Windows brand by turning Windows 8 into a tablet clone. It was enough to spook consumers to say 'well why don't I just get a tablet anyway' and Windows developers to wonder since the captain was getting into the lifeboat perhaps they should be doing the same thing? You attract customers by innovating. You lose them by imitating. Yet when faced with a dropping market share the usual practice is to imitate the competition.
BTW Lenovo's Thinkpad Tablet is nice. One reviewer said "If your IT department designed a laptop, it would look like this." It was a backhanded compliment, but it convinced me to give it a go.
The number of Apple phones I see on my daily commute with a cracked screen is crazy.
If emulating Apple meant replacing the shit plastic case with solid machined aluminum, I'd be all for it. It seems that nobody else is serious about unibodies and lasting design elements. Other products come and go, like the Dell Adamo, while Apple stays true to form on the unibody front.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
... but try threatening people with a netbook or a Mac and they just laugh. When they see my G40 whistling through the air they fucking run.
Hah! Ninja Notebook.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
I sincerely hope you're kidding... the whole reason we have gorilla glass now is because Steve Jobs talked Corning into making it again for the first iPhone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_Glass
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Gorilla Glass? I don't think Apple would do that. A broken screen just gives the tekkiddies an excuse to buy the latest iteration.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
They can have a new line of faddish skinny machines with chicklet keys.
The can also have a classic line of thicker solid machines with real decent keys.
Trying to walk the line in the middle seems to satisfy neither.
I dunno about that, although I suppose 'feels' is fairly subjective. We use Thinkpads at work...probably newer models, I don't know, mine's a T400...but it definitely feels like a cheap piece of shit to me. I know from the travel I've done with it already that it's fairly sturdy...but it _feels_ far inferior to my newer personal laptop, which is an HP dv6t (though about on par with my old Dell -- which was from their business line, a Vostro 1000.) If I squeeze my HP, it's fairly solid; if I squeeze the Thinkpad, it bends visibly and feels like it's going to crack. I'm actually somewhat astonished the plastic hasn't cracked already (and I've only had the thing a couple months.)
Case in point:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Glock_26.JPG
^ Plastic. Feels plastic. Not a cheap piece of shit.
Nobody cares what the CAPTCHA for your post was.
Not just toddler resistant. They're college student resistant, too. My daughter's Thinkpad lasted through five years of college. She claims her T60P lasted longer than any of her friends' laptops at college. What did she want for a graduation present? Another Thinkpad. She wanted something that would get her through grad school without a problem.
Token error line 1.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
You're just a blithering fanboy that would drink poison cool-aid if someone at the Genius bar offered it to you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They are still well build and well designed, and that's why they have a loyal following. I bought my thinkpad (I also own a think station) because it was well designed, which allows me to:
1. Service and upgrade it effortlessly. How many laptops do you know where you need to remove just one screw to change the hard drive? They even have the service and repair manuals on their website!
2. Have a good keyboard with that wonderful red cl... mousey thing.
3. Have 16GB of RAM.
The rest of the features are also top quality, without being flashy (back-light keyboard, IPS screens, extra large wifi antennas)
Apple products are well designed, but with a completely different goal in mind. They are trying to prevent you from accessing the hardware (hell you are not allowed even to change the battery). Trying to byte into apple's user base is the stupidest thing they can do. Apple fan's are not going to buy lenovo just because it looks as cool as apple product. On the other hand the people that buy thinkpads for what they are will drop them as a ton of bricks.
I can't imagine cushier job than a thinkpad brand manager: Just sit back and don't do anything, besides making sure that the quality stays the same, the corners are sharp and the color is black. Every year you spend not doing anything only strengthens the brand. So why change a ting?
Though Apple is exceptionally good at balancing nice and cost.
No, Foxconn is. Sweatshops tend to do that.
Sweatshops are a tool. At Apple's direction, Foxconn builds nice products at manageable prices. For most other vendors, Foxconn builds cheap pieces of shit. I first heard about Foxconn (long before they became well know as Apple's factory) because they were the ones producing really awful motherboards for Dell.
I have had the same experience. They might have some new options that are different but they still have classic Thinkpads. I bought a W520 about 15 months ago and still love it. It is totally solid. 4 slots for RAM (4x8GB possible). mSATA slot so I can use a solid state drive and keep the 2.5" hard drive. Actually high resolution 1920x1080 or 1600x900. The video cards are Nvidia Quadro 3d workstation video cards but still way more powerful than the average laptop video cards and powerful enough to play most games on high settings.
The Google Spec Nexus devices dont geel like cheap crap...
Except the Nexus HSPA+ that did feel like a really really cheap toy, even though it was better than anything made by HTC or the other phone companies up to that date.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I would _like_ to upgrade, but the latest Thinkpads have those awful Apple-like flat keyboards (anyone remember the PC-jr and the "chicklet" keyboard?) The Thinkpad keyboard was so awesome that Lenovo turned it into a USB keyboard and it sells like crazy. So, obviously, that had to go. The beveled lid was specifically designed to keep object in your briefcase from migrating to between the screen and keyboard; yep. let's ditch that, too!
And for good measure, let's build the whole thing on a SATA bus, but never, ever, ever permit an eSATA port that could be used for an external drive. Let's just stick with USB2.0 so all our competitors are 3x faster at moving data. It's only a business laptop, it's not like I have to move gigs of data around every frelling day!
The Lenovo laptops have turned into a me-too product, with nothing to recommend it over HP or Dell. My company (a Fortune 100 company) ditched _all_ IBM products in favor of HP. And everyone (in Engineering, at least) still misses their
Thinkpads and Thinkvantage servers.
Lenovo, this business is yours to lose. And that's what you're doing.
You HP elite book is a chinsy toy compared to my laptop....
Try a panasonic Toughbook. I can beat someone to death with it and then continue working after I hose off the blood.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Lenovo has already started to mess with the ThinkPads. It used to be that the keyboard layout was a seven-row deal with the keys sensibly placed and spaced. What they have now is a six-row deal with the function keys squashed together and the keys from the seventh row scattered about seemingly at random. Howls of protest went up about it and the result was this condescending blog post from Lenovo telling people to just deal with it. Here's a selection of commentary.
You're right in that he was comparing apples and oranges. HP's consumer laptops are cheap crap. Their business laptops (EliteBooks) are quite nice. Dell is much the same way. Lenovo's consumer laptops (Ideapads) are still much better quality than their HP or Dell counterparts.
What is the relation between solid and ugly? I never understood why Thinkpad should be so ugly, and why people associate this with solid product. So, if a Thinkpad got a nice layout, but still a solid piece of hardware, some people will hate it?
mostly from morons that keep it in their back pocket. What complete idiots think that is the right place for a phone? I was told by one chick that the NExus 4 was junk because she cracked 4 of them. She kept sitting on the freaking phone because she puts it in her back pocket.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not true, I want a cheap piece of plastic that computes fast. Provided a reasonable keyboard and display. These pieces of plastic are used to be changed every 24 months anyway. I was a Thinkpad customer for a long time, it ended up abruptly two years ago when Lenovo managed very bad an important problem with the nVidia chip on its T61p line of products. I did buy these because they were the top end product at that time. I did buy Thinkpad instead of another brand because of the high quality I got in the past and the service. Lenovo just managed to replace the laptops likely to fail before the end of the warranty and made a recall for these serial numbers only. Many of us did have our lovely T61p just die not long after our warranty expired and we were told by Lenovo to go to hell (not in these terms of course) our warranty is expired and they won't do anything for us. Then I started to see if I could buy a replacement board and in Canada they charged over 1500$ for a replacement board while you can buy yourself a new machine for that price. I then decided to drop Lenovo once and forever. Since that time, I am committed to buy cheap pieces of plastic that computes fast instead.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I always thought the R line was kinda shit. T series were the flagship, toughest and lightest.
The few IBM era T's I have are tanks... Good too, as I'm stuck with them because no one believes in 4:3 anymore.
Sent from my PDP-11
Why exactly is an angular, matte design so bad? Are rounded corners, chrome or brushed steel and extreme gloss the only acceptable apperance for something to look "modern" and "stylish"?
It's all just opinion regardless, but I think the original design IS "sexy", to borrow the summary's wording. It's good-looking without being gaudy, distracting or prone to wear (e.g. iPod Touch/iPhone backs).
Nothing terribly revolutionary about a gun that uses ABS plastics for the lower portions - magazine well, trigger assembly, pistol grip, etc. This lightens the weapon and makes it easier to carry, draw, and aim - though it does increases the effect of recoil when the weapon is discharged (due to the lack of stabilizing mass). The REAL parts of the gun are still forged steel though, despite quibbling internet memes and crazy anti-gunners screaming the 'ceramic' lie - Glock achieves the 'ceramic' feel through a process called 'Parkerizing'
Gorilla Glass' primary feature is scratch-resistance, not shatter-proofing. Apple already uses Gorilla Glass. To me, it seems like their devices shatter so easily for three reasons:
- The "glass sandwich" design (double the chance of shattering)
- Flat flush face (my Nexus S has a slight curve to the face, which means when I drop it, none of the screen actually impacts the ground)
- Aluminium instead of plastic (it increases the phone's weight unnecessarily, meaning more damage when it drops)
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Pick up a nice Thinkpad. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit. Especially the old ones.
Apparently, You haven't touched a Thinkpad Edge. Think Ideapad with a Thinkpad label. Nowhere Near an R series Replacement. I'm surprised that the E520's haven't been recalled yet for fire damage since the power plugs would break internally and short, causing the power supply and PC to smoke. Seen that three times now.
Although I do agree that the older series Laptops, (anything R61 and earlier), were a hell of a lot better than what they supply now, and i'm not sure about the T's but I'm sure they've been Cost Compromised.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Though Apple is exceptionally good at balancing nice and cost.
No, Foxconn is. Sweatshops tend to do that.
Foxconn just assembles things that Apple designs and ships the parts to them. They are close to the last step (maybe *the* last step) in a long supply chain. Apple is exceptionally good at designing products that people want and maximizing their profit on those items. Sometimes that means leaving off a few features but it always means very effective management of their supply chain. I don't think there are many companies in the world with Apple's skills in acquiring and locking up its component supplies. It helps having 10's of billions+ of dollars to throw around. Samsung is also pretty good and getting better.
Pick up ANYTHING APPLE. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit.
Well, except for the few remaining white MacBooks. But I do see your point. Apple products aren't typically just a couple plastic housings molded, glued, screwed, or snapped together. They're glass, metal, or whatever else Jony Ive's been playing with lately. When you pick one up, it feels solid, just the right weight... and hopefully, like it's worth the price tag.
Burger King employees like you are not the real demographic that any manufacturer is aiming for
I guess my having a different opinion about electronic devices means you can insult me. I can play this game. I actually make quite a good living, thankyouverymuch. Doesn't mean I want to spend 3 grand on a laptop for no good reason other than to impress self-important fucks like yourself sitting next to me at Starbucks. Maybe if you had a job in manual labor, like in a place like burger King, you would learn the value of a dollar and wouldn't blow perfectly good money on over-priced shiny status symbols. This is fun!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Or they wouldn't have articles like this: http://blog.lenovo.com/products/why-you-should-give-in-to-the-new-thinkpad-keyboard#disqus_thread
This space for rent.
It's planned obsolesence vs. company planning.
Business customers with a large PC/Laptop fleet don't really want things to change, because it breaks compatibility and spare parts availability, and change costs money -- especially change that they didn't really need, and hadn't planned on paying for.
This isn't what the manufacturers want, however; they want to sell kit, and a good way to do that is to have a customer base they believe is loyal, and render their products obsolete on a regular basis. The change doesn't have to be better, just different. Different enough to be incompatible with the current generation. Oh, and wrap up support of the old gear as soon as you can, so the customers have to change over their fleet.
I've noticed this happening during a gig certifying store systems for a major retailer. Really pisses off the retailers, too (beware the irony).
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
In good hands, the "cheap piece of plastic" can be made to last. My mother just retired her Dell laptop... it was an Inspiron 1525 that she bought in 2008, and the main reason for replacing it was that the hard drive was failing. The system itself is fine, and with a replacement hard drive it could be convinced to last another few years, but she saw my ultraportable and decided she wanted a new one while she could still get Windows 7 on it.
$500 once every 5 years is good economy, IMO. It puts the laptop in the category where I don't really cry if I have to replace it every year, and everything beyond that is gravy.
Got one recently, and it is truly awful. Screen, buttons, optical drive, cooling fan, drivers, usb ports, brightness controls, wifi, battery, you name it, it has a problem. Resume from sleep and brightness controls are broken. Reboot and wifi is missing. Totally power off and restart, usb port rejects the mouse. Fan pulses up and down every 2 seconds. Suddenly can't read the battery, and it will soon emergency shut down, unless rebooting to fix that asap. Optical drive randomly pops open occasionally. Rejects discs 1/3 of the time. Pops open after closing with no disc 1/3 of the time. Screen is bright gray instead of black (I knew it was a cheap screen, but dear goodness I was not expecting that bright of a gray.) Left trackpad button has to be smashed to work. There is no Win7 graphics driver on the official website for the exact model (but you can find one with web search.) I do like the feel of the keyboard though. Check the official Lenovo forums to see more carnage.
These are all nothing but individual preferences, but ...
Screw access point and power manager. I don't use a crappy OS. I run linux and all that stuff Just Works.
Screw the trackpad. Wish it wasn't even there. I keep mine turned off all the time. I use only the trackpoint. Good luck trying to sell me anything without a trackpoint.
You are out of your bloody mind about the keyboard. DON'T SCREW WITH THE ONLY PERFECT KEYBOARD IN NOTEBOOKS. If you don't like it, I'm not even sure why you want a Thinkpad.
I have to agree, though I haven't used them much in the past few years... the last one I had was docked most of the time, but the positioning of the Fn key really got to me, so I haven't used them unless they are docked most of the time, for a work laptop, and will usually use another keyboard. I really wish that a bit more effort was put into case materials... I'm using the last gen Core 2 based Macbook Pro as my personal laptop, mainly for look/feel of it. Still don't like the keyboard, but it was leaps and bounds ahead of the pack when I bought it (3 years old in May, when my extended warranty expires).
I've gone through 6 tablets in about 2 years before settling on the Nexus 7, liked it so much, I now have an N4 for my phone. In any case, I'm sick of lowering build quality to the lowest possible point.. I'll pay a more for better, not to the point that say Sony likes to push it (though I won't buy their stuff for other reasons). I won't always by Apple's new shiney, I don't think they're worth it in all cases. But I will spend upwards of 25-30% more for something I know will actually hold up better.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I used my Thinkpad T40 as my main computing device for a solid 9 years prior to dropping it shearing off the hinge last month (although it still actually works!). Part of the reason for its longevity is the modular design - everything is easily swappable - allowing me to replace the fan at 5 years for about 30GBP with just a small screwdriver. Upgrading the RAM, hard-drive, optical drive etc was even easier often not requiring any tools.
I paid 1500GBP back when I bought it, and at the time many colleagues paid around 850GBP for the cheapest piece of plastic on the laptop market, which would inevitably overheat and break after 1 year, just after warranty. People thought I was wasting money at the time, but since then I've had 9 uninterrupted years of computing pleasure, typed on a unrivaled laptop keyboard, in a nice thin and light design, which still doesn't show it's age. My friends have been through 3 even 4 cheap laptops in this time, spending at least double in total, and having the inconsistency and annoyance of having to replace it 3 or 4 times.
I've replaced my T40 with a 14inch T60p that doesn't seem to have been used, but it's concerning that the more recent models are showing trends towards less modularity (i.e the X carbon) and possibly also to less quality. I'm not against change - and the Thinkpad series has gone through a lot of experiment and change since it's inception - the cheaper i-series and G-series, the butterfly keyboard, various tablet type forms. When they started out they were sleek, black and boxy - I think that modern finishing techniques can bring those design features into this decade. But they can't compromise on the quality or modularity to achieve that, or else they will quickly lose their cachet.
I think Lenovo beats Dell on the high end too (wouldn't know about HP). I bought a fully loaded Precision M65... It was great on paper and out of the box. It was also bloody expensive and I found out later very keen to cut corners where things do not show too much at first, like flimsy hinges, a magnesium casing that at first looks awesome but was prone to cracks from stress fatigue ( never tried dropping it).
I bought a fully loaded W520 for about a thousand bucks less when it came out. It may not have a metal casing, but it's built like a tank, every little detail that made the M65 reveal its cheapness was carefully engineered in the W520, solid hinges, everything is built to last. The M65 was a nice laptop but it just doesn't compare. Now I haven't tried whatever was a replacement for the Dell when I got the Lenovo but I'd be surprized to find a major design improvement.
Mind the frickin' laser...
I'm not a fanboi by any means... I have Windows on my desktops, Linux servers, a Macbook Pro laptop, a Nexus 4 for my phone, and an N7 is my preferred tablet... I don't see Apples products as 4x as much compared to competitive products, ever. I do see them sometimes at say a 50% premium.. and often that extra design and build quality is worth it... rarely to me... but others.
Computers are fast enough now, that I tend to recommend people spend over $1000 USD or under $500... Middle of the road isn't worth it... I prefer a more expensive system that lasts longer myself. I usually replace my desktop/laptop every 2-3 years.. both are now about 3 years old, and honestly I don't have reason to upgrade. My desktop has been having issues either with the PSU or MB, so may have to upgrade there (1156 socket core i7), my laptop is a Core 2 duo.. runs everything I need well. Though using an SSD helps a lot in that regard.
That said, there's little compelling reason to upgrade laptop/desktop every couple years these days, so having something that lasts, and is at a higher build/material quality is worth it. Phones/Tablets are starting to get there too. I'd rather not have to replace my appliances every 3-6 years... I think the race to the bottom only can work so far.. eventually value needs to improve, which may mean a rise in cost, and pricing.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
He's actually quite right, it's not fanboy'ism to recognize Apple has top noth engineering and build quality, whew as the Blackberry Bold...is kinda a piece of shit.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
The sales of 3D printers, however, *can* scale. The logistic issue won't be about serial manufacturing throughput, it'll be about parallel manufacturing throughput. If it would some day take a day to print an individual laptop, then that level of throughput would likely be acceptable to a single individual with a 3D printer.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
It has nothing to do with it "being shiny".
Engineering and build quality matter.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Um hate to break it to you but iPhones and iPads do in fact use gorilla glass.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Well, one difference is that Apple products tend to look like they were designed by someone at Fisher-Price.
A nice Thinkpad (especially a T or X series model), on the other hand, never looks like something that came from Toys R Us.
I don't know who the hell decided that the only acceptable expression of "sexy" is 'round corners and shiny surfaces', but I hate that guy. Has made shopping for electronics a lot harder, unless you're super into stuff that looks like Apple made it, obviously.
That and motherfucking glossy, reflective as fuck screens - I can't imagine how anyone thought that abomination was a good idea. Seriously, what the fuck?
sic transit gloria mundi
>I'm still using a Thinkpad T60 from 2006, and I'm not that impressed with the build quality.
You laptop will be 7 years old soon. Try that with any other laptop, including Apple. They fall into pieces at the 3 year mark.
I have a pile of old Thinkpad notebooks in my desk. They have become too slow to run new software, but they all work.
I work somewhere where I'm paid enough to be able to afford $2000/mo in rent, in addition to payments on a new car and still live comfortably. I still think that Apple's products are overpriced for what you get. They certainly are good quality, but I don't abuse my laptop and have had nothing but good luck with Dell's build quality on their recent stuff. It says something that you can get a $400 laptop from their business line and it includes 1 year of NBD onsite support. I'm typing this on the 13" ultraportable I paid $430 for from Dell more than a year and a half ago, and it's still working as well as the day I bought it. I don't see any point in replacing it until the battery kicks the bucket but it's still good for about the same time as it was when I bought it.
Same story with my cell phone, btw. While I could buy an iPhone, or a One X, or a GS3 if I wanted to, I went with a One V instead. It was $150 without a contract, and is plenty for what I actually use it for. I don't need a quad core processor with 2GB of RAM in my cell phone when all I do with it is listen to FM radio, check e-mail, check wikipedia from time to time, watch Netflix, and maybe play the occasional tower defense game, so why would I spend 4x as much on the phone or let myself get tied into a long-term contract where I'm paying more than I need to for service?
As a general rule, the only times I spend money on the higher end product is in food, clothing and shoes. Food because it's better for my health, and clothing/shoes because it's a false economy buying the cheaper product: higher quality clothes last a *lot* longer than the cheap stuff and end up costing less in the long run (and no, by "high end clothing" I do not mean brands that treat their customers as billboards). When it comes to consumer electronics, it almost never pays off to buy the expensive product, especially not with the pace that the technology is advancing.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that there's 3 classes of consumers. There's the people who genuinely can't afford a higher end product, there's the people for whom the more expensive product is a status symbol, and there's the people who search the best economy which may or may not mean the more expensive option. You are assuming the person you're replying to fits into the first category when they could easily fit into the third.
It's true. I got an Asus Zenbook at work when offered a MacBook, and everyone went goo goo over it for weeks, even more than the Apples (and why not since it has more battery life and is thinner and lighter?). But it's made out of aluminum instead of cheap plastic. I think that makes all the difference in the world when it comes to perception of quality.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I dropped my Samsung Galaxy S2 at least 5 times from holding height onto a hard surface such as tile, concrete or asphalt. Twice, it even exploded into component parts in spectacular fashion. All three times, not a scratch on it. I really don't know how they do it (they copied Apple?).
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I don't think that we will see this as the Lenovo Thinkpads age. People have talked about the rollcage design, and I actually agree that the lenovo enclosures are a step up. However, as for the rest of the product, they are not the products of superior design that the IBMs were.
Well, one difference is that Apple products tend to look like they were designed by someone at Fisher-Price.
I thought that was Windows 8.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Is English not your primary language, or are you being difficult on purpose?
When people use 'feels' in this context they mean 'produces a tactile sensation'. We are concerned with this because that's the best way to determine the build quality of a product.
The devices mentioned feel (again, words can be tricky, try to follow along here) like cheap pieces of shit, because they are cheap pieces of shit - purposefully built to fall apart withing 1-2 years.
Physically examining something is pretty much the exact opposite of "subjective assumptions". I don't really understand what kind of "data" you're looking for, do you not trust your senses to tell you what materials something is made of?
sic transit gloria mundi
Kind of an odd example since that's definitely more of a "value" brand. (wouldn't go as far as 'piece of shit'...)
sic transit gloria mundi
The device is cheap.
Plastic comes in grades. The cheap shit plastic appears to be the most popular. This is the industry term in injection molding; the "shit plastic".
I'm drunk and ranting about a cheap plastic shit disease nobody is talking about and from what I can see, appears to be endemic and terminal in consumer devices manufactured today.
Help stop the pain. Don't buy cheap plastic shit.
..don't panic
Foxconn just assembles things that Apple designs and ships the parts to them.
I don't think you understand why everyone manufactures in China.
When Foxconn needs parts, they put in an order to a company down the street
Foxconn's factories are company towns, inside a city made of companies.
Literally, the entire supply chain is there.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sure, engineering and build quality do matter, but that's not the whole equation. Depending on one's upgrade cycle, budget, and usage needs, "good enough" for a couple of years actually is. Different users have different needs.
Much love for Ultrabay goodness, ease of service, etc, but it wouldn't kill Lenovo to offer better displays as options.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So get an X-series. Exactly what you're asking for.
Not what *I* would choose, but the X-1 is light (around 3lb) and without an optical drive. Comes with Win8 but 7 is an option.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Sometimes it's not about economy, it's about saving yourself the worry of need to repair and patch it together.
It's totally alright too, because those people are not trying to make you get that item. It's other people that have issues with those people using something that they don't use because it makes them feel inferior.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I could probably copy that line and post it to just about everything on the market... replacing genius bar with Best Buy, Fry's Electronics, TigerDirect, NewEgg, etc.
Thanks!
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Look it up, dude.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
the Macbook pro does not dent easy... far far far less dentable than any other plastic case.
Believe me, I have one... it's frickin durable. Most laptops that travel have scars, breaks, and dents anyway....
I have to agree on the old plastic Macbooks though... they were plastic junk, and the reason I didn't get one.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Whilst I agree with your other 3 points this one isn't that much of a factor. The tiny amount of aluminum doesn't make up that much weight and being metal, is quite maleable and more resistant to damage when dropped. Apple's problems are:
- Using glass where plastic or rubberised plastic is more suitable (such as the back of the phone).
- Extreme rigidity/lack of removable parts. When I drop my GNex, the battery cover comes off and takes with it some of the kinetic energy of the impact, the plastic casing also flexes.
- Glass again, this compared to plastic reduces grip and makes them more prone to dropping.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I always bought the tablet series of the X thinkpad. I own a x60t an x61t and now a x220t.
I recently compared the x201t to the x220t. Its a serious backstep.
It lacks quite a few leds on the bottom screen. It has a huge think frame around the screen. The frame is also very thick around the keyboard. The keyboard layout was changed. The Touchpad now was to be curbesmly pressed to generate a keypress, no longer dedicated buttons. The keyboard also has been changed to something less klicky.
The cablelayout outside is a mess. Especially that the power cable has moved to the back, and the ethernet to the right, where formerly everything was on the left.
I also miss the screen locking mechanism of the old series, a solid latch. Instead i now have rubber pads that constantly go missing.
The plus side is an ips panel and multitouch screen, decent speakers.
I will see if lenovo is buyable in the future....
I bought a fast cheap piece of plastic (HP Pavillion!) and it lasted just over a year. It drove me right back to a thinkpad. I paid more, but I have expectations that this thinkpad will last me at least 3 years.
https://www.facebook.com/digitizeicm -- Show your support for the digitization of the Iron County Miner newspaper archiv
If by implication the author means to suggest that by staying the same, the ThinkPad will not die, it may be worth examining how the business of selling ruggedized iDen handsets to Nextel subscribers is going. Because, after all, people loved those things and never wanted them to change.
Foxconn just assembles things that Apple designs and ships the parts to them.
I don't think you understand why everyone manufactures in China. When Foxconn needs parts, they put in an order to a company down the street
Foxconn's factories are company towns, inside a city made of companies. Literally, the entire supply chain is there.
While this is partially true, most of the major components (processor, memory, drives, some display screens) are not fabbed in China or at least not mainland China, but Taiwan, Korea and even the US, so the entire supply chain is certainly not there.
I'll take you up on that offer. Why are people so concerned with how things "feel"?
Since we began by talking about Thinkpads, let me bring up a case in point -- the Thinkpad keyboard found on their older models. As a tactile input device, the "feel" of a keyboard is tantamount to its quality.
Which leads to the second part: it doesn't "feel plasticky", nor does it "feel cheap". It is plasticky and you think it's cheap because you have equated plastic to inferiority. Which isn't necessarily true
My Thinkpad x201t has a plastic keyboard. So does the HP Touchsmart it replaced.
Despite the similarity in materials, I have no qualms about describing the HP keyboard as a cheap plastic piece of shit -- nor do I have any worries that the wording of this phrase might automatically casts aspersions on the excellent plastic Thinkpad keyboard. Most readers are not so obtuse.
They hopefully copied the Nokia 3310, that unassuming phone has reached meme status for its indestructibility. Youtube is full of videos of it getting dropped and hit by a sledgehammer and it survives. The covers absorb almost any shock and fly around everywhere in spectacular fashion, leaving the innards unharmed.
I see your point, BUT, money is mostly what matters.
'race to the bottom'.
selling high end -anything- is hard these days. "which is cheaper? I'll get that one."
people are conditioned to expect crap and landfill it in a year or two. quality does not matter for most people, now.
sad but true.
the modern buyers are landfill fillers. they chuck hardware that is perfectly good simply because its old. cell phones are a good example. and companies EOL their stuff so that encourages landfill usage. my nexus one still is in perfect physical shape but was EOL'd a year or two ago. there are show-stopper bugs that google refuses to care about and they want me to 'buy a new phone'. sorry, but I don't work that way. but most people ARE ok with that, and so why make something that lasts when the young audience does not WANT to own things long-term?
I have some power supplies (test bench stuff) that I bought on ebay, and was made in the 1950's and 60's. clean it up, spray the switch contacts and maybe replace some electrolytics (then again, maybe not; the old ones CAN go decades, unlike the newer ones) and its good to go. I have a few of those 50+ year old lab supplies at home and they're amazing. but try to buy that today (even from agilent) and you can't. even higher end tek and agilent stuff is plastic crap and not fixable by regular people.
we live in a disposable age. I hate this, but I'm not the majority anymore.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I am facing exactly the same problem.
This is my first and last Lenovo for this reason.
Actually Lenovo is doing that to comply with FCC regulations. While authentication methods differ between suppliers the FCC still requires that OEMs control which wireless card will work in their system as the FCC grant is specific to a host/wireless card/antenna combination.
I'd bet a weeks pay that you can't find a single electronic device/appliance in your home that doesn't have something from Foxconn in it, and that was true before you even knew who they were.
EVERY PC made in the last 10 years has Foxconn components in it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I have a MacBook pro sitting next to me right now that has a nice dent in it because I sat it down and it touched the corner of the desk first.
The 2009 model denys easy as shit.
I REALLY like my MacBook Pro (Typing this on a decked out 15" Retina as a matter of fact) but they do dent easy. The bottom cover is extremely thin, its not the least bit surprising that they dent all the time.
Plastic doesn't tend to dent, it flexes and then flexes back or cracks. Metal dents.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
selling high end -anything- is hard these days. "which is cheaper? I'll get that one."
Apple must have missed your memo, they seem to have no problem selling high end.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
a) Keyboard quality
b) Thinklight led to shine on the keyboard (very usefull if you have read some doument or some note on paper)
c) trackstick
If they keep these features, i may buy another one (Bought used X21, X31, X41tablet (the battery lifes sucks)).
I think that's a great example. A perfectly functional handgun, used by lots of police and armed forces worldwide, but search for "glock feels cheap" and you're sure to find a lot of people whining. Just skimming through a few results, I read "it feels like a toy gun". Well, maybe to the wielder. The guy on the other end of the gun might disagree (quite respectfully, I'd bet). That "toy gun feel", as you mentioned, brings quite a few advantages (and tradeoffs), but some people don't really dig into the particulars of a determined characteristic, they just quickly dismiss as inferior what doesn't fit their often obsolete assumption of how a quality product is expected to be.
I am in the third class you describe (I can afford it but I look for value). I find that my Apple products (iphones, ipads, iMac, macbooks both air and regular) are a good value. Just a difference in opinion of the value equation. I value not having to do the kind of "maintenance" on my iMac that I did for years on PCs just to keep them running kind of smooth.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
The Retina MacBook Pro handles 16GB of RAM and has a video resolution that makes the ThinkPads cry. Lenovo has slowly been trimming back from having the best displays you can get in a laptop over the last few years. If you want a touch screen, the ThinkPad is your system. In just about every other case they're hard pressed to compete with Apple's best stuff in anything but price.
The new Thinkpad T530 comes with a crummy keyboard and the top resolution is 1900 x 1080. It's a step backward in many ways from the 1600x1200 T60 with great keyboard I bought in 2006. And the build quality...Lenovo is not even close nowadays. Sad, really, that I find myself giving up on the brand after a solid 10 year run where they were the only reasonable choice.
You do realize that F=MA? So no, elephants don't bounce when you drop them like beetles do.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
It's about choice. We all have different motivitations and priorities in what we buy and use. Apple and Lenevo may appear overpriced, but there are people who see value in the products they sell. This is no different to whatever you choose, except your value is that of money saved, but still having a product that fulfills your needs. As long as people are clear to the choices they are making, then they have made the right choice for themselves.
I like to see choice, and a good broad market, where everyone gets something that suits them. It would be boring if we were all using the same brand.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You mean they were great products. Take a look at a T530. That they are very obviously trying to emulate Apple, to the detriment of the product, is a past tense event already.
In my 30 years of buying computers, a HP Pavillion laptop is the only thing I've ever happily paid a restocking fee to return, rather than lose all the money by keeping it. It's easy to do better when the comparison point are the worst laptops you can get. It's not really a fair comparison though; HP's EliteBook models are the ones they claim are reasonable quality.
My just over 3 year old Thinkpad T500 just died recently. Meanwhile the entire fleet of 6 year old T60s at my last startup are still chugging along. I hope you have better luck with the newer models than I did, I've been surprised at how fast the quality has been declining on them the last few years.
I was looking at it from the perspective of resource use which is often a good measure of economic cost. To put things simply, for some objects it's a hell of a lot easier to carve, bend or cast them out of something than to build them up bit by bit. For others it isn't.
It's another tool in the box. It's not yet a tool that can print a complete laptop now, just the case for now (which is dirt cheap to make other ways and bloody expensive by 3d printer).
There are other ways that are within the means of hobbyists without assuming that the only tool in the box is a 3d printer.
It's shortsighted to think that the Thinkpad evolve. If Lenovo wants to develop and high end rugged laptop to compete with Apple it can be done. The Mac Book Pro is considered to be one of the most rugged cases because it is milled from a single piece of aluminum There are other options such as carbon fiber which Lenovo has already. They can also produce a reliable chassis by extruding a piece of aluminum and heat treat for extra strength. The can always well the case together. Or use a very high strength aluminum such a dural or a 9000 series aluminum.
Hmm I'm not quite sure where you've been living but that has already happened. I just bought my first non-Thinkpad in well over a decade because I don't see a reason for the Thinkpad other than nostalgia -- these days it's just another random wide-screen, windows-only laptop with one of those awful mac-like toy keyboards. I'll be back once they release something like the X80, a nice compact 12" laptop with a 4:3 display and a proper keyboard.
HP's consumer laptops are cheap crap.
I love the 6xx series cheap-ass consumer laptops. I'm typing this on a HP 635, it's fully plastic but everything sits nicely in place and the machine works reliably and stays cool. And the LED-backlit screen has high enough PWM frequency to not create an annoying flicker present on many other LCDs. The keyboard has a slightly cheap feel, but otherwise there's a lot of bang for the buck.
Well said.
The 3310 is the best phone released by Nokia. This spoken by a Finn. :) Very reliable and responsive device. You can't play Angry Birds on it, but as a bare essentials cellphone it's a classic bastard.
Mozilla Glass!
No, that's just the excuse they use to keep you from blaming them for the fact that you can only buy cards from them at 3x the actual cost. If that were true then there would be no aftermarket antennas for WiFi routers.and the antennas would all be permanently attached. Not all OEMs lock the wireless card either. Did you miss the part where I said I'd done it before? Dell, Acer and Apple do not lock the Wireless card. In fact, laptop manufacturers who do this are in the minority.
Excellent point.
In terms of repairability Macs are actually not technically superior.
Be glad you didn't stick with the Precision. I sit in a 6-man office at work, and 3 of my coworkers have company-issued Dell Precision laptops (one with the old Core 2 Duo, one Arrandale and one Sandy Bridge)... it's like working in a freakin wind tunnel. The fans on those things are constantly running full tilt for some reason, even when you're just writing an e-mail or Word document.
As I sit here typing this on my Thinkpad T520, on the other hand, I can't hear it at all (SSD so no spinning hard drive, fans are off because the CPU temp is somewhere around 37 anyway)...
I went to Wiki and found no ref to ipad or ipod in it, but found a ref link to AppleInsider...
Thursday, January 03, 2013, 06:05 pm
Corning's third-gen Gorilla Glass could be bound for next iPhone, iPad
By AppleInsider Staff
Glassmaker Corning on Thursday announced Gorilla Glass 3, a stronger, more scratch resistant version of the current substrate used in the display of Apple's iPhone and iPad lines of mobile devices.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
"When it comes to consumer electronics, it almost never pays off to buy the expensive product, especially not with the pace that the technology is advancing."
Depends on what you're looking for. If we consider high-end computers like Thinkpads and owners who know what they're doing, it almost certainly pays off to buy the more expensive X/T/W series Thinkpad instead of a low-end Dell Vostro or Latitude... have you ever tried to replace parts (from sourcing to actually replacement) on a low-end machine?
For the high-end Thinkpad, you simply type the part number (listed in the hardware maintenance manual) into eBay and order it for (usually) a peasly amount (I paid 120€ for the top-end FullHD screen with an official Lenovo FRU sticker, now compare that with the prices for a low-end laptop's "Screen assembly"... and in the US it's probably much cheaper), then grab a screwdriver and follow the instructions in the hardware maintenance manual for repair. Anything short of a dead mainboard and you should be up and running in three days or less...
With the Dell, on the other hand, once that 1 year of NBD runs out, you're completely screwed, because on the low end, replacement parts are 1. way too expensive and 2. difficult to replace.
And even if your device doesn't break (and high-end Thinkpads rarely require more than a new battery and keyboard, maybe palmrest, after two years of daily use - and replacing these things takes about 60 seconds), you're still better off with the high-end model because the resale value is better. My Thinkpad is still worth twice as much as a new Vostro, even after an entire year of use... if I sell it and buy the next gen model as a demo unit, pump it full of upgrades (SSD + big spinning drive, top-end LCD, max out the RAM), I'll still be spending less than I would on a low-end Vostro, and have the performance (both in terms of grunt as well as battery and thermal/noise) to back up the high price.
It's got nothing to do with a status symbol - I'm just cheap enough to recognize that buying cheap crap is not very efficient economically.
So she's the reason the damned things are sold out... slap her for me, would you?
Cheap plastic housing => light weight => not much fall damage. It's a good design philosophy, but I personally prefer a phone with a little more heft, as do many others.
Do you have the FullHD wide-gamut screen? I'm quite satisfied with mine... good color reproduction, high contrast, decent viewing angles, bright... OK, I do miss 1200 vertical pixels, but you won't be seeing those anywhere until we get 15.6" 2560x1440 laptops...
Or is your W520 OK and you're jumping ship because of the chiclet keyboards? I've been stockpiling US Layout T520/420 keyboards for a few weeks now... thinking maybe I should start on palmrests. Should hold me over until Lenovo get their heads out of their asses and bring back a sane keyboard layout.
Where did I mention glass? I use a Galaxy Nexus, which is also a Samsung product, but feels a bit less cheap because it weighs more :p
Always that Apple example. They sell fashion, not high end. A whole different thing altogether.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Sure, sure. I suppose a hideous, yet incredibly well-made tablet would fly off the shelves. Apple's products are made to be beautiful, and their boxes, packaging, ads, and stores all highlight that. The vast majority of their customers know nothing about quality, nor anything about the specs of the devices they buy. They're drawn into the stores for the asthetics, not because they've researched build quality of multiple manufacturers. Apple's success has everything to do with being shiny.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Yep.
Companies used to put lead ingot weights inside electronics - such as, for instance, in house phones which would not necessarily be screwed to the wall - for the very purposes of not making them 'feel' cheap. Why would they 'feel' cheap? Because people expected things to have weight to them, and the plastics the phones were made of were not heavy like the Bakelite or metal phones they were replacing. It didn't matter that they were functionally superior, luddites didn't like them because they 'felt cheap'. (Same for the Nokia-come-iPhone users who dish on everything else, I imagine.)
That said, a lot of this might just come down to the tactile appreciation for weight in the things we use as tools. I know I appreciate heavier handguns and knives, and love how 'sturdy' my HTC HD2 feels (because it's heavy).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Lenovo has ZERO to do with IBM now and that's the way it's been for YEARS. IBM doesn't make Lenovo or own any remaining Lenovo stock. IBM no longer owns the Thinkpad name or brand.
My company gets custom built Tecras that show a model number on the tag on the bottom of the machine that's not listed in any publicly available listing or DB. This is what helped destroy the IBMPC business in the first place. It's simply too expensive to do that.
Oh please.
They feel like cheap POS's because they ARE. printers are especially bad at this now, with hinges and trays breaking off exceptionally easily. cheap crappy injection molded plastic of the lowest grade. has nothing to do with perception becoming reality. it IS reality. thinkpads ARE going down this path, they are NOT as rugged as they used to be.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
more to do with people putting them in their back pocket and then sitting (their fat arses) on it. and that seems to come frm a trend of mking the front pockets on pants progressively smaller and smaller, cue once again, businesses pinching pennies on important features. i dont need pants pockets that go to my knees...but someone sufficient to hold a modern phone or even my keys would be nice.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Plastic also interferes with RF a lot less and makes antenna placement and design easier. First thing i want my products to do is work for the intended purpose. Next is cost vers features that I will use. Battery life is pretty close to the top of that list for most portable things and that typically means smaller screens. Feel is only interesting if all other things are equal. A lot of people above seem to equate heavy with "feels better" fine, add some lead then.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
I haven't, but it surely look like crap. Supposedly the top of the line model, but
The keyboard is all wrong, their chiclets may not be that bad but the layout is awful.
And what about the display? I shines like glass, I don't want to see my face on the display, I'm not a vampire!
It's like they made this model to experiment introducing changes that will make the thinkpad just like a macbook with no rounded corners, I hope nobody buys it because I don't want future thinkpads to be cheap apple clones.
A while ago they introduced some small and well studied design changes (T400 keyboard, new touchpad). But, WTF is this? Find out why people choose your computers and improve it, don't fuck it.
I was once talking to a law enforcement officer at a gun range, who was commenting on my Sig Sauer P229. He said that his department's decision when it came time to select the weapon they were going to use came down to that Sig P229 and a Glock 23. They chose the Glock because it was accurate, drop dead reliable, and lightweight. The Sig, in contrast, was accurate and drop dead reliable.
I love my P229, but I could see why someone would want the composite frame of a Glock if it was strapped to their hip all day long.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Pick up ANYTHING APPLE. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit.
Just yesterday I was working on my Lenovo which has an SSD in the mSATA slot, and my co-worker was on a MacBook Air. Capability wise, they're pretty darn close.
The Macbook Air had much more flex, so it was harder to pass back and forth in the tiny data closet we were working in. Additionally, its cheap glare-type screen made the overhead fluorescent lights a real pain to share work on, so we wound up moving the task over to my anti-glare-coated screen (the more expensive manufacturing option).
I guess it's lighter, but that comes with a lack of ports (cheaper) and not enough RAM (his isn't expandable, I stuffed another 4GB into mine - expansion slots and doors aren't free) and he has to attach all sorts of dongles to the thing to read a CD or use Ethernet. Again, all good cost-saving moves on Apple's part, but they really hamper usability. For this device, he paid double what I paid for mine. I rather suspect that when the Airs were first made they were of a higher quality, but now they just feel cheap compared to the much less expensive Lenovo. I do envy his backlit keyboard, but that's about it. Oh, and mine runs Fedora out of the box, so it's much more useful in a data closet. Lenovo pays programmers and a support staff to support Linux in addition to their primary OS, while Apple cheaps out here as well.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
On that T400, the plastic shell may be cheap, but the magnesium roll cage that houses all the components is not. Plastics can be replaced quite easily.
We have thousands of those T400s in my company, and they are solid workhorse laptops. Same with the T410 and T420.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I bought a quad core 15" macbook last year that cost the same or less than any of the competing systems I looked it. I specifically wanted quad core, 16GB+ capable, 1680x1050 or better, bluetooth, webcame and a matte display. It is the nicest windows 7 dev box I own. The fact that the adapter doesn't strain the power socket when yanked off is a bonus that has already saved me a repair bill.
I'll second the durability of the Inspiron 1525. I bought one in 2008 and used it until 2010. My mother has had it since then, and it's still trucking along. It has survived being dropped and generally banged around for the last two years with no more than cosmetic scratches.
I don't know if Dell's newer products are as durable, but as of four years ago their build quality was more than sufficient for their price point.
I sure hope the computer is better than the website:
http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/fully-rugged-laptop-toughbook-31.asp
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
i'll take that weeks pay, but then i might be cheating with a few pieces of old mil spec equipment laying round
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
So true. My 2010 17' MacBook Pro took a slide down 12 steps after my 4 year old was trying to help me by bringing me the laptop.
I'm typing on it right now - no repairs required. The hard drive senses a drop, and the aluminum case protected this huge LCD display from getting busted.
Not in my case. Bought W510, big disappointment, it overheats badly after a year, it also has random BSOD when walking up from a new dock. Now I switched to Dell M6600, and it has done pretty well so far, no overheating whatsoever and no random BSOD. Dell's metal casing also feels good (No I didn't drop it and don't plan to, I'm not sure that's a good assessment method for quality)
Of course Dell doesn't beat Thinkpad on everything, there're things I miss from Thinkpad:
a. System Update: I don't understand why Dell doesn't have something similar, very convenient tool
b. Fingerprint scanner: Dell's only work 50% of the time, it also doesn't boot the machine so I had to press power button
c. Thinkpad's dock: Big and solid, Dell's dock is very small, but on the other hand it's cheap, universal and give the laptop plenty of room to dissipate heat.
Overall I'm very satisfied with Dell's high end laptop would buy them again in the future, they are not as convenient as Thinkpad but I value stability much more than convenience.
I won't touch Dell's consumer line, but that's largely due to the lack of matte screens in the consumer line. FWIW, I have a Vostro V130n (the version that came with Ubuntu preinstalled) that's a year and a half old, which is still going strong. I will find out if they're still as good, because my mother's new computer is a Vostro 3360, but so far she says she's very happy with it.
Dell seems to trust their build quality. They're still offering 1 year NBD onsite hardware support on even the entry level bottom tier Vostro laptops. If they can offer that on a $350 laptop and still turn a profit they must have a pretty low fail rate.
I run a modded Thinkpad T60, and have stockpiled two more, and extra screens and keyboards. A lifetime supply, if necessary, though batteries will be a problem someday. I want 4x3. I want trackpoint. I want Linux compatibility. And I break warranties - look inside, repair inside, change inside.
The T60 is my main work tool. I calculate. I design. I program. I write papers and books. I can display two 8.5x11 pages on a 4x3 screen and fill it nicely. I can drive a 4x3 computer projector (still the most common) without clipping. 16x10 and 16x9 may present movies and games better, but I don't make movies or games.
Donald Knuth borrowed the T60 I'm typing on now. He's not going to borrow your windows 8 media vending machine.
I modded the T60 to a 15 inch 2048x1536 screen, from an NEC prototype run that M$ did not support. I built a kludge to rewrite the EDID eprom so the Thinkpad BIOS accepts it.
I bought my first Thinkpad (a 560) when my Dell laptop spent TWO MONTHS waiting for a power supply repair. That first Thinkpad developed a similar problem, and IBM fixed it 36 hours door-to-door. In fact, the morning after I sent it, I got a call from a service tech at IBM, who said "We see you are running Redhat 5. We have a new BIOS, which we've tested with Redhat 5. Before we ship your machine out in a few minutes, will you permit us to upgrade the BIOS?" Oh. My. God. SOLD.
That kind of service (no longer offered by Lenovo) is worth a huge premium. Laptops pack a lot of technology and heat into a small space, an unavoidable reliability compromise. Excellent manufacture and excellent service turn a consumable into a capital investment. Sadly, Lenovo is now following the race to the bottom. Thank goodness it is not leading it. Yet.
I am 59 years old. I've fooled with computers since I was 15, and built two from scratch. I'm old enough to NEED a trackpoint (hands too jittery to use a touch-touch-touch-touchpad). My visual acuity is dropping - handheld screen text is too small, and I must have a matte screen.
And there are millions like me. Most boomers are self-absorbed gimme-pigs, but some of us still design the hardware that the world depends on. The tools we need are disappearing. The tools that genX and genY engineer/entrepreneurs will need when they pass 40 won't be there. I weep for them.
Perhaps someday, some manufacturer will wise up, make a run of 15 inch 4x3 display glass, put a decent computer and keyboard underneath it, and own the engineer/business/senior market segment. They won't sell 100 million units, but they will get ten times the profit. It would be great if this was a branch of Lenovo, but my loyalty is to the usefulness and quality of the product, not to the nameplate.
Change? I'm all for change, if it is improvement, not atrophy.
Keith Lofstrom server-sky.com
the Macbook pro does not dent easy... far far far less dentable than any other plastic case.
Wait... you are claiming that aluminum is less dentable than plastic?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
On a serious note, can you suggest to me what place (hopefully easily accessible, semi-big-box/brand name) carries "higher quality" clothes and shoes - casual or business? I need that.
For mens' clothing, no, not really, as it's not something I shop for. If you're looking for womens' clothing, when I shop at a store that's part of a chain I usually go to Tall Girl (known as Long Tall Sally in the US, I think), and have had some luck at stores that are part of the Reitman's empire as well. For shoes, you may luck out at a store like Naturalizer (not sure if they do business in the states) as they do carry some of the better brands in addition to the low end stuff, but I usually go to a small privately owned non-chain store that's outside of the city, because they carry a lot of good brands from Europe that you don't usually see here in Canada.
Sorry :/ Going to a box store is usually anathema to the goal of wanting a quality product.
I've used 3 or 4 Thinkpads in the past 10 years and been deliriously happy with them--and the little thumbstick trackpoint in the middle--consistently. My T61p is still going strong, if running a tad hot, on Bodhi Linux and E17 (it was bought new by a business, used by a road warrior for 4 years, then "retired" to me and I've had it for 3 or 4 years. Ubuntu's 12.x kernel runs thinkpads a tad bit hot, and I think the cat hair might be encouraging ol' Sparky towards his ultimate end, but the thing is a workhorse.
The only Thinkpad I've been less-than-overjoyed with is the little netbook I bought 2 years ago that was supposed to replace/upgrade from the T61p. The X100e (in a wild and crazy move, Lenovo offered them in a tasteful lipstick red, too) is a little netbook that had a problem with random shutdowns (again with an overheating thing). I suspect--but never confirmed because I wiped Windows on receipt--that it might have been a hardware thing. It's got win7 on it now and is used by my daughter for Minecraft fun (and it still occasionally shuts down randomly).
Thinkpad keyboards are the bee's knees. Trackpoints are something that never should have gone away. But where the Thinkpad really truly shines is in those hardworking metal hinges.
My old ThinkPad 760XL, bought used from eBay, only needed a new battery and hard drive. The screen is still very bright, the keyboard and trackpoint still work fine and it's built like a tank. It runs Windows 98SE with old software and old hardware that requires a parallel port, etc.
Getting inside it to replace the battery or hard drive is a 1-second job that only requires pushing two levers on the side. It has spare room inside that's big enough to store three PCMCIA cards. I plan on replacing the hard drive with a 4GB compactflash card to make it even more rugged and get a longer battery life.
Is it sexy or ergonomic? Hell no, but it's 18-years old and it still works fine. That's what a ThinkPad is all about.
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But I don't see other phones with cracked screens!
Maybe so. So where are you going to find something that light?
Macbook Air 11" is 2.4 lb. The 13" is 3 lb.
Have you found soemthing lighter?
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
My T61 literally died the week after my warranty expired. I should see if there is a class-action lawsuit concerning this widespread issue.
Read some Robert Pirsig and Christopher Alexander, they open you up to the objective nature and depth of things like quality. With consumer products, there are exceptions, but some very mainstream manufacturers (er.. gadget brand owners) sell only cheap, plasticky products, not to mention knockoff makers. No one said it is impossible to build great products from plastic, or that such products don't exist, but the generalization about inferiority was fairly valid. If a reviewer says it feels cheap, flimsy and plasticky, at least I know what to expect (I'd rather spend 20% more for something that feels better to use). However don'd build up a childish strawman argument, they don't write it simply based on the construction material which is but one element of the overall feel. For example, the Nexus 7 or the HTC One X are praised instead. Determining instrument-measurable criteria for determining quality would be an interesting research project. In the meantime I don't need to think a product is cheap, I just need to feel it and move on to alternatives.
Pirsig dances a lot around definitions, but he doesn't define quality objectively at all. On the contrary, he defends its subjectivity and subjectivity itself. If you want to talk Pirsig, what I meant is that most consumers seem to view things only in terms of romantic quality and then infer an equal level of classical quality, which is, at best, illogical. Especially when classical and romantic quality are at odds, like in usage of soft plastic or phones that are ready to disassemble upon collision, absorbing kinetic energy, instead of taking it all in, inelastically. A "hard" outer shell is equated to a "good feel" when it's in fact not desirable at all on such devices. Please refer to ZAMM, more specifically the story about his friend that would try to start a hot bike by choking it, then complain about the bike.
By the way, no need to be rude, call my argument a "childish stawman" or act smug by suggesting reading material you assume I'm not familiar with. It's needless hostility, especially when you seem to have simply misunderstood my point (and one of said works).
I am now in the market for a new Thinkpad, and in Lenovo's defense just about every other clone maker still pales in comparison. For the same price as what a T430s goes for, the offerings from Dell, Sony and HP don't measure up. The only real weakness of the current Thinkpad line are the screens in a few of the models (like the 14in. T430/s). Lenovo are trying to push relatively lo-res/low clarity kit and I don't know if its due to sheer cost cutting or because of other considerations like durability. OTOH, I noticed the screens on the Sony business laptops were similarly disappointing (I did not see Dell or HP business laptops that hit the mark for weight, durability, speed and security features).
The new Thinkpad T530 comes with a crummy keyboard...
Then you haven't used it. The new keyboards are the same underneath, with only a slight layout adjustment and new keycaps on top which IMO have a better feel. They are not flat, it is easier to hit a key properly, and they reject dirt better. I have scoured both professional reviews and user testimonials on places like Youtube, forums and blogs and have yet to come across a negative review of the new keycaps. Mostly, they are reported to be even better than the old ones.
Thinkpads are *still* Milspec tested (presumably they pass) and I dare you to compare the price of a 3yr warranty from Apple or Sony with one for a Thinkpad. BIG difference that reflects the durability of the products that are covered. And please don't compare features/price with non-business models that are comparable to other lines like the consumer Ideapad. A Sony S Series 13 Premium compares in features/specs with a Thinkpad T430s (including security features, which are important, IMO)... but costs much more.
A few people don't like the overall feel of the newer Thinkpad models with the carbon fiber-reinforced plastic. I'm not one of the haters though. They still feel very nice, but its a 'new wave' niceness... new materials that, thank goodness, are much lighter. Magnesium outer bodies are so 1990s, too bulky at this level of toughness and I'm glad they're gone.
Thinkpads are still fully modular designs letting you easily swap drives and batteries and yet the current crop of them can compete with the weights of monolithic designs like Macbook Pros. That also reflects greatly on Lenovo's choice of materials.
Macbooks aren't even laptops/notebooks anymore. They are ultrabooks that straddle the line between a personal computer and a manufacturer-managed appliance or thick client. That is too restrictive for me and many others. And BTW you should never trust a 'personal' device on which you cannot simply and quickly yank the power, nor should you trust a manufacturer that attempts to shut out small and medium sized businesses from aftermarket repair and recycling.
...business laptop. But its not like the Thinkpads of old that were thick.
The thin mag on the HP and Sony models will not hold up the same, and it shows in their extended warranty prices which are more than twice that on a comparable Thinkpad.
The reaction I've seen from the Thinkpad faithful (a group I've been in a long time) on forums.lenovo.com seems evenly split on whether the new keys feel better or not. Regardless, the layout change is unambiguously worse for what I do, making that a net negative. What they did to the top row is just terrible. The layout is no better than every other keyboard on the market.
And that's really the point. They're still reasonable laptops, especially given the rest of the competition has gone downhill. But too much of what made the Thinkpads uniquely good has been chiseled away for me now. There was no other laptop on the planet I'd have traded my T60s, which are still chugging away, for. I struggled with motherboard failures in the T61, a buggy TPM and a BIOS update that bricked the unit on the T500, video out not working right on the T520--all things I saw multiple other reports of too. Losing the old keyboard layout and having to adjust to a new keyboard feel on the T530 was just the last straw. I can use a Mac, with its equally bad top row, or a new Thinkpad, and it doesn't matter to me anymore.
No argument that the repairability on the Thinkpads is still by far the market leader. The 15" Macbook Pros can still be worked on, but the smaller Macs are well nigh unrepairable.
Indeed I should not have made assumptions about your readings even if your familiarity was not apparent in your post. What I mean by strawman arguments is present in your response as well. You should not assume that people equate plastic to inferiority; more likely they equate bendy, twisting, creaking cases, dust-collecting seams and an unappealing tactile sensation with low quality, and in most cases this is a good gauge even if the product has fast components, great battery life and impact resistance. On a statistical basis, excellent designs have good to great components and few of the listed problems. The reason is the difference in the design process. Apple designers or the IBM Thinkpad designers understood this and for them, putting together a product was different from hardware architecture + assembly. There are some interesting readings of what went into Thinkpad desings and how they formulated their design language.
In your response referring to ZAMM, there is a strawman again, as the serviceability (and impact resistance, type of material etc.) of a product is mostly orthogonal to the question of subjectively experienced quality. For example, my R.A.T. mouse is attractive to look, hold and use; its exterior is mostly matte plastic that's not brittle and not flimsy, being ergonomic just the right way. It is also a most serviceable mouse, with accessible screws and a wide range of adjustment options. Impact resistance is good. A lot of thought went into it and the use is flawless, the feel is premium.
So let's not assume that someone who is knocking a product as plasticky or having a cheap feel can be reduced to the obvious observation that a product that contains plastic actually contains plastic. It would be childish. If it feels cheap or plasticky, then it's something some of us will possibly avoid. Bringing in aspects of design does not imply that your discussion partner misunderstood ZAMM, it might have been your way of returning some hostility.
I have a 15" 4:3 aspect ratio T60 with a UXGA display. I have swapped the motherboard out for a T61 with a penryn CPU and Intel graphics. It has an SSD, 4g of RAM and an Atheros 9280 with the help of the Middleton BIOS. I use this laptop everyday, for school. It has been all around the world, and has almost none of the original parts it came with. Nevertheless - let me be crystal clear on this - I will continue to use this laptop everyday until spare parts become obscenely expensive. And then I will buy another Thinkpad.
How about both? They're not mutually exclusive, you know. Corning definitely advertises the strength of Gorilla Glass as one of its advantages, not just scratch resistance.
Yeah, it's stronger for it's thickness, but all vendors (not just Apple) tend to use that increased strength to get away with thinner and thinner screens.
Why do you think aluminum is a heavy material? Aluminum alloy has been the primary structural material used in airplanes for over half a century. Advanced non-metals like carbon fiber have higher strength to weight ratios, but aluminum alloys are still quite good.
Aluminium isn't a heavy material - it's just heavier than plastics. It's strength is relatively unimportant, because whether the body's aluminium or plastic, the glass is going to be the weak point anyway. Apple didn't use aluminium for it's physical properties, but for it's aesthetic ones - it feels colder, heavier, more sold and more durable than plastic, even if plastic may actually demonstrate better properties for the use at hand.
According to wikipedia, the original iPhone (thin stamped sheet aluminum back with a plastic RF window) weighed 135g. The 3G/3GS (all-plastic back) weighed 133g/135g. The 4 and the 4S (glass sandwich around a stainless steel frame) were the heavyweights, at 137g/140g. The current generation iPhone 5 (milled aluminum unibody with small glass RF windows on the back) weighs just 112g.
Yeah, the 4Gs were the outstanding winner for "oops, they smashed cause I breathed on them". They're also (still) the ones I see around the place the most.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face