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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 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.........
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
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!
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.
Ding ding ding! Typing this from a ThinkPad right now. I picked it from all its competitors because it has a standard IBM layout, with a keypad and all. No chiclet keys here. The mouse trackpad is a solid piece integrated with the case. This laptop has survived dropping once, accidental thumps more times than I can count, frequent airplane trips, and it's never done anything to make me angry - which is more than I can say for any other piece of electronics I've ever owned.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The number of Apple phones I see on my daily commute with a cracked screen is crazy.
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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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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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 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.
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...
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!
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.
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.
Except that Thinkpads have a chiclet keyboard now. That's kind of the point here; they've changed to where they're homogenous and unrecognizable as classic Thinkpads from a quality perspective. There is no reason left to pay extra for a Thinkpad over $GENERIC_CRAP now. (They're still better than, say, HP, but I can assemble a computer out of cardboard that is more rugged than a HP laptop)