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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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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
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.
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.