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Are Lenovo's ThinkPads Getting Worse?
writertype writes "Over the weekend, Lenovo launched the ThinkPad T431s, a ~$950 notebook with chiclet keys, no trackpad buttons, an integrated battery, and Windows 8 but no touchscreen. The T431s is also thinner and lighter than the bulletproof bento boxes we all know and love. The argument ReadWrite makes is that ThinkPads are becoming slowly, but significantly, worse. Do you agree?"
I'd say the lack of touchscreen is a positive feature =)
It's based on the Ultrabook standard put forth by Intel, Lenovo doesn't get a lot of say on some of those missing features. If you dont like it, dont buy an Ultrabook. They do still make other notebooks, including the T430S which has track-pad buttons etc and should be very familiar to Thinkpad fans.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
They used to be known for the keyboards - precise and firm with Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDown keys in a 3x2 layout. They used to have good trackpad button that worked perfectly with the red nav stylist thingy. The need to be distinct. They need to be the best. They need higher resolution; 1440x900 is an absolute minimum in my book. They need a solid keyboard. They need the 3x2 layout. They need a differentiating, defensible position. They've lost it. Sad.
Let's also not forget the bad old days when ThinkPads had twice as many screws and screw lengths as Dell laptops had, making servicing them a major pain. Putting in a too-long screw in the wrong place risked damage to the motherboard.
That being said, PC makers really do a poor job of marketing what their premium offerings are, and what's a value offering. Outside of Apple, which is almost exclusively premium, no one gets this. Dell didn't with Alienware, HP didn't with VoodooPC, and now Lenovo doesn't get it with ThinkPad. While the exact target of each brand is different in these 3 examples, all are upmarket items.
My company purchases several hundred ThinkPads every year that are given to users who use them ~12+ hours per day 7 days a week and who generally abuse them. X series tablets (starting with the X40t up to X230t), T series (T60-T430s), a smattering of W series and a couple X1's. The ThinkPad line is still as bulletproof as ever, with excellent warranty support (we purchase accidental protection on everything).
The new systems we are getting have (so far) been just as robust as the previous systems we've had. Of the various groups who purchase computers where I am at, mine is the only one that is exclusively Lenovo. My group is also the only one that doesn't consistently complain about their vendor of choice.
The new keyboard is a monstrosity compared to the old ThinkPad keyboard, but is still much better than anything else I've tried.
Also, anyone comparing Lenovo's IdeaPad line, to their ThinkPad line should think about them as two separate companies. ThinkPads are built like tanks, the IdeaPads are built like a Kia and the support model is completely different.
Microsoft made the PC market, and MS is going to break it. While those that make PC kit can choose between Intel and AMD, or Nvidia and AMD, for either the CPU or GPU, by definition the PC has to use Windows from Microsoft. Those that makes PCs therefore have to trust MS's choices and commandments.
Think back to when IBM controlled the essential hardware spec of the PC. Clones were clones because they used the same types of components and interconnects as the original. Luckily, when IBM became even more senile (these were the losers behind the dreadful 'token ring' bus, for instance), an industry group of OEMs created new standards for the hardware- standards that ultimately gave Intel most of the control over new bus designs.
Microsoft can, in a sense, be chucked too if Windows is replaced with Linux, but a computer with Linux is NOT a compatible PC. The IBM solution makes no sense here, and that is the issue.
Microsoft is going senile. It no longer has a sense of viable purpose. By some miracle, it survived being last to the Internet (as nonsensical as this will sound, MS supported CDROM in place of the Internet, which is where things like Encarta came from- MS 'geniuses' stated that the Internet could NOT beat the bandwidth advantages of local optical storage, and so should be ignored). Today, MS faces almost too many challenges to be listed, and has an answer to none of them.
The 'ThinkPad' reflects MS saying 'this is how the future of notebooks looks'. Microsoft knows that 'fashion' is the answer, even though we know that MS has NEVER succeeded this way, but by offering (indirectly, of course) serious, value for money, work-horse products with insanely good third-party software support.
How many things has MS copied from Apple over the last couple of years, through blind replication? The top management of MS currently state "if it associated with Apple hardware or software, it is a magic ingredient for success, and therefore we must do the same in exactly the same way." So Microsoft gave us the world's most expensive tablets, with the world's most restrictive software store, and failed once again in the most humiliating way.
Rather than rethink their strategy, MS prefers paying an army of online shills telling us that everything MS does is 'genius', and if we fail to appreciate this we are the idiots. So, suggesting that an ARM based tablet from MS should 1) support full windows (with recompiled apps, of course), and 2) sell for the same price as tablets from Google and Amazon, will get hundreds of 'shill' responses explaining in detail why such a proposal is clearly nonsense.
Here's a question. Why did MS NOT insist all new laptops have touch-screens? The answer, of course, is not a happy one. MS is NOT about choice (a lappy with a touch screen gives the user choices between screen, touchpad or external mouse input). MS is about control. It thinks Apple wins by telling its customers what they may, or may not do. Apple sez a laptop is not a tablet, so MS agrees, at least until that moment Apple laptops commonly include touch-screens.
For years, MS whined on about how its OS and Office suite should be sold as a 'service' with recurring costs. But who was first to making such concepts popular and commercially effective. Why, it was Google with the Chromebook. Where is Microsoft's equivalent to the Chromebook?
As I said, MS has gone senile. No longer will it listen to its users. No longer will it care if its products receive approval from those forced to use them. No longer will it care if the competition is encroaching from a million different directions at once. All Microsoft cares about is that THEY control the PC, and whatever they say goes, no matter how self-destructive.
When Google steps up in the next year or so, and makes Android a true OS for the desktop and notebook, MS is toast. The fact that our CPU is going to change architecture for the first time since the PC spec was created by IBM is the most critical factor. When proper Windows finally go
Last night I looked at pictures of the new ThinkPad T431s. While looking at them, I thought to myself, "Hmmmm. How does this laptop look any different from any other high-end PC laptop?" I will be in the market this summer for a new laptop to replace my aging MacBook. I wanted to replace it with a ThinkPad due to the ThinkPad line's reputed reliability and its conservative design. The current ThinkPads, in my opinion, are well designed, and I don't mind the chiclet keys in current-generation ThinkPads such as the ThinkPad T430s and the X230 (although I sympathize with those who prefer traditional-style keys). However, the ThinkPad T431s, in my opinion, doesn't resemble a ThinkPad. Where are the mouse buttons? To me, the design looks like yet-another MacBook Pro clone.
Doesn't Lenovo understand that part of what makes the ThinkPad so desirable is its conservative design, including the keyboard layout? ThinkPads are like HP's calculator line in this regard, which have a similar fan following who likes the calculators' high quality and conservative designs. Older HP calculators from the 1980s and early 1990s such as the 15C, 32S, and 48GX are highly regarded due to their high quality (not to mention their support for RPN input). I have a HP 48S that I bought on eBay six years ago that I like a lot due to its feature set and its quality. However, HP's late-1990s offerings (during the Carly Fiorina era) deviated from the style and quality that were characteristic of HP's older calculators. These offerings were not well-received by HP's customers. HP's older calculators started to sell for very high prices on eBay. Thankfully HP listened to the input of its customers, and HP has recently been making calculators that nearly match the quality of their older models, such as the newer HP 35S and the HP 15c Collector's Edition models. Hopefully Lenovo realizes that they have a special brand with a loyal fan following, and that Lenovo doesn't make the same mistakes that HP made during the Fiorina era.
Like all ThinkPad's before it, it has a trackpoint, but how the L did the Lenovo designers think that trackpoint users are going to be able to click with no mouse buttons?
Apparently, you are supposed to click by pressing on the top of the trackpad...
However, there are quite a few users out there who are used to disabling the trackpad in the BIOS because it is too easy to nudge it by mistake. With such a large trackpad (twice as wide than before) and practically no space between the Space Bar and the trackpad this is bound to happen more often.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
"it meant you were buying a laptop built to survive Armageddon (well, at least one that's neither wet nor sandy) "
Those of US that wanted to survive the Outdoors bought a Toughbook. I can use mine in heavy rain, while it is snowing on it, or at the beach laying in the sand, or even buried in it.
My favorite feature is being able to beat someone senseless with it and not worry about damage.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
^^^ Fatal flaw: no Trackpoint, and the same indexfinger-optimized touchpad as every other PC laptop on the planet(*). God knows, that's just about the only reason TO buy a Thinkpad anymore.
Giving credit where credit is due, Lenovo DOES have one truly kick-ass new product that they could make a KILLING if they were to sell it as a thirdparty accessory compatible with other laptop brands: their combination power supply + powered USB hub. Others make power supplies that can act like a source of 5v power, but only Lenovo makes one that's a real powered USB hub in its own right. Now, if only they'd let us have one that's big enough to supply the laptop with 95 watts (so it can run at full speed AND charge)... or better yet, supply 95 watts to the laptop, AND power a bright LED-backlit USB LCD screen with the same dimensions and resolution as the built-in display. Maybe make it for the W-series, and design it to piggyback onto the back of the main display for travel (protecting the back of the built-in display from crushing, protecting its front from cracks, and eliminating the need to bother with yet another carrying case). When running on batteries, you'd just leave it clamped onto the back. When at someplace where you're going to do real work, unlatch it, fold out the kickstand, pull the recessed USB cord out, and plug it into the power brick-USB hub. (before anyone brings up weight, ask yourself... seriously... if you had this, how often would you really, truly have the laptop someplace where you wouldn't be carrying the display with you *anyway*?)
(*)Back in the ancient days of yore, sometime around 1997, I remember the very first touchpads... they emulated the ballistics of a thumb trackball, and understood that a curved sweep with a tiny bit of vertical motion and a moderate amount of horizontal motion meant "move the pointer in a straight line". Then, sometime around 2000, it all went to hell... I don't know whether it was value-engineering, or just pandering to people who don't know how to type properly & use touchpads with their index fingers instead of their thumbs, but all the manufacturers changed their touchpad ballistics, and within a year they went from being "eeeew. I like Trackpoint better" to "utterly and completely unusable". Every now and then, I'll stumble upon some random laptop whose touchpad doesn't completely suck, and try to figure out what makes it different from the other 98% -- but if there's any particular brand, firmware-version, set of configuration settings, or whatever... I've never discovered it/them, nor figured out what precisely differentiates a trackpad that sucks completely from one that's merely a piss-poor substitute for a Trackpoint.
Once in a great while, I'll stumble across a laptop that goes a step further, and puts a real IBM trackpoint in what's (IMHO) the ideal location for it -- below the spacebar. The story I've patched together over the years is that IBM patented the Trackpoint mechanism, GHB location, and rubber tip, then Fujitsu patented their own (inferior) mechanism and below-spacebar location. As a result, anyone who tries to put an IBM-style Trackpoint under the spacebar risks an infringement lawsuit from Fujitsu, so the only companies who dare are companies like Sony (who Fujitsu wouldn't dare to sue, because they have plenty of ammunition to fire back at them). In my dream world, my keyboard would have a Trackpoint directly below the spacebar (able to slide up to an inch to the left or right of center, then lock it down tightly with a tiny screw) flanked by two buttons on each side (nw, sw, se, and ne of the stick) so you could have one thumb on the stick, and easily press the left or right (really, top or bottom) mouse button with the other thumb. And a pair of thin, rubbery wheels between the F|G and H|J keys, serving as the scroll wheel (two, because I'd rather not strain to reach one between G and H, and there are both left- and right-handed users to accommodate).
It's not only the quality. They're killing off all the features that make me want to keep using a Thinkpad.
1. The 7-row full keyboard layout with the Delete/Home/End island and separated blocks of F-keys
2. The trackpoint buttons
3. A way to keep the lid closed unless I decide I manually want to unlatch and open it (the latch-hooks are being or rather have been removed on most models)
4. Big swappable batteries - I'm typing this on a machine with a 94Wh 9-cell that gives me about 12 hours of battery life. The devices they've shown so far with integrated batteries are all 40-50Wh
5. Easily swappable RAM and hard drives with multiple places to actually stick hard drives so you can use two or three at once
And through all this, they still haven't added any decently high display resolutions. Yes, I"m typing this on a 15.6" Thinkpad T520 with a 1920x1080 screen, but tbh at this screen size I'm yearning for 2560x1440 at 100% Windows scaling...
I've actually been looking into getting a 13" MBP Retina and running Windows on it, but unfortunately all the Mac users I ask either say "Just use OSX" or have no idea what kind of battery life I can expect in Windows... and tbh, 7 hours (the "wireless web" runtime in OSX) is cutting it a bit close already :(. And then there's the price - I'm running my Thinkpad with a 256GB SSD as the system drive and a 1TB hard disk as the data drive... I'll need to get at least the 768GB SSD option on the MBP :(
But what're the alternatives? Dell? Much crappier driver support than Lenovo, better on-site support, much much much worse input devices... What do I do when my T520 (I'm planning on upgrading it to a dual core i7 when the i3 I bought it with for thermal reasons starts to become too slow) is too slow to keep me happy? I think I'm fucked, tbh... I'll probably be clinging to this T520 until the mainboard dies or the backlight expires...