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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 =)
While we all know about Betteridge's Law, the answer here is yes.
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?"
This was the beginning - the "new" keyboard on the T530 and brothers. It's OK - but not the wonder that my ancient T40 had. I simply make more typing errors, for a bunch of subtle reasons.
Well, if my company forces one of these on me, I'll worry about it...when they get to it 3 years from now.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Having owned multiple Thinkpads, starting with the 600e, the new T431 is very disheartening. I have a W520 and I am hoping they leave the W line alone.
I absolutely LOVE the grouped F-keys, beveled keys, dual "mouse buttons" and dual pointer control. I just hope they don't cheap out and turn the chassis into a piece of fragile plastic.
They just don't hold up like they used to. We've got at work several 2009-2010 aged Thinkpads that are about done, while older ones (2007 era) are still showing no trouble aside from user error (dropped, etc). I've even got really old Thinkpad 600e (Pentium II, 96MB RAM) that won't die. I'd rather work off of the 600e then deal with the chicklet keyboards on the new ones (purchased a few T and W series laptops at the beginning of the year, they all suffer from it).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I bought a then-still-IBM Thinkpad in 2005. It was a T42, I think. Over the next five years it did over 700,000 miles of flying with me, was dropped (in and out of its case), stood on, had coffee spilled on it and was generally abused. By the time I replaced it in 2010 the CDROM had packed in and the letters on the keys were mostly worn out. That's it. I gave it to my mother as her first laptop and it's still going strong, three years later. So 8+ years uninterrupted service.
Obviously I was immensely impressed with that, and contrived to immediately buy a new Thinkpad. "They can't be all that different" I thought. I could not have been more wrong.
Its replacement (I forget the model right now) was DOA. The replacement lasted three weeks before suffering a terminal mainboard failure. Lenovo, declining to replace it, took almost three months to return it to me.
Over the next year it progressively disintegrated. The DVDROM died, the keyboard had to be replaced, the hinges needed constant tightening and the hard drive was replaced twice and it developed cracks in the lid, and the battery was almost useless after a few months. The power adaptor socket also broke. It looked cheap, it felt cheap, and it was anything but cheap. Lenovo could not give a fuck.
I will never buy another Lenovo product, Thinkpad or not.
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.
Last Lenovo I had was an IdeaPad S205. EFI was crap. Windows didn't boot in EFI mode, Linux had problems with Wireless, reboot, everything ACPI related in EFI mode. There are still problems with either working card reader OR working USB ports (arguably a kernel problem) also in BIOS mode.
Do the Thinkpads work in EFI mode?
It's a headline with a question. So the answer is no.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Having just purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon I am finding it to be fantastic. It still feels solid like my ol' T42 and it was considerably less expensive than most (but not all) ultrabooks on the market with comparable specifications.
It has an incredible keyboard (in my humble opinion) and does not look flashy which I consider to be a huge plus.
I'd say the ThinkPad series hasn't changed one bit.
Oh yeah, and they've still got a clit mouse!
I've had this for a couple of months. I don't prefer the keyboard more than the larger T520 ones and the touchpad is ass, but I love the laptop as a whole. It's light, powerful, and the touchpad is a non-factor because I use a bluetooth mouse.
Lenovo was going to be my go-to recommended machine because Dell has gone downhill. It looks like the HP Elitebooks have improved but they still have shitty keyboards. I guess the MacBook Pros are now the best ones out there. After all, you can run Windows on it.
chic-let keys back. After all, didn't we decide that was a bad design with the IBM PCjr?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr#.22One_of_the_biggest_flops_in_the_history_of_computing.22
Be seeing you...
I have a T410S. The spare battery (in place of the CD drive) often falls out, the tiny rivets holding the screen together has failed on both sides -- I've put screws in the lid to fix it. It still has a trackpoint, matt screen, and half decent keyboard though
That said, It's survived the last few years, the two original batteries are still giving me a couple of hours, despite being charged and discharged probably 1500 times, physically (despite the modifications to the screen, which must have been opened over 10,000 times), it's racked up enough miles being flung into overhead lockers in my rucksack (may times while still powered, chunterring away compiling something) on it's travels to get to the moon
Doesn't feel as solid as my 380ED was 15 years ago, but that didn't get half as much punishment.
My 15" macbook (about 18 months old) sits next to it in the rucksack and isn't doing too bad (despite having a coin stuck in the sd slot), but I don't use it half as much as the thinkpad (running ubuntu 10.04)
It's probably nearing time for a new thinkpad, so on my list is
* decent screen
* matt screen
* trackpoint
* keyboard light
* built in 3g card
* extra battery slot
* Large SSD (significantly more than my 128GB one)
* 8GB or more of memory
I'm not convinced by the look of the new keyboards, however there's not exactly a great deal of choice in decent laptops.
I bought my first Thinkpad (a used T20) in the early 2000's after reading Slashdot reviews. The various reviewers discussed Sony Vaio, Dell Laptops, etc. What eventually sold me was that the Thinkpad was consistently well regarded (durable construction, backwards compatible, etc.) and most importantly had the best keyboard feel of all the brands.
I love the feel of the Thinkpad keyboard and how the layout preserved essential aspects of an extended keyboard (esp. the insert/delete/home/end/PgUp/PgDn keys). The function keys were grouped in 4's which made them easy to find by touch. It made the transition from a full keyboard to the laptop keyboard that much easier.
Lenovo seemed to have started down the slope when they started tweaking the layout by moving the "Insert" key and enlarging the "Delete" key.
The whole point of the Thinkpad line (esp with the T and X series) is that when the time comes to upgrade, one could simply start (/focus on) working as one didn't have to relearn/readjust where keys got moved around to.
For mass market appeal, Lenovo had the IdeaPad line to experiment with. The traditional business laptop series should have remained unchanged. The T series incarnation in this case is nothing special; it's not really a ThinkPad anymore. Hopefully, Lenovo will hear the cries of the T series devotees and revert the design emphasis.
My work-issued T420 is probably comparitively the worst laptop I've ever owned. And I've had 12 from 8 different manufacturers over 18 years.
I have written about this on /. before but it's more relevant than ever to me now
A few years ago (late 2009), I bought a ThinkPad and a MacBook Pro around the same time. I used the two machines side by side for awhile, and I really, really wanted to like the ThinkPad. However, the MacBook Pro's screen was brighter, clearer, speakers were better, battery lasted longer, and, of course, the profile was a lot smaller. Power cord was nicer. Touchpad was miles beyond the ThinkPad. Also, power management didn't work perfectly on the ThinkPad (Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD, all of them wouldn't suspend to memory on closing the thing and resume properly when opening it. Sometimes it would, sometimes not). ThinkPad fan was noisy.
I'd once again like to buy a laptop, and run Linux/BSD on it. While OSX was giving me a decent dev environment and not pissing me off too much on a daily basis at the time, lately the lack of configurability, Finder being slow as fuck, development environment issues, generally using OSX being not as badass as running something made by the community, Apple's legal positions, etc... I'd really like to get off the Apple stuff.
However, it's obvious that there's no laptop made by anyone else that isn't an ugly piece of shit. ThinkPads used to have that nice weight to them, the look and feeling like you just stepped off the space station with one. Something reasonably classy about them. But if you look at them directly next to the latest Macbook Pro, it is obvious which one is better hardware (OS political issues aside).
Honestly I'm thinking about just not using laptops anymore. The ergonomics of the screen/keyboard placement is obviously terrible, and there just doesn't seem to be any option I'd want to use every day other than handing Apple a huge check for their hardware and running another OS on it.
If anyone has any suggestions about other brands, products, or experiences I'd be happy to hear them. Because I certainly can't seem to find a reasonable alternative
Long live the BSD license
My previous Thinkpad experience was an A31P. I finally just parted with it, reluctantly, a couple of weeks ago. Newer Thinkpads, up through the X61 were ones I very much wanted, but couldn't justify the price. At that point I do think they started going downhill for a while. This one actually looks to me like it has possibilities again.
I really like the idea of a MIL-SPEC. I do think it would have been better with a replaceable battery, but in trying to keep up with the thinness of the competitions products...
I was leery of chiclet type keyboards, but now that I have gotten used to the ones I got with a couple of Motorola products, I find I prefer them. Keep in mind that one thing I am NOT is a touch typist...
Once they come up with the touchscreen version, I may have to look at a Thinkpad again. Now, if it was only available with Linux...
I recently purchased an x230. It's light as hell, has an IPS display, quad core, 16GB RAM, 160GB SSD, and displayport. Best of all, ALL HW was detected perfectly by fedora 18.
So not all Lenovo laptops are getting worse..
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.
I've used Thinkpads exclusively since I bought a 560 in late 1996. I'm currently using a 2009-vintage W500 and hoping it doesn't break, because it has more pixels (1920x1200) than any Windows laptop made today. They've always been rugged, functional, and effective tools for getting work done.
What did I want from yesterday's Lenovo announcement? A retina-class (i.e., 2560x1600) display, modern CPU/memory/SSD hardware, and no significant changes elsewhere, because Thinkpads are in fact pretty darn well-engineered (and designed), and remarkably reliable.
What did I get? A paean to how important it is to design for millennials (who apparently need dedicated multimedia buttons), a bunch of important features gone (physical buttons? function keys? replacement battery? indicator LEDs? Thinklight?) and an explanation that the single hardest decision they had to make for the T431 was how to re-orient the logo on the lid. I can't even get a big SSD--their largest is 256GB, unlike the 600GB Intel unit I installed in the W500 18 months ago.
Bah. I'd vote with my feet, except there aren't any alternatives. Why is there no Windows laptop with a high-resolution display? I suppose I can get a Macbook or a Chromebook and run everything in a VM. But then there's no Trackpoint.
...at "Windows 8".
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
For all those interestd...
Let's see, just to cherry pick a few points in Lenovo's history:
ThinkPad in 2006: Windows XP
ThinkPad in 2012: Windows 7
ThinkPad in 2013: Windows 8
Yes, I can see a definite decline there.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Two years down the road when their graphics cards had started to go out and the ribbon cable connecting the screen wore through, my x60 was still going strong... till some jackass stole it out of my car. Anyway...
Laptops nowadays are being made lighter and all around crappier. No buts about it.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
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
I don't know about the rest of the world but last year, Lenovo Australia changed their support arrangements. Previously Lenovo support was excellent - now it's abysmal. We had a small form factor desktop power supply fail. Our "onsite next business day" support contract ended up being to a three week wait for parts, along with the engineer coming onsite before the part had arrived, twice. It was a joke.
We couldn't get a firm answer from Lenovo support - eg "the part is on route" or "we're out of stock" or "it's been ordered" were all provided as excuses at various times. A 3 week wait for "next business day" support is inexcusable. We also have HP and Dell desktops with NBD support. They also occasionally fail. They get replaced the next day.
We're not buying anything from Lenovo again.
I am not sure why that machine would START at $950! That is for a low end model!! Let's compare....
In late November I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad Twist for $1100. But that was with twice the memory, an SSD instead of HD, and the fastest mobile core i7 available. And the case looks nearly the same, it has the identical keyboard, and the identical trackpad and I think the same battery. What I bought was a new model, it was not clearance or anything and it is also classified as an "Ultrabook".
The only thing better about this T431s is that it has a much higher res display (the Twist is "only" 1366x768). But the Twist's is a glass touchscreen and can "twist" and turn into a tablet- which is yet another premium feature. Oh, and it works wonderfully under Linux (Fedora 18/KDE at the moment).
Something is not right with the price of the T431.
I have an old X30 that I bought for about $150 on ebay a few years ago and is still going strong. It's great for travel because it's very small but has full-sized keyboard keys, and I don't have to stress out if it gets stolen or broken.
They're usually great laptops to buy used because they're so tough and they have traditionally only been used by businesses, usually on relatively short leases, and not subject to the same kinds of punishment that personal laptops suffer from mostly home use. I also supported thinkpads in business use a few years ago.
Although I thought it was BS when I first saw it on TV, I eventually came to realize that the old ad where they promoted Thinkpads as being the best and most desirable business laptops was really true.
Anyway, I recently saw a new thinkpad in person and the first thing that struck me was the chiclet keyboard. They had probably the best keyboards in the business and instead chose to kind of imitate Apple, who probably have the worst keyboards. Even though they at least gave the keys some natural curvature (unlike Apple), it still didn't feel right. That right there would probably prevent me from buying a new one.
Another thing that they are apparently imitating Apple on is the integrated battery business. Unforgivable and unacceptable, and again, no sale.
What's next? No ethernet port? Mini display port? Glossy screen? No user replaceable or upgradable parts? Whatever other usability-disabling "feature" Apple decides to push on their willing users?
FWIW, I've used a T61p and then a W510/W520 at work. Granted the dual graphics card on the recent W machines is a pain, but once I got past the installation phase, I don't have to worry about it, as I don't run eye-candy that needs all of the 3D stuff. I just pulled the trigger on an E430 for a personal laptop to replace an aging Dell D620. Note, in general, I don't use the system as a laptop but more of a desktop replacement with external monitor, keyboard, and mous, but there are times when I do travel with the system. For traveling, I found I prefer dealing with a 14" screen over a 15.4" screen, let alone a 17" screen. I also wanted the Windows that came pre-installed be Windows 7 instead of 8 for the few times I need to deal with Windows, but have the system with a new enough processor that KVM would work well in the system. I did avoid most of the consumer end of the line when looking at Lenovos and kept more to the business end of things. Hopefully the Edge part of thinkpads is a reasonable machine.
The right title should be, "Are ThinkPads getting worse ever since Lenovo took control from IBM?" And the answer is yes. Pretty much from the point Lenovo took over (along with the new, fat AC connectors), ThinkPads have declined steadily, but surely. You could say maybe it's because IBM is a US company and Lenovo is a Chinese company; all I know is yes, they have indeed gotten worse.
Every once in awhile these Thinkpad stories come up, and I generally read all of them. This is possibly the best comment I've read on the subject.
Someone at the top of the Thinkpad product division should read it.
you can spend a pile of money for a well made think pad, or you can spend practically nothing for a chunk of worthless i3 3gig no keypad, no wifi, so poorly made you have to twist the case so the battery engages, large heavy SHIT that look like 1987 threw up on (but you have 2 mouses)
but is that really different from any other era? Thats why fans always make sure to mention their model numbers, cause some outside sales drone looks at his bottom of the barrel stinkpad and wonders what the hell people are talking about.
Fuck Betteridge, the answer is A THOUSAND TIMES YES.
I can't tell you how long I have been waiting for this story.
Yes, ever since Lenovo bought out the ThinkPad line, they have been continually cheapening and degrading it into yet-another-cheap-piece-of-shit consumer laptop. Anyone who has ever owned ThinkPad made by IBM, especially one like the 600x I had, will know exactly what I mean.
First, they degraded the build quality. The battery jiggles in its compartment, the screen is not flush nor tight with the base when closed, the single screen release tab is cheap and flimsy, as are the screen panel hooks.
Then they did away with 4:3 screens in favor of 16:9, despite promising to largely retain 4:3. I think they still use 4:3 on the X series, but that might not even be the case anymore. Now we have this annoying and pointless limitation, plus a laptop that's quite awkward to use on your ... um, lap.
Then they started removing useful features like dedicated indicator LEDs and differently-colored F and enter keys.
Then they degraded the build quality even more. Every iteration and generation of ThinkPad since the takeover has been made of continually cheaper, creakier and flimsier materials.
Now they've committed the absolutely unholy, unforgivable sin of replacing the prefect 7-row ThinkPad keyboard with that 6-row travesty known as the "island keys" keyboard. Then they had the gall to write this condescending and insulting blog post (http://blog.lenovo.com/products/why-you-should-give-in-to-the-new-thinkpad-keyboard), basically saying, "we're messing with perfection because fuck you, loyal customers.". You might also notice that the 9-month-old blog post is still accumulating angry comments from once-loyal customers TO THIS DAY.
Every single thing Lenovo has changed has made the ThinkPad worse and every time, they make some horseshit excuse that it's a "cleaner design," but the real, disgustingly obvious reason is that they're letting the bean counters run the show.
Just wait, next they'll bin the titanium screen hinges while they claim that plastic is better and throw in some Jedi hand waving for good measure.
There is no reason -- none -- to buy a ThinkPad anymore.
Under IBM's direction, ThinkPads were synonymous with absolute, no-compromises, no-nonsense quality and professionalism. Under Lenovo, they're just part of the noise.
The question now is: where the hell does the business user, the programmer, the typist go for a real laptop to get shit done?
I've been using Thinkpads since 1997. I currently have a T420s. The machine cost 2K USD with Windows tax for Win7 Professional and Office Professional. It is 1 1/2 years old. Here is my list of problems:
1. The side USB 2.0 port came off the mother board. I'm super careful, but ports get tugged on from time to time. Last week I opened up the machine, and the connection had been tacked to the mother board with two tiny bits of solder. I used a solder gun and 10 minutes to fix it myself. Ports need strong connections to something solid!
2. Same with the power cable. The connection is bad. I have to pull the power cable wire to the left to get it to keep the power on.
3. The computer doesn't always go to sleep when the lid is closed. If I don't notice, I close the machine, put it in my bag, the machine overheats and then it blue screens.
4. There is 1 USB 3.0 port on the back. I know USB 3.0 was new when the machine came out 1.5 years ago, but it has never worked. USB 2.0 peripherals that work in the other ports don't work in the USB 3.0 port.
5. The machine occasionally freezes/locks up for 5-10 seconds at a time (random timing, but it happens about once ever 30 seconds). Removing the battery, disconnecting the power and letting the machine site for 10-15 minutes seems to fix this problem. I've run the Lenovo diagnostics program. I've watched the diagnostics program freeze and sputter. Then it tells me everything is 100% good to go. I have no idea where the problem is coming from. Mother board, Video, CPU, RAM (I've switch out the RAM, it didn't help). Once the problem goes away, I have about 1 week before it comes back. This started in the last week of the 1 year warranty.
6. "Access Connections" is a train wreck. When it works, it is ok. If you want to delete a location, you highlight it, hit "delete" and it deletes the record above. At this very minute, "Access Connections" shows no connection. I'm running on Win7's network connection. Tomorrow it might be working normally again. What if you are in a new location and mistype the password? If the log in fails, it should ask you if you want to re-enter the password. Instead you have to go modify the record.
7. Battery life is crazy. I run on batteries about 6 times a year. The rest of the time I'm plugged in. Last time I was in an airport, I had 45 minutes until the machine shut down. That is with a dimmed screen. I would rather have 1 light battery for daily use (so I can get from my desk to a conference room) and a heavy battery for travel. When I know I want 6 hours of work time during a flight. Instead I have something in the middle that does both functions poorly.
8. After about a year, the fan got loud. I think the bearings are shot.
9. Track pad went out two months ago. I could care less. I use the little red dot 100% of the time.
10. (design gripe) The screen is 900 pixels from top to bottom. Once you add Window's bars, application boarders, menus, I'm working in this tinsy tiny window. My cell phone has 900 pixels up and down! Left and right I have huge fields of unused white space. Most documents and websites are much taller than they are wide. Therefore Lenovo gives you a screen that is much wider than it is tall. I've been wondering if I can write business plans(or Java) the same way they wrote ancient Chinese - up to down instead of left to right. It would fit the screen much better. Lenovo thinks their business laptops are used for nothing other than watching movies. I think this shows how well they understand their customers these days.
I am their ideal client. I will happily pay a 2-400 USD premium for a "business laptop". I want to run databases, huge Excel spread sheets, occasionally write a little code. If I could pay a little extra for a more reliable machine, it is worth it to me. The cost of unplanned downtime is higher.
This is not a ThinkPad anymore. It is other notebook with ThinkPad sticker on it. My crutial functions in ThinkPad (aside from TrackPoint) is keyboard layout. When both were change, it isn't ThinkPad anymore. I'll definitely stick with R400 for a while. After upgrade it to 4 GiB, SSD and new battery. It should be able to stay for another 3 years.
You would have to translate it to Chinese.
I loved my old T20, it was a primary workstation, for work, that took three years of 40-120 hr weeks without a fault. The keyboard was the main selling point, and the shugging off of abuse. I spilled both Dr. Pepper and Dr. Thunder into the keyboard, and it was fixed with a keyboard removal, rinse, dry, and reinstall. Thinkpads were the gold standard of the business world, and the T-series was the pinnacle. Fast, light (including the power brick!, fer gds sake), I could go on. Traveled well, worked well, a breeze to take apart and fix (see keyboard wetting above), pounded on that keyboard, frequently in frustration. I was a sysadmin (for IBM no less), so, there was a lot, of frustration....
I have a T420 now, bought new with my own money, it will be my last IBM^H^H^HLenovo laptop. I guess I will have to buy a macbook to get something decent from a hardware perspective. I run Linux primarily so don't care about the installed OS. Maybe the google laptops will be better when this one dies. It is sad to see a great line of hardware destroyed.
andy
At our company (1000+ employees) we recently decided to drop the ThinkPad and switch everyone to either MacBook or Dell. The standard ThinkPAd keyboard was the main reason we purchased ThinkPads, this option was no longer available, so we saw no reason to buy Lenovo products. The quality of their products also dropped significantly.
I bought an IBM Thinkpad 760xd in 1995.
I still use it to this day, almost on a daily basis. It boots OS/2 Warp (and BeOS 5.1d0) and works wonderfully as an indestructible terminal emulator. Yeah, I could probably use a USB RS232 adapter, but for some reason I love whipping out this giant black brick and booting OS/2 Warp. The double-take anyone within eyeshot does when it's booting up is well worth the hassle of dragging it around.
Frankly, even IBM's stuff was going downhill before the Lenovo thing happened. The early Thinkpad laptops were wonderful and innovative. We had things like the 701 series with the butterfly keyboard, 760 series where the keyboard lifts up like the hood of a car to reveal a nearly completely modular and user-servicable design, the 860 series which ran PowerPC and OS/2 or AIX or Windows NT, the PC110 Palmtops, hell even the Transnote was an awesome machine at the time.
Then OS/2 got ran over by Microsoft, and after they'd put the bus into reverse and ran over it a few more times to make sure I think IBM lost the interest in innovating hardware wise and decided to just produce modern up-to-date laptops vanilla style. Stuff started to go downhill, and it seemed to pick up pace a bit once the T42s were EOLed (IBM's last OS/2 supported machine). Nifty user serviceable tool-less designs gave way to plastic covers and screws, radical things like the Palmtop, Transnote, and the 701 became absurd and quickly forgotten.
After a while Lenovo happened, and they've been rapidly steaming towards completely plastic commodity hardware ever since.
I bet that if people were willing to pay for a real operating system again, there would be a market for real hardware built to last. It seems like the age of paying $400+ for an OS is over, so the hardware is going to reflect the software from now on- cheaply made, cheaply sold, and designed to break down after a while (but who cares? Your OS isn't going to support your current machine in 3 years anyways). That is the new American business model, so you better get used to it.
I keep my old TP500 (4MB) for some reason. It's in a closet, but still. It ran PC-DOS instead of the probably identical MS-DOS. Why do I think it ran OS/2 instead of WIn3.1 on top? Maybe it did. Anyway, it was a bare bones ThinkPad at 4MB even then.
I don't have the tablet I do have a new x230.
The good:
That said:
What an abomination. I hate touchpads, and indeed disable them upon boot. They always f up my typing whenever my palms hit them. I wouldn't be able to even use this thing. And what was wrong with the old thinkpad keyboards? I don't want chiclets!
What are they going to take away next? I bet it's the matte screen...
I started my current job (trade floor support) around the same time Lenovo took control of the design as well as the manufacture of the ThinkPad. I was given my companies standard laptop (a TP R60) and told to make it work! I tried dozens of configurations and worked with IBM engineers and ultimately we only found 1 video card that would work in the 6x series Ultra-Dock.
Because of corporate refresh cycles IBM had always guaranteed any updates in a series would be compatible with that series accessories (a TP R61,T61,R62,T62 should all work the same on the Ultra-Dock). Well the R60 was replaced with the R61 within 6 mo. and not only did it not work with the video card it wouldn't boot with the card installed. Again I worked with the IBM engineers (IBM was helping Lenovo transition). After 2 months they simply said it won't work and we will not attempt to make it work. They also added a note on their page in very small print explaining very vaguely that 3rd party video cards "might" not work.
In my previous position (trade floor support) all traders had T4x series machines with Ultr-Docks that had Nvidia Quadro 4 head cards in them and they were tanks. I could pop a T40,T41,T42,etc. into that dock and didn't even think about whether it would work or not.
We are starting our hardware refresh again and had been slowly rolling out L430's to the general public (I finally convinced them a laptop wasn't exactly the best fit for traders) only to find out they had been building them without the ExpressCard. We purchase CTO (Configure To Order) and all units should have had the card slots. Not only did Lenovo not want to make it right. They flat out told my boss that we were stuck with what we got...until he told them we were talking to Dell about changing vendors. They finally owned up and replaced all the L430's with T430's but the bad blood has convinced my boss to look elsewhere.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I have owned several ThinkPads over the years and can attest to the declining quality over time, particularly right after Lenovo acquired the Think brand.
My first ThinkPad was an IBM T40p. The build quality was rock solid. It got me through college and I carried that thing on my back nearly every day for four years. As a sys admin I have deployed many IBM and Lenovo ThinkPads. The T4x was well built machine, and ran for a long time but tended to need repairs just after the warranty period. Since we had a fleet of identical machines I had plenty of systems to cannibalize. The decline in quality was hardly noticeable at this point.
I used a T420 for work for a while. It seemed nice. I had no complaints, but I didn’t get to keep it long since I didn’t stick around.
Now I have a new T530 and the build quality SUCKS! The chicklet/island style keyboard wouldn’t be bad, but the flex is terrible especially at the top edge by the F keys. I don’t like the new keyboard layout with the different bottom left corner (fn, ctrl, win, alt). The monitor/lid flexes a lot when opening and closing and there is a lot of play left in the monitor after the hinge has latched. Also, there is a gap at the back edge when closed. Picking up a closed laptop from the back edge will again flex the monitor. The battery is loose and rattles when locked in place. That is about everything I can remember about it right now. Oh, the power brick for it is huge, like a brick. One thing that good about it that I can say is that it is smoking fast, but I think I have Intel to thank for that.
While ThinkPad’s quality has been declining, Inspiron and Vostro quality has been improving. The thing I don’t like about their 15” is the 10 key. It forces you to have an offset keyboard, but overall it has a good build quality. Not as good as the old ThinkPads, but better than the new ThinkPads. If it weren’t for the 10 key I might have gotten a Dell instead of my rickety T530.
Been using Thinkpads for years, and I've seen more models at work than I've owned.
The X-series subnotes (not the Tablet PCs) are great - the X200/201 was terrific, the X220 was great, and I can't say enough about the usability and the battery life of an X230 with a 9-cell battery in it. The new keyboard takes a little getting used to, but it's good and sturdy.
The X1C is a nice system, and the T4xx models have been pretty solid. The Lxxx models can be iffy, but I can't say that they're any worse than the R40/R51/etc.The 5xx series of any line, I just can't stand. I don't know what it is, but they lost the plot with the L and T530. It's like they can't decide what the "big" business notebooks should be, so they're just kind of a mess.
I was bitten by a lack of support a few years ago (had to ship a server halfway around the world when the local support centre closed, then Fedex put a forklift tine through it on the way back, but that's nothing compared to the confusion of dealing with Dell (other Dell clients looking for the same part were given my contact details and rang me thinking I worked for Dell)), so just gave up, bought spares and sent people to training courses for odd hardware (eg. IBM3590 autoloading tape drives) which also has working spares.
I have had to wait for who knows how many weeks for a small form factor machine as well, but for that month or so the user still had something to work on.
If something is important enough and the place is big enough to have IT staff you can't afford to waste much time just waiting for your number to come up in a queue for hardware support. An old server that was retired because it could barely do the job is better than waiting days for somebody to bring a part for the new one.
I have an X220 with a clickpad. I have only used it a few times. Instead, I reach above the touchpad to tap the pointer thingie buttons, which by the way take way to much pressure to use.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Lenovo does makes some laptops that are "Dell beaters" and sometimes they put the ThinkPad name on them. That is a mistake. Calling an UltraBook (built to that silly Intel spec) a ThinkPad maybe one such mistake. The "real" ThinkPads are still alive and well. I just sold a bunch of T530 units to a client as well as some W530 workstation-class laptops (and kept a W530 for myself). These deserve the ThinkPad name and still hold to the old IBM standard of quality and reliability. Heck, IBM still provides the onsite repair services for ThinkPad, ThinkCentre and ThinkServer if you have the onsite warranty. Of course you rarely ever make a service call on the Think products. I have owned ThinkPads since the beginning of the brand (disclosure: I am an IBM and Lenovo Business Partner) and still have some of the very old units in my stash and they still run (I'm talking 486 vintage units that still boot up fine and have tight hinges on the LCD panels). There is nothing like the ThinkPad and all the quality is still there. You just have to be sure to buy a true ThinkPad (T430/530, X230, W530, etc) and you will get what you expect, like the TrackPoint Nipple, keyboards that are better than some desktop models and you can pour a bottle of water through them, titanium chassis, etc. Thanks and have a great evening!
Officially a geek since 1984
Let's see... I owned a T20, T23, X30, T41p, T43, T60, T60p, and a friend owned a T600e, T42, X60, X201, X220 and now X230. Of all these machines that were never abused, here are the problems:
T20 - just stopped powering up one day, when it was about 5 years old, never figured out why because by then it was not worth repairing.
X30 - LCD stopped working when the laptop was 3 years old, same as above
T41p - Ethernet flaked out, turns out the chip had desoldered and the only fixes were reflowing or new motherboard. Kept using WiFi instead
T60p - USB ports on the right side refused to work with a mouse. Lenovo provided new motherboard, two new USB daughter cards. Turns out it was either incredible bad luck with replacement parts or a design defect.
X220 - IPS screen ghosting issue
X230 - Random reboots, traced it back to the motherboard.
Yes, all the above are anecdotes, but what I am trying to say is that Thinkpads DO die or have defects. Even IBM built Thinkpads, not just Lenovo build Thinkpads. They used to be great laptops with amazing build quality in terms of fit, finish and especially keyboards. What truly set them apart, and this still holds true for HP and Lenovo business class laptops was the level of support. Every problem I had with them during the 3 year warranty period was fixed ASAP.
I still have a spare bag of screws IBM sent me when I swapped the motherboard in the T60p because their service manual specifies replacing the screws when replacing the motherboard.
All that said, I stopped buying Thinkpads with the T60p. The T61p had the infamous Nvidia G84 chip that would fall the fuck off, so I stayed away, and I moved to other manufacturers. I realized I can get better performance for the same price from Acer, Asus or especially Sager. The downside is a complete lack of support, but when you are saving hundreds of dollars on a similar machine it evens out in the end. And this is where laptop manufacturers except Apple miss out. They cannot build a high quality materials, excellent support but expensive machine when they are competing with cheap materials, little support but inexpensive machine.
I still remember fondly most of my Thinkpads, but I'm not going to give up my disposable Acer I am typing this on. It has an SB i5, GT540m, 8Gb RAM, 160Gb SSD that I picked up for $300. And it will SMOKE that brand new Thinkpad advertised in TFA in games.
To me, it looks as though Lenovo has been trying to make the Thinkpad line more profitable by slowily adopting common components/methologies from other lines. They could have assymilated the Thinkpad designs to make the Lenovo branded products better, but that would have increased the production cost, even if only slightly.
Its evident even in the firmware, where each generation moves away from handling more functionality in hardware (think things like the independent volume control/amplifier) to using software to make it look like it still functions like a Thinkpad.
Also, completely idiotic to follow Dell on the tablet design. The latchless lid on the latitude XT was stupid, and for whatever reason, Lenovo decided to follow suit. The x220 and x230 tablets are clearly yet another step down (I've had my nose in most of the tablet models since the x41). Don't get me wrong, the speed and low power capabilities (I frequently run at 6W when I want the battery life) are superior, but I think that's more a statement of the general trends in laptops (thank Intel for the cpu/chipset). The build quality and the bells and whistles under the hood, the things that differentiated the line, are trending towards the mean.
I absolutely agree. When I saw the first pictures on engadget the other day, I thought to myself "man, that keyboard has gone to hell. Where are the page-up (etc) buttons?". They've taken what was arguably the only remaining good laptop (w.r.t ergonomics) and flushed it down the toilet.
Move sig!
I love my T430s - can't comment on newer ones.
...the Escape key is in the right position now. I avoided Thinkpads for years, simply because the Escape key was on the line /above/ the function keys. The moment they released the Thinkpad Edge series, with Esc in the correct position, I bought one.
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Lenovo sells TPs into the business market mostly. The features you seek are in the Ideapad line.
They probably make more money in the short run making substandard computers. But I (and my reluctant boss) would pay double to get a proper Thinkpad with the proper keyboard, a 4:3 screen and all the other qualities we had in the T40s and T60s.
The WUXGA screens on my T61s are great for prolonged reading. The construction is impressive (explored when building two of them out of four donor machines). The keyboards are outstanding. With 8GB RAM (ignore the 4GB listed limit) and SSD OS drives they are fine for anything I'll need them for.
Lenovo refuses to offer non-shit displays as options across the line of what is supposedly premium product, hence the fondness for older 'Pads which sometimes had them available.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The Lenovo ThinkPad T500 series (I write this on a T520i) is still the best PC laptop on the market (I also own a MacBook Air.) Yes, my very old IBM ThinkPad A20M is probably more of a tank (it still boots up,) but overall the T500 line is the only laptop I recommend to Windows users.
I went from a T410s to a T430s and the keyboard is killing me. They removed the F key spacing and the 3x2 layout, and now there's a printscreen key instead of a right-click key. It seems they saw the iMac keyboard and just pasted it onto their laptop. The rest of the hardware is still good but I can't use the keyboard for coding without getting frustrated.
A couple of my old laptops had trackpoints. I tried using them once or twice, but found them infuriating and very unergonomic (muscles tensed but almost no movement is a recipe for disaster) to use. You basically replace the freedom of movement of a mouse with 8 discrete directions, like a joystick. They also interfered with the laptop keyboard, making it much too easy to insert spurious mouse movements in between keystrokes (my "favorite" was its tendency to interpret random movement as a click-and-drag, selecting whole swathes of text to be deleted a the next keypress). So I ended up disabling the trackpoint (luckily there was an option for that in the mouse/trackpad control panel).
And here I find people lamenting its absence from a laptop. It takes all sorts, I guess...
The screens in the T430, even the "hd" 1600x900 screen are terrible. Lenovo should be ashamed of putting a 1366x768 panel in a 14" business class laptop. Also, where's my blue enter key *shakes fist*
moox. for a new generation.
I disagree with the full original premise.
They are not getting worse slowly; they are getting worse quickly.
I work at a business school. One of our graduate programs buys tablets for their students, who start each January. In January 2012, they purchased ThinkPad X220t tablets. They had bought ThinkPads in the previous couple of years, too. Price was the main consideration. We've had problems with the Lenovo systems and the support every year. Frequent hardware failures, lousy on-site support. We are a Dell shop, so that's what I am comparing the Lenovo experience with.
We create the Windows image for the program each year, using a fresh copy of Windows 7, Office, anti-virus, etc. which is burned to the 35-40 systems we get in. We do this with every Dell we get in year round for faculty and staff with no issues. Dell provides easy access to the right drivers, and after the OS is installed, the Dell and third-party drivers work on the fresh build.
Not on the Lenovo X220t systems. After a fresh OS install, pulling the "current" drivers from Lenovo's site resulted in many issues, especially with the Wacom tablet drivers. Quite a few of the drivers on their site listed for this specific model did not work, not just the Wacom drivers. Just for the Wacom drivers (the most difficult to remedy), my engineers jumped through many hoops before finding an old, legacy set of drivers buried deep on Wacom's site to make the tablet interface work correctly. No Wacom drivers from Lenovo's site worked. The wireless adapter drivers were also a problem.
Lenovo's support told us that we shouldn't have created a fresh image and should have stuck with the bloated crap the systems shipped with, and basically refused to help us. That's crap that you can't rely on the drivers that they make publicly available to work if you rebuild the system for any reason.
Bottom line is that we do this all the time with our Dells, and the drivers we get from their site always work on a fresh Windows install on their hardware. Lenovo - not so much. This past January I was able to convince this graduate program to go with Dell XT3's. We built a fresh image for them, using the drivers from Dell's site, and they've worked flawlessly. And we haven't had one XT3 in for hardware issues whereas in past years we typically saw three or four Lenovos in the first couple of months for hardware issues.
No, I don't work for Dell. It's just what I have to compare to.
And I'd be right behind you!