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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 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.
We started with the T61p, then W500, W510, W520, and now W530 at work, and that line has done well for us. The switchable graphics in the W500 sucked- we ended up giving that to an office worker, and used the T61ps for engineers. We also deployed a T530 recently, and it was still built in the "traditional" style. We purposely avoid the "consumer" style ThinkPads, and the clit mouse is a must.
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.
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!
Normally, I'd agree with you about Betteridge... but as a life-long Thinkpad owner, yeah... compared to 5-10 years ago, their quality has gone down the toilet, and they're slowly turning their laptops into cheap shadows of their former glory.
Being a "Thinkpad" used to mean something... it meant you were buying a laptop built to survive Armageddon (well, at least one that's neither wet nor sandy) that you'd feel compelled to hang on to forever as a future family heirloom, because it just seemed morally wrong to ever throw one away. Compaq's high-end laptops used to be the same way, until HP destroyed them & turned them into the same throw-away crap they sell at Walmart (but with enterprise management features added to their BIOS, a TPM module, and drive encryption enabled by default).
It used to be, if your Thinkpad died, it was almost guaranteed to be your fault (or the fault of somebody in your general vicinity, or to whom you made the mistake of temporarily delegating possession or stewardship of it). If you were on board a hijacked jet, you could remove the battery, put it in a pillocase, and go after the boxcutter-wielding hijackers using your battery as a hybrid club-mace, and your beloved Thinkpad as a shield.
I just pray to ${deity} that the Trackpoint IV patents all expire before the dark day that they decide to start eliminating them from even their expensive models in a misguided attempt to shave another $1.17 from the manufacturing cost, and take away my last remaining reason to stick with them instead of trying to hack my own guerrilla lunchbox PC with a microATX mobo, a body-transplanted Model M (with Trackpoint), a suitable 2560x1440 display, and the fruit of a Makerbot & a week or two of printing & gluing-together a new case, one 4x4 inch piece at a time.
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.
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.
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.
Which is why ThinkPads have always had a freely downloadable hardware service manual, which would include every step of disassembly, including which screws went where!
"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...