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Not Just For ThinkPads Anymore: Lenovo Gets OK To Buy IBM Server Line
IBM sold its personal computer line (including the iconic ThinkPad line) to Lenovo back in 2005. Now, Lenovo is poised to acquire IBM's line of X86-based servers, and has garnered the approval of a regulatory body which could have scotched the deal. (The article describes the server line at issue as "low end," but that's in the eye of the beholder.) From the article:
The conclusion of the review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, is “good news for both IBM and Lenovo, and for our customers and employees,” Armonk, New York-based IBM said yesterday in a statement. While Cfius placed some conditions on the deal, they don’t significantly affect the business, and terms of the transaction didn’t change as result, a person with knowledge of the matter said, without specifying the conditions. The sale drew scrutiny because of disputes between China and the U.S., the world’s two largest economies, over cyberintrusions. By completing the deal, IBM can jettison a less profitable business to focus on growing areas, such as cloud computing and data analytics, while giving Lenovo a bigger piece of the global computing-hardware market. ... Spokesmen for IBM and Lenovo declined to comment on whether the Cfius clearance included any requirements or concessions. Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, which leads Cfius, declined to comment.
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Lenovo laptops are the worst. They can't even get the keyboard layout right. I'm looking at you cntrl and function. Whomever thought it was a good idea to switch them around is a moron.
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It was bad enough Lenovo bought the Thinkpad line, always a favorite in business computing. Now buying servers too? Lenovo and Huawei scare me, second only to the NSA.
At least for those looking for an excuse to go to HP or Dell but who couldn't escape the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" nostalgia.
Thank IBM for that. You can swap them in "BIOS" BTW.
nobody will be buying these anytime soon.
...and wonder why IBM is selling more of its lifeblood and history to an enemy of the United States.
Almost all IBM stuff was manufactured in PRC anyway.
Glorious Eastern Tigers are obligated to do everything in the opposite way of those Evil Western Devils.
all globalized corporations, the politicians who 'lubricate' them, and the wealthy individuals who control them are all enemies to the nations they're headquartered in, as well as any nation in which they have a lasting presence.
The Fins letting Microsoft indirectly gut and then firesale Nokia to themselves, to IBM selling out to the Chinese, to Halliburton relocating to Dubai. What do these all have in common? Corporations and their political representatives giving the people the long hard shaft of crony capitalism! Better stock up on lubricants now, because once they have the other markets cornered they're going to be sure to charge you an arm and a leg for anything that can help increase the comfort of the thick shafts they'll be giving you.
It might seem odd, but IBM has steadily moved away from COTS systems and towards their proprietary offerings over the last many years. The initial sell off was what started Lenovo, IBM's personal computer line. Now its x86 server line. At some point IBM drops Linux in favour of AIX and MVS/XA.
Let's hope they're too stupid to find the back doors.
no I think they just got the approval from gov to do it.
So, IBM wants to focus more on cloud computing yet sells of the very hardware (System x) on which my company operates their cloud. I wonder if the System x Enterprise (like the X6 line of servers) are also moving to Lenovo, since they're not quite that low-end.
I'm ok with the layout, but I'm not happy with the way that Lenovo as screwed up the keyboard and trackpad in recent years. On the latest generations of Thinkpads, they moved from the terrific old Thinkpad keyboard to a typical, lousy "island" keyboard layout. And they removed all of the mouse buttons, so you now have to depress the Trackpad, MacPro style, for a button push, even if you're using the Trackpoint. This is totally awkward.
The combination of a MacPro style trackpad and keyboard style leads me to believe that they are one more company who has succumbed to stupid Apple envy--even though their original design was far superior to Apple's.
I cant buy Thinkpads anymore. I wish that there was a good replacement, but there really isn't. Microsoft and Apple have screwed up the whole laptop industry.
There were only three servers for serious data center work--Dell, HP and IBM. Of those, IBM was arguably the best. Now, that is sure to be screwed up in short order. I'm sure I'll be speccing more HP servers in the future.
The Apple touchpads are actually quite good, but everyone else's attempts to rip them off have been terrible and unusable...
I always used to use the nipple on thinkpads, and with other laptops i would always connect up an external mouse. When i got a macbook i actually started using the touchpad.
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Any computer is a server.
The sad thing is people actually believe this. People like you are the reason my faculty was running all the linux home directories off of some shitty PC in the corner somewhere that couldn't keep up and kept crashing disks every other month. Now we have a real rack mounter server in a proper server room with proper cooling and enterprise grade hard drives. No more restoring from backups every other month.
It's not so black and white.
People like you are the reason it costs the company a few million bucks to move between point versions of stuff we didn't write.
Asus laptops it turns out have excellent touchpads. Even the old eee 900 had a small but otherwise very good one.
Touch pads have however always been the weakpoint of thinkpads. And battery life. But hey, you can chuck a cup of coffee over the keyboard then beat someone to death with it and it'll keep on truckin'.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
...thinks the Chinese MBA at Lenovo HQ, Beijing
Like it or not Lenovo saved the Thinkpad line. They are one PC maker actually seeing a resurgence in sales of PC's to enterprise. I always had good luck with customer service with them and I would buy another Thinkpad without question. Just not one with Windows 8 on it. I think IBM knows the server market is becoming more competitive now and talk of low powered ARM based servers means Lenovo has its work cut out to keep things competitive. I think this is a good move for IBM and Lenovo.
Yes, I believe Slashdot's server is actually a Netbook left by CmdrTaco years ago. Who needs redundant dual-port disks with multiple controller paths, the ability to run more than 32GB RAM (with ECC), redundant power supplies, hot swappable disks, power supplies, fans and even PCI cards, centralized remote management and monitoring, motherboards built with components that actually last at least 3 years under stressful workloads and environments, 4-hour support contracts, certified hardware-software combinations so there is never any worry about compatibility, right?
And then they put a post right in the middle of the keyboard.
You mean the part where they test the new version for compatibility, or the part where you have to pay a new comercial license fee? I'm not sure what you're complaining about here.
I liked thinkpads because of the trackpoint, and the lack of the otherwise entirely superfluous windows keys, and because of the good keyboard and the sturdy build. Now, though, thinkpad has lost basically all of that and is just another also-ran. An expensive also-ran, true enough, but it hasn't been its own thing in a long time. Heck, there's nary a laptop anywhere that isn't a dvd viewer in disguise.
I'd agree, but only up to the point where they went multi-touch. On my UX21A the touchpad isn't very good; palm rejection is poor and two-finger scrolling is often confused for pinch & zoom. Compared to Apple it's not nearly as reliable.
Huh I rather like the UX21.
I've not tries the palm detection. Out of habit from the thinkpad I use syndaemon instead and that works very well. I think the pinch versus scolling must be a matter of thresholds.
If you run synclient in dump mode, you can get realtime positions of all blobs detected and it seems pretty accurate. I think there's some settings you can tweak.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Lenovo actually makes a decent keyboard with ONLY the Trackpoint, and NO pad, the Thinkpad Tablet 2 bluetooth keyboard. Not wasting space on a twitchy touchpad gives more room for the actual keys, even restoring some of the "lost" dedicated keys such as PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, right Ctrl, etc - what a concept (!), especially for a compact keyboard. The size and spacing of the keys is amazing for a keyboard that matches a 10-inch tablet's dimemsions, 10x4.5" for the actual keyboard area (leaving out the weird tablet holding part across the top).
I can use it all day/night for work/play, and nary a touchpad thumb brush to jump the cursor to different parts of the screen - awesome! It's completely horizontal position (none of that non-ergonomic tilt that so many seem to prefer with larger keyboards), and optical Trackpoint are very easy on my carpal tunnel problem, although I do keep a mouse active for large page scrolling or fine cursor control, the one weak part of the design for me at least. Still, I can work long spells without moving my hands from the keyboard (aside from a few stretches every so often).
Which of the back door are you speaking about?
The one mandated by NSA that they put in hardware of any American owned company ?
Or the backdoors that the Chinese put into any parts that they ship from their plants to US to build computer ?
Or the backdoors that the Russian somehow still managed to cram in even if they weren't in theory involved in the production of that precise piece of hardware ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Been using a used Thinkpad x60 for the last few years and must say that the keyboard and trackpoint are the best thing about it (aside from pretty flawless Linux compatibility, which probably comes from being old and very popular). When the time came to upgrade, it was between an Asus Zenbook ux32ln (catchy name) and a Macbook Pro 13" 8gb ram/256gb ssd. In the end I got the Macbook, but the Zenbook really impressed me. Not only did Asus fit a sensible but not overkill 1920x1080 screen, but the keyboard and trackpad were great, it had a discrete Nvidia GPU and didn't look like shit or feel cheap and flimsy. It was a good price too (~$1000).
Basically, Asus nailed everything except they put Windows 8 on it. Not really loving MacOSX either (tolerable once xtrafinder is installed), but I got Windows 7 installed now, so the panic is over.
I did look a lot at Thinkpads, but they all had far too many compromises: The modern keyboards have weird function keys, the screen resolution is too low by default, no sensible GPU (the highest was Intel 4600 or something like that), too much wasted space by a trackpad that I'm not going to use because Trackpoint is far better, they look like crap, except the Carbon, which is overpriced... They do offer a few laptops with better internals, but they are not Thinkpads and lose the Trackpoint. Lenovo just makes me very sad, because they could be making AMAZING computers, but Thinkpads keep getting less and less desireable. That and they also have Windows 8 on them.
That's not even the worst part. You can switch them in the BIOS, so it's effectively a null point.
But, yeah, the keyboards are fucked, regardless.
Text nav keys splayed fucking everywhere, lack of F key groupings, F keys that *aren't* F keys, chiclet bullshit, slop and flex regions.
It's not even a damn ThinkPad anymore.
Trackpads have always been meh, they're just a sucky and imprecise interface.
Give me clit mouse or give me death!
Run any IBM servers? Next time they replacement, you'd be wise to dump them and look elsewhere.
It could be cheaper to replace the cheap consumer RAID drivers than to buy expensive "enterprise grade" stuff. Maybe the cost of a RAID array with backup is cheaper than all the more expensive stuff.
But hey, you can chuck a cup of coffee over the keyboard then beat someone to death with it and it'll keep on truckin'.
Not sure about the coffee, but the rest is has been a killer feature of IBM keyboards ever since the model M.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Enterprise grade hardware: IMHO, got nothing to do with "Server" above. But if you're business relies upon the "Server", you should run it on "Enterprise grade hardware".
You want to run your own web server in your cubicle, or or living room? Hey, consumerized commodity hardware is fine. You want me to bet my paycheck as well as my co-workers'? I insist on Enterprise grade hardware. Actually, I insist on more - but this is the part that's pertinent to this thread.
And where do I go to get a P5xx/6xx/7xx? Or even something comparable?
Case study on how to outsource your company out of existence. Each incremental step makes sense, but at the end of the day you are left with nothing but a name.
Lenovo isn't getting System P hardware. They're only getting System X, which is the x86 stuff.
Lenovo laptops are the worst. They can't even get the keyboard layout right. I'm looking at you cntrl and function. Whomever thought it was a good idea to switch them around is a moron.
Almost nobody gets the ctrl key right. It belongs in the home row.
The X60 & X61's keyboards are also not equipped with TouchPad. Most of my colleagues hated it at first, since they're so used to it on their Dell's and HP's notebooks.
Exactly, except the official name for the product line has been Power Systems for a few years now (although I don't think anybody outside of IBM calls it that). Because IBM is the only manufacturer, they still get good margins on it, and that's why they kept it.
American cretins.
Many thinkpads have holes in the underside to drain spilled liquid out of the keyboard. There's a little keyboard-above-a-drip emblem imprinted on the plastic next to it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I so wish that IBM would take back the Thinkpad from Lenovo--maybe they could swap the server line for the Thinkpad line.
Lenovo has royally screwed up the Thinkpad. The keyboard and the Trackpoint were the very best things in the older Thinkpads. The pointing device and they keyboard have gone radioactive. At least they haven't completely abandoned matte screens.
And UEFI sucks rocks!
I actually consider the stubble a feature because my hands always get into the way of the trackpad and I have to switch it off.
The "beat them to death and keep working" part isn't true anymore, either. My new Thinkpad fell 3 feet off a couch and broke.
The FN key is in the corner so you can find the keyboard light shortcut by touch in the dark.
I find it absolutely hilarious the way everyone disparages Chinese manufacturing while 95% of all electronics, clothing, and gadgetry is made in China or other asian countries.
Scariest of all are the ill-informed masses who think that IBM, HP, Dell, etc. actually make any of their own parts any more. They're US companies in name only.
Wake up. Globalization has already happened.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Touch pads have however always been the weakpoint of thinkpads.
I'll never know. The very first thing I do when I get a new Thinkpad is to disable the touchpad on it completely. The trackpoint is greatly superior to any touchpad, even an Apple touchpad.
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Really? I moved from a MacBook Pro to a T430S a couple of years ago, and I really like it. The trackpad isn't as good as the MBP, but it's pretty damn usable... I don't have any issues using it at all.
Not running M$ bloat OS tho, maybe that's why? Does Linux have a better trackpad driver than M$? And I still have the eraser mouse if needed.
I am extremely happy with the Lenovo and recommend it any time someone asks. I can get the proc I want, the amount of memory I want, and it's still reasonably priced (in my case, an I7 and 16g). When I got it the only other company that could match the specs I wanted was Alien, at twice the price and weight, and a 17" screen.
I was a little worried moving from a metal case (on the MBP) to a plastic case, but it has survived very well and the body is still very stiff with the metal (magnesium?) inner skeleton. No issues at all. And, I believe that the Fn key was swapped with the Ctrl key to make it easier to find in the dark, to turn on the backlighting... I know, kinda lame, how hard is it to find the SECOND button from the left in the dark, but I do appreciate it at those times.
And Lenovo's support is EXTREMELY good, the one time I needed it. Getting anything back the day after you send it in is unheard of in my neck of the woods... Normally the shippers aren't that good here.