Comment by anexprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anexprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

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Lenovo ideapad (cheap ones, superfish, avoid) and Lenovo Thinkpad (no superfish, mostly good) should be thought separate manufacturers. They're not comparable.

For quality and reliability. This is astonishingly subjective and quite probably wrong :p

1. Thinkpad. Not as good as they were, but appear to be trying to improve again. Usually a fairly safe bet for BSD & Linux drivers. Support (UK) have been excellent.

2. Dell 2. HP (Like with Lenovo separate the cheap consumer crap, and the well made professional ranges)

3. The rest

4. Apple. Well made, hopeless for upgrade, now very overpriced. New keyboard seems to be disliked on reviews so far.

99. Acer - Pet hate brand that always seems to have far more than fair share of issues, and support (UK) terrible.

No experience of clevo or system76. Not sure MS have been around long enough with Surface to judge well yet. Personally I would be wary of Razer, though I've not owned a laptop of theirs, which might be superb. None of their mice and keyboards seem to last 5 minutes. Santa will bring the kids no more Razer Nagas.

How can thinkpads reasonably be trusted after superfish though? Some security agencies don't even allow Lenovo hardware onsite, sort of implies something...

"Lenovo ideapad (cheap ones, superfish, avoid) and Lenovo Thinkpad (no superfish, mostly good) should be thought separate manufacturers. They're not comparable."

I'm a bit dubious of the idea that you can trust the parent company after the Superfish incident.

Why would you use preinstalled OS anyway? Every manufacturer installs ton of unneeded crapware. Just download pristine Windows iso and install it from scratch.

A clean windows install wouldn't make any difference. Lenovo installed their malware in the BIOS and set it to automatically make sure it was present, and reinstall itself if necessary, on every reboot.

Wow, that's really bad, didn't know about it. Can't even imagine how buggy their reinstall code would be.

Because I shouldn't have to do work just so the machine is usable. If I bought a PC, I would buy it from Microsoft, as they don't sell them with all the crap.

...other than first-party Microsoft crap. But you would get that anyway in any other OEM version of Windows, along with additional third-party crap.

As long as you're willing to put in a tiny bit of effort, you can know that all the software on your machine is coming from known people and companies, that you chose to trust.

Apple is the only company I would trust [at this time] to put only Apple software on retail Apple hardware. But that is because even if anybody was willing to comply with the inevitable list of strict requirements, Apple would almost certainly try to charge the third-parties so much to bundle their software, that no one would reasonably be able to justify the cost.

Microsoft, I could see making a deal with some third-party to put into certain models of the Surface. It might just be something like hardware drivers with a Windows GUI to change some settings, but they would do it.

Which sell for about the same price as a MacBook Pro. I'm sure the margins are good, but the cost to make a high quality laptop seems to be going up.

Except they're not separate manufacturers...

Actually, they may well be separate manufacturers. See may comment above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845499

I knew throwing personal experience out was going to open a can of worms! :)

They seem to act like they're separate. Hardware build and installed software is entirely different. I was under the impression they still operated as separate divisions. UK Support was even on separate numbers until fairly recently - now it separates at top level.

If Lenovo get a strike, Sony probably should for the rootkit.

If you're not comfortable ignore my "probably wrong" suggestions! :)

First thing I do with any Win machine is remove the crap and demos or clean install and add drivers. Or occasionally start immediately with !Windows.

Dell and HP have separate business and consumer laptop lines and they're not comparable in terms of quality. A Dell Latitude (historically good) is nothing like an Inspiron or XPS (inferior).

Also one mustn't discount post sale service in evaluating options. The value of a particular laptop is more than the box itself. What happens if you have problems? How easy is it to get it fixed? How long will you be without it for in the meantime?

I did mention to separate the consumer and well made pro ranges for Dell and HP.

Had several Thinkpads, only one needed repair, was handled quickly and smoothly. Repaired first time.

HP and Dell have been OK, for me, with support.

I've had issue with individual products of theirs, but not laptops.

I didn't like how Dell handled a faulty monitor, but is it relevant to their pro laptop experience?

They're both harder to deal with than Thinkpad, in my experience, in my country.

I've had three Thinkpads in two years (T440, two T450s). Their build quality is okay by PC standards, not great. The keyboard deck is warped on my work T450s. The screen was shit on my T440. The screen is shit with bad backlight bleed and low maximum brightness on both T450s.

EDIT: Oh I forgot about the absolute ton of crapware on the machine out of box.

A surprise. I always felt screens have been one of their best features, with great consistency and brightness so far. I'm looking to replace at the moment, and t460 t560 are shortlisted along with dell and HP. So now I'm clueless again. :p

Don't like the 6 row chiclet keyboard, sound is garbage on recent machines I've had, don't seem as resilient, and not the same attention to detail.

Crapware? Access Connections (Adobe Air made it slow junk), warranty/help/update thing. No Norton any more. They started adding other junk?

I don't think it's just me grousing: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/59pqrh/lenovos_en....

As for crapware: my T450s came with a bunch of Lenovo-branded garbage, like a settings app, a power management app, and an update app. That leaves you with, e.g. two different ways to configure your power management settings, and three different ways to configure things like mouse settings (the Windows modern app, the lenovo app, and the Windows app). For $1,000, a machine should just come with Microsoft software.

Hah. :) I must have got models with OK screens, by sheer luck.

I forgot a few. I killed them too.

Except I kept update for TP drivers. Win Update has got them wrong in the past. 'apt-get upgrade' starts to look quite advanced! :D

All Thinkpad laptops can support at least 3 different screens.

The default shipped screens are okay-ish.

The IPS displays have a reputation of good quality but you gotta pay extra.

I recently got an HP Spectre, I would not recommend it (due to unresolved driver/hardware issues) but the build quality is pretty good! Keyboard is very nice with excellent travel.

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