Lenovo Computers, Soon To Be Made In America
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
* The corporate market often prioritizes speed and ease of doing business over the absolute rock-bottom cost. Local manufacturing offers advantages due to a much shortened supply chain.
* The gap between an hourly worker's wages in the US versus China is shrinking, due to Chinese labor inflation and US collar wage stagnation.
* The hours of labor per assembled unit is declining due to advances in automation, rendering regional labor variances less important.
Labor is becoming less of an issue while local manufacturing continues to have major supply chain cost benefits, so Lenovo considers that the scales have tipped enough to justify a US presence for the market segment that values that responsiveness the most.
Because of the variability in demand, you are either going to expend resources on keeping a large inventory, or you are going to be ordering in smaller batches from suppliers who are a week to two weeks away.
Lead times are also very important, it takes about a month to get something from china to the US. This means that you need higher inventory levels in order to be able satisfy the demand without considerable shortages.
When you take into account the variety of configurations available its very hard not to get low rotation items on your inventory. Specially if you are expected to always have stock and when your inventory levels have to consider that it takes a month to get an item to the US.
Shifting assembly to the US reduces the number of SKUs imported and allows an easier control over inventory levels and supply chain costs.
Just because Apple sells items with a few options doesn't mean every other company should.
I'm sympathetic to this argument - there's always the oddball page in the configuration process that doesn't make sense, like the not-actually-selectable "Selectable SIM" on the current page for the T430. But the number of choices that actually don't make sense isn't that high, and the wifi adapter is not a good example. Which is "the good one"? The one with a working driver for someone's oddball OS, or the one with 802.11a support for someone's legacy network?
Do you think Lenovo should do away with one of the two palmrest combinations on the T430, and if so, which one, the one with the fingerprint reader or the one without?
You would if you knew what the chip was from sources other than the ordering page. Owning a model already is an obvious example but if I wasn't so lazy I could probably dig up the model spec book, grab the FRU of the card and google up the specs based on that.
The system works!
And people say Americans don't need unions anymore.
Only it's not "increasing manufacturing efficiency", it's taking advantage of worldwide labour supply (including child labor and labor under extreme exploitative conditions) _in addition_ to all-too liberal outsourcing and import laws to make wages enter a race for the bottom.
I'll take unionization.
Since there are safety nets in most first world countries, I'll take globalization over unionization as the best way to improve global standards of living over time.
If we really cared about those people, why allow their wages to be lower and their working conditions be far worse than ours? Just because we can, or because it's better than the alternative (substinence farming)? Well, and slavery is better than famine, should we take advantage of African countries with food/water supply problems to have them work for next to nothing?
The truth is, we "care" about them as long as they keep producing cheap stuff. We care about the cheap stuff. If they wanted equal pay, we could not care less about their fate.
As will happen, eventually, the industry people will jump to the next country that happens to offer them lower wages in a comfortable business environment, e.g Latin America or Africa. Like they moved from the US to China in the first place, crushing US working/middle class in the process.
Even the cheapest comes with a dual core processor, though, so you can share your memory among 2 cores and an integrated graphics engine. Progress it ain't.
1024x768 -> 1280x768 -> 1366x768
2048x1536 -> 1920x1200 -> 1920x1080
[1] http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/02/viewsonics-vx70smh-led-ip...
EDIT-- It probably helps that the MBA has a higher pixel density screen and resolution.
That said, the ultrabook market is still in a weird state. I looked at all of the major vendors and no one really had the ideal combination of components yet. Once you can get the x230 with higher res display and a multi-core CPU, it'll be an ideal machine.
The only ultrabooks I can find with high res screen at the moment are either made by Asus or Sony. I've heard good things about the Asus UX31/32, full HD IPS displays (1920x1080) in a 13.3 inch laptop. A 12 inch laptop with 1600x900 would probably be ideal for me.
Real keyboard + 16:10 hi-res, high quality display and real thinkpad (IBM era) build quality and I would be willing to pay north of $1500
I pull out my old T42 from time to time and it's so relaxing to code on such a screen ratio.
I've been trying to grab a 4:3 (1400x1050) T61 for a while off ebay as they're cheap and upgradeable to a reasonable spec.
Unfortunately I can't seem to find one :(
Edit - I just checked eBay and searched for "T61p". I found:
* A 4:3 T61p with an incorrect description for $500. That seems high.
* A 4:3 T61p missing its palmrest and other parts, auction only.
* A T61p in a T60 chassis with a QXGA panel, SSD and other upgrades for $1300. That sounds high unless you've tried to find a QXGA panel; they're over $400.
1400x1050 14.1" !
The ones here tend to be broken.
(I actually wanted a 15" screen to replace my 15" T61 but the current 15" laptops are so frigging huge with so much wasted space that I had to downgrade.)
What does North Carolina have over Mexico? How does this cater to the corporate "custom" PC market?
I'm curious to see why the company is moving operations there.
HP has a large portion of the government contracts market for laptops.
Safety? Properly functioning law enforcement?
Hardly a domestic industry, although I speculate it may also help in some political/contract situations.
No more waiting 4 weeks to get a computer/laptop I actually want.