How Lenovo became the world’s biggest computer company
economist.com
economist.com
1. Get a Thinkpad, preferably a T series, non-Thinkpad Lenovos are crap, based on personal experience.
2. Expect to do a full reinstall of your system. It comes over bloated with the worst crapware available, to the point that it makes it unusable. Mine couldn't perform Windows updates and Chrome crashed constantly, all of this out of the box. But the mayor offense was including Norton bloatware, that I couldn't just tolerate.
They're still better than the competition, but the new ThinkPad models are not very interesting. I'm hoping Lenovo will respond to current pressure and release new X and T models that are worth buying.
Though much of my decision on buying a laptop rests on how nice the keys feel. I was originally looking at a Samsung laptop but the "feel" was wrong for me.
Finding a good deal was pretty easy too, I just checked lenovo's website semi-regularly for a month or 2 until they were discounting something I wanted.
I recently got a ThinkPad W530 because it was the only workstation laptop I could find that supports 32gb of ram. It even came with a Core i7 Extreme Edition CPU! Talk about beastly. Before that I had an X201 which wasn't quite the powerhouse but both have been great performance and stability wise.
The only downside to Thinkpads is the crowded trackpad. Hourly I seem to accidentally to page/up down while coding. However, it's my only complaint and otherwise the Thinkpads are just fantastic.
I know it is just anecdotal, but it put me off the brand (which I was bullish on before).
For all other, you have to at least specify the product line for the statement to mean anything at all.
http://blog.lenovo.com/products/thinkpad-laptop-nasa-youtube...
And you can't really make any broad statements about the Thinkpad family either since lenovo introduced Thinkpad Edge and Thinkpad L. Which is just your typical cheap laptop with a quality label on it...
The "real" thinkpads however are great and I'm a huge fan of the Thinkpad X-series. But that doesn't make all of Lenovos laptops or even Thinkpads great.
still puts me off the brand though, the should use a different brand for their cheap stuff, not a different series. customers (like me) will lose their brand loyalty.. .
I don't understand anyone buying non-Apple non-netbook laptops.
Speaking seriously, my desktop PC will beat up your T420. I can't imagine doing work (writing code) on laptops with their degenerate keyboards. And for the rest you have desktops.
I don't know how you inferred I have any Apple products but actually I don't and never had. I think you just have problems with logic.
The Thinkpad series is know for having some of the best keyboards ever used on a laptop. Even though I prefer using my happy hacking keyboard, I'll take the Thinkpad's keyboard over pretty much anything else. It's so good that they even sell the damn keyboard as a standalone option to regular keyboard. Trackpoint and all. And yes I write code all day.
Regarding my "logic": You don't need to own an Apple to product to be a fanboy, and as such I never said that you owned any. That's all on you and your logic. I ended my post with the same type of sarcastic fanboish retort that you used at the end of yours.
Of course you can't, but a simple USB adapter will allow you to fit a proper Model M to any laptop.
Then you just need a good bag like Michael Douglas' in Falling Down to carry it around.
My Lenovo T61 has two batteries (9 cell+ultrabay). I get 8 hours. It's also 5 years old and just doesn't break - it's been dropped, had drinks in it, thrown a couple of times, used in the rain. Plus you could beat an elephant to death with it. The whole thing is build like Wolverine out of the X-Men. Look at the picture - the grey bits are titanium:
http://www.lenovo.com/shop/americas/content/img_lib/products...
Compared to my 2010 Macbook Pro which caught fire after 5 months, lasted about 3 hours on battery and had a new logic board after 4 weeks...
But when I come to the shop I see a long line of laptops; all with Windows 7 or 8, all made of ugly plastic, all with expected battery life under two hours, all bulky and all costing 3X the netbook price and climbing.
That's what gets sold to people and that is what I can't imagine anyone wanting to buy.
Yes, another thing I don't care about is comics you try to illustrate your post with.
As for my T61, I bought it for half the price of a new netbook when it was 3 years old... (well actually I bought two so that I can just grab the other one in a complete failure scenario).
It's not a comic - it's an engineering cross section.
As for looks, I don't give a shit what it looks like or if it's heavy or whatever - I want something that works and doesn't fall to bits after 5 minutes and is repairable and replaceable if it does. Why? Because it pays the bills and can be trusted.
Depends on what do you consider serious. If you want to watch a movie in the airport, edit some text on the go or take some casual game break - the netbook is ideal. They work as advertised. And you're funny :)
For the heavyweight tasks I still prefer desktop. Built according to a spec I assembled.
This message was brought to you by Thinkpad T430s.
Are you from Soviet Russia?
"Lenovo’s culture is different from that of other Chinese firms. A state think-tank, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, provided the original $25,000 seed capital, and still owns an indirect stake. But those in the know say Lenovo is run as a private firm, with little or no official interference."
"He vows to keep investing, regardless of returns, until the firm reaches a roughly 10% share in each of the target markets. Only with such scale is long-term profitability possible, he insists."