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Comment by jisaacstone | Hacker News Reader

My wife's parents still use a lenovo desktop from the ~'89 and it works fine. My 2 year old laptop, on the other hand, has had several problems (especially with hibernation/wake-up) and the battery life is and has always been only about an hour.

I know it is just anecdotal, but it put me off the brand (which I was bullish on before).

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Lenovo makes fantastic laptops as well as poor laptops. Apple is probably the only manufacturer where you can make broad statements about their products.

For all other, you have to at least specify the product line for the statement to mean anything at all.

The Thinkpad is hardly a poor laptop, it's the only laptop certified by NASA for use in space.

http://blog.lenovo.com/products/thinkpad-laptop-nasa-youtube...

My point was that the Thinkpad is hardly the only laptop series that Lenovo makes ...

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.

Ah so that is my problem - I got an 'IdeaPad' or some such.

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 read tjoff's statement as saying that Lenovo makes the thinkpad which is a low quality laptops. I read it as saying that some of Lenovo laptops (as opposed to laptop models) are good while some are bad.

Laptops are useless with their hulking mass and short battery life. Netbooks rule the world: they always have three or more hours of battery life and they're so cheap you can replace them if they break. Which they don't. And everything works thanks to proven hardware.

I don't understand anyone buying non-Apple non-netbook laptops.

My T420 easily gives me double (sometimes even triple) than your three hours mate. It's very well built so it doesn't break as easily as crappy plastic netbook. Not only is it's hardware "proven" whatever that means, but works extremely well with Linux which is my OS of choice. Oh and almost everything I want to change is easily user replaceable. Probably with the exception of the gpu. And Lenovo provides manuals to do both the easy thinks like changing memory, to medium things like replacing a keyboard (which is a piece of cake), to more complex things like replacing the LCD screen. Oh and 14 inches is not a hulking mass, and it also replaced my desktop. I don't understand Apple fanboys (and I own an iPhone and an iPad)...

I'm so happy for you that you're almost allowed to take a cookie.

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.

Wait wait, so you complain about the mass and short battery life, and when I give you an example of why that's not really true you go ahead and try to compare it to your desktop? That's one of the worst counterpoints I've ever come across. I have a small rack in the corner of my study and the machines there will considerably outer perform not only my t420 but most of the consumer grade machines either prebuilt or enthusiast built. On the other hand, my t420 has better specs that most of what's considered normal for most consumer based setups. I need to run various virtual machines for starters.

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.

> I can't imagine doing work (writing code) on laptops with their degenerate keyboards.

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.

WTF are you smoking?

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...

I don't care about your T61. Not the slightest.

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.

Yeah that's because it's what people want to pay i.e. not much. As for a NetBook - have you ever used one to do something serious on? Absolute joke. The things are the worst thing on the planet.

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.

If 3X the netbook price is not much then what's much? Why pay a magnitude more for a good laptop if you can get ten netbooks for that price? I mean, TEN damn things.

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.

I'd rather have one piece of gold than ten turds.

Some of us prefer not to wait for our computers.

This message was brought to you by Thinkpad T430s.

Surely you prefer your computer to wait for you since you left it at home.

Are you from Soviet Russia?

I read this as saying: buy an Apple netbook. The mythical beast which Steve refused to let live.

You don't understand logic. Look: if I don't understand why people buy non-Apple non-netbooks, means that I may understand why people buy either non-Apple netbooks or Apple non-netbooks (for the aluminium case)

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