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Comment by dryicerx | Hacker News Reader

This is rather depressing. I've been a huge ThinkPad fan, on my 3rd T-series at the moment... a T61p that still wore a IBM sticker and can't praise more for the wonderful WUXGA screen... but guess Lenovo's corner cutting is finally catching up, hopefully this is just a isolated case.

I'll always love and remember the thinkpads (at least IBM era) for their tank like qualities; being able to use the laptop as a blunt weapon in a fight and later using the same laptop to code and blog is a good feeling.

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Agreed. I have an IBM/Lenovo T60 which I run Debian on and it has served me well, had it now for must be going on three years, never had an issue with it, the build quality is rock solid. But even when these ThinkPads were released, around about the time that they were making the brand transition from IBM to Lenovo, I had doubts about what this meant for the future of the ThinkPad.

I have heard numerous horror stories about the quality of Lenovo gear since then. I am saddened to think that my T60 may be the last ThinkPad I will ever have considered buying. But then I am somewhat consoled when I remember that my next laptop will probably be a Mac to go with my recently acquired Mac desktop.

Aside from not being able to so readily beat someone to death with a MacBook Pro, for me, Mac laptops are the new ThinkPads, mainly because I bought my ThinkPad primarily to run a Unix-like OS (Debian), and OS X fits that desire too. You also get to pay a premium for a Mac, just like a ThinkPad. :P

I keep vaguely hearing horror stories but all the people I can actually pin down as owning lenovo thinkpads are having a great time with them - me included.

I suspect what we actually have here is a case of the usual random set of poor experiences with any given product being much more conversationally trafficked because people assume that "this is my first troublesome thinkpad" must be because of the Lenovo switch rather than just being an unfortunate coincidence.

Yeah, just to be clear, when I said "I have heard numerous horror stories about the quality of Lenovo gear since then." I was actually referring mainly to anecdotes I had heard from people relating to non-ThinkPad Lenovo laptops. As I said, I've had no problem with my T60, it's a great laptop for my purposes and I have not purchased a ThinkPad newer than my T60.

My only concern about the newer ThinkPads - based off these anecdotes - is that the quality of ThinkPads may be adversely affected as they ostensibly become more Lenovo and less IBM.

Agreed. We have 5 old thinkpads from the IBM era (they are "R5" series I think off the top of my head) which run Backtrack or other flavours of Linux and work without fault even today.

We bought some Lenovo Thinkpads the other week for new employee's to use remotely - what a load of awfulness they were! Already trying to find a decent replacement.

Not just that, but they also had a decent keyboard. I took out my old one (pre Lenovo) and was just amazed by how good the keyboard was.

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