Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group
engadget.comI think this is a good idea. Thinkpads have evolved to a point where - regardless of IBM or Lenovo being the brand behind the product line - the name is a synonym of dependability and quality. I think that by separating the brand from the rest of the Lenovo pack, and giving it it's own two feet they might steal quite a bit of Apple's customers.
I went from my own homemade machines, to exclusively Apple hardware, to owning a t420 (wanted the old keyboard). I'm in the process of leaving the Apple ecosystem and going back to Linux (Arch to be specific) because I dislike the direction Apple is going (the Mac App Store was the inflection point that made me want to leave). The Thinkpad brand was the obvious choice because of upgradeability, quality, dependency, and the fact that they make some of the best laptops for Linux. Even better than Zareason and system 76 hardware IMO. Making the perfect business computing tools AND at the same time the perfect Linux portable hardware is a big plus in my book. Even more than unibody pieces of aluminum and the retina bs that while commendable to a point, I've found is more of a nuisance than anything else.
Anyways, Lenovo earned a customer by keeping the Thinkpad brand alive and maintaining it's quality standards. Any step to make the brand better is AOK with me.
I feel the same way. The ThinkPad is the only computer that could potentially tempt me away from my MacBook. So far I'm stuck to OS X though (dreaming of Arch minimalism).
Arch is a maintenance nightmare if you want to be productive.
I'm puzzled by this comment. Arch values elegance, code correctness, and minimalism. Initially Arch installs a very minimal base system, and package management is done via rolling release.
Perhaps you should explain exactly how Arch is a "maintenance nightmare."
Ok, I'm speaking purely from my experience and there's a big chance that I'm stupid but:
I've tried running Arch as my main OS in the last year. I needed a weekend to configure the OS and even wrote a little daemon to handle the conservative fan spin ups on my overheating Macbook Pro. After that it was great as long as it lasted.
But then the OS just died 3 times. What had I done? A simple
> pacman -Syu
was enough. Whenever there was a bigger change (a new kernel, new init system, etc.) a simple update would render my Arch installation unbootable. And to get everything to work I had to waste hours (in one case days because of re-install) to get it to work again.
That's not something I want from an OS I'm using productively.
If all the initscripts and kernel updates break Arch, then you probably made a mistake or two in some conf file installing it. (eg not having /boot correctly in the fstab will break you on every kerenl update, for example)
Maybe I did. But my point is: I need a system that just works without constant maintenance from my side. So Arch is not really for me.
Sorry I should have clarified the point up front:
The initial configuration is tiresome and complicated. While knowing the details is important, using them as a barrier to entry i.e. by removing the arch installer is just a hideous waste of time.
Occasionally, I've had a broken system, packages or dependency failure which has left me in the royal shit with a recovery disk and a text editor.
pacman has no transactional semantics around it so you can't stage a package or roll it back easily and no-destructively as you can in deb and RPM based distributions.
It relies on the default configuration of all pieces of software i.e. minimal changes to upstream. This is good and all, but most of the upstreams have retarded and dangerous by default configurations. You have to vet every damn package upgrade.
As for rolling upgrades, introducing major new package versions mid-cycle is a major risk, particularly when it comes to large critical packages such as DB engines and web servers. Minor version changes can literally shred you. MySQL are very good at that for example (I no longer use their product due to the awful bugs in early 5.0.x release).
I see people above are moaning about Ubuntu in comparison. In fact that is just as bad, but for a different reason: it's just hideously mismanaged.
They ignore the collective knowledge and mini frameworks that are included in other distributions (for example the /etc/apache2 structure in Debian derivatives). These are incredibly powerful at managing configuration through upgrades etc so hours with diff aren't required.
To be honest, I have a virtual machine floating around which was once a physical machine. It was deployed on a Compaq Professional Workstation 5000 (nice dual Pentium Pro 200 with 128Mb of RAM, 4 Matrox heads and 18Gb of SCSI disks) with Debian 2.0.
This installation is now at Debian 6.0. This has been accomplished EASILY with ONLY dist-upgrades since day one and has survived about 5 bits of hardware.
That's how it should be. Rolling releases are dangerous. Planned staged releases.
And no I don't particularly care that my Ruby VM is X years out of date.
When I used Arch last year, they also regularly break things in ways that require manual fixes every month or so. So don't dare update without first reading the news, lest you end up with a broken system and no way to find out why it broke. Stick with Debian or Ubuntu if its your main laptop OS.
Haven't had such problems with Arch in the last couple of months really. I value more the customizability and control that Arch offers than pretty much anything else. It hits the proverbial spot in my quasi-requirement mixture from both Gentoo and Slackware usage. Ubuntu might be easier to get going and maintain, but it's goal of becoming a distro for the common men and women of the world does not align well with me to be honest. Both Ubuntu and Debian are too opinionated for my taste.
To be fair, at work I've used Debian a lot for servers, and it had worked pretty good all the time with very few exceptions. In comparison Ubuntu (which I know is Debian based) always breaks for me. It's amazing how I can always get stuff done in minutes in Debian but I always have a problem with Ubuntu. This is to the point that I would rather work with the botched in-house distro of Solaris I used on a mini mainframe I used to work with and maintain some 8 years ago than Ubuntu. Even with the weird customized vi/vim it had, that made life for me and the sys admin incredibly painful.
All that being said... Slackware was the distro that made me fall in love with Linux a decade and a half ago, and one of the reasons I'm jumping out of the Apple bandwagon is their recent tendency to make their machines more common-user friendly, but less of an "hackers" machine. Therefore, I'm tremendously biased regarding Os' and Distros.
Last year admittedly was rather bad in that sense, because of a couple sweeping changes. Hopefully we don't have to repeat those too many times in the future.
The flipside is that Arch Linux has shown to be able to make sweeping and controversial changes rapidly for longer term benefit.
Personally Ubuntu's 6 month release update always break things for me. Most people I know usually just reinstall when a new version comes.
Considering that they have LTS versions if you have slightly older hardware (12.04 is supported for 5 years), you aren't forced to upgrade.
I've been using Ubuntu since Breezy and every upgrade I haven't had a problem. I use it on many of my machines (apart from my laptop due to Bumblebee) and have had no issues with the 6 month updates, but I usually stay on the LTS versions.
It does need some more time to setup, that's true - things like custom drivers, power management, etc. require some config changes. But once it's working, I don't see it as a maintenance nightmare.
The only two points I could complain about is that:
1. There should be a better guide/support for dkms, or you have to recompile your driver by hand every kernel upgrade
2. You must look at the `pacman` output while upgrading the system, because sometimes (rarely) the migration step is printed out for manual application (for example "mkinitcpio hooks changed, replace all of pata, scsi, sata, usb with a single hook block").
I'd never recommend Arch to a beginner, but it's far from maintenance nightmare.
Alternately all the important bits of pacman output are in /var/log/pacman.log and everything that _requires_ manual intervention is posted on the archlinux.org site. You should not update before checking the arch news.
I have never used Arch, but I heard it uses rolling releases. Could you expand a bit more in the typical problems an Arch user would run into?
It is not as long as you pay attention and know what you want.
There is always a tradeoff between 'works as _I_ want' and 'how much time _I_ have to spend on maintenance'. It is always your choice, and if you want an OS that you can craft exactly to your needs Arch is currently the best (in most cases, of course).
I've spent a couple of hours a few times a year having to maintain my OS so far. I vastly prefer this to Ubuntu, where pretty much everything broke every 6 months.
The tradeoff is that you get new and shiny software continually.
Try Debian stable. I've had a single installation last for 13 years so far.
New and shiny is considerably less important than working and tested the first time something breaks.
I moved to Arch because I was prepared to accept breakage in return for having the latest software. Debian stable is pretty much the exact opposite.
You could easily get a cheap 420 or 520 and try it out for a while. The only thing that I'll be keeping a mac mini I have in the corner of the desk for is photoshop to be honest. Why are you stuck on OSX if I may ask?
Access to Adobe Suite, iWork, Max/MSP/Jitter, and other software that I depend on for my work.
Great idea.
This will save the following thing happening again and again:
1. Someone asks me for a laptop recommendation.
2. I tell them "ThinkPad T-series" and state you can get them online for the price of a mid-range laptop in a retail outfit from http://www.lenovo.com/ with a direct link to the product page - they say thank you.
3. Some time passes
4. I get a call from the person saying they bought a "Lenovo" laptop at their local electrical supplier and it's rubbish and they'll never trust a recommendation from me again. They have inevitably bought a cheap Lenovo close-out machine which has died after 3 months (their cheap machines are crap).
5. Argument ensues and email is re-sent with "ThinkPad" highlighted. Much "aaaah" is to be had.
4 times so far. People just don't get the difference between good and crap, which is to be honest, where Apple are quite good.
> People just don't get the difference between good and crap, which is to be honest, where Apple are quite good.
Apple's secret is to only built good stuff and don't try to serve the cheap crap market. I hope the new ThinkPad brand will do the same.
Right. Most of the laptops at Best Buy are under $600, $400 below Apple's lowest offering.
Yep, an exercise in classic brand fragmentation on their part. Better avoided. This move can only help. I hope it reduces confusion about their professional ThinkPad products.
I hope this doesn't mean further abandoning the Thinkpad design values (centered around excellence in functional design) to compete on the ones that Apple has been so successful on (excellence in visual design). If they do they won't win and will mess up an excellent and unique brand in the process.
They've already started down this road IMO, dropping their near-perfect keyboard for a trendy chiclet one in the x230. To be fair, it's a great chiclet keyboard, but it doesn't have the action of the old ones.
I don't know but my Macbook Pro feels pretty functional. Things like the Magsafe power connector or the superb touchpad don't just look pretty.
Only because it looks nice doesn't mean it's useless. And only because it's functional doesn't mean it has to look like a plastic brick from an 80s sci-fi movie.
I once spilled some coffee (like 50 milliliters or so) on a top of the line Macbook Pro. The keyboard and the DVD drive simply stopped functioning. I got lucky too, because I shut it down immediately, pulled the battery out and then I let it dry for a whole day.
Right now I own a cheap Asus for instance and it has swallowed tea, coffee and water. Besides the keyboard getting a little sticky, nothing happened. I probably got lucky, since I am talking about a piece of shit low-end laptop.
But Thinkpads are designed for accidents. The T line has to pass military tests. Soldiers used Thinkpads in Irak. That plastic brick from the 80s can take abuse like no other laptop on the market.
And besides, I do not care about how shinny and good looking my laptop is. I do care about functionality. Macbooks are great for their touchpad and their high resolution screens. But thinkpads are great in this regard - great keyboard, awesome pointing stick, HD+ available on all models, not to mention things I wish Macbooks had, like the Ultrabay, which allows you to easily put something else in place of your DVD drive. Something like an SSD, or maybe an extra battery.
Something else I love about Thinkpads and HP EliteBooks, something which even low-end models have (ThinkPad L series, Thinkpad Edge, HP ProBook), is the easy access to the internals, without voiding the warranty. On Thinkpads, even the low-end ones, it's really easy to change the hard drive or to add an extra memory stick. On ProBook you don't even need a screwdriver. This is useful not just for upgrading it, but also for cleaning the internal fan and other maintenance stuff. This allows businesses to have in-house hardware support, without having issues with the provided warranty.
There's a lot of things I like about MacBooks. But IMHO, if I were operating a business, I would give MacBooks only to developers that know what they are doing and really want one.
I don't think he was saying that Macs don't have good functional design, rather that excellent visual design is the top priority. While Macs do work great, there are some instances where it's apparent that they valued aesthetics over functionality, such as nice-looking but short-lived power cord cables.
The older ThinkPad keyboard design is the example I thought of immediately. The classic ThinkPads had keyboards designed for people who touch type— they were supremely functional. Not a "buckling spring" IBM Model M keyboard— they use foam rubber under the keys like all other modern keyboards, I suspect—but still more responsive and better for people like me who don't need to look at the keyboard when programming or writing. Now they've replaced their time-tested, solid keyboards for Mac-style "chiclet" keys. Agreed; it's just not the same.
I would kill fr a laptop with a model M keyboard built into it. There must be some way to simulate spring action in a thin keyboard setup.
Most of us don't need to look at the keyboard when writing, chiclet keyboards are completely ok for that. You don't really need the peaked edges to find the keys.
Sure, you don't have to have the peaked edge keys. But that's like saying you don't need a tactile keyboard at all. Those high, peaked keys with responsive feedback are perfect for me (I type 70-80 wpm).
Having a W530 and typing a lot, I can tell you that I will never wish to go back to the old keyboard (having had multiple older T-series).
The new chiclet is way better when you have gotten used to it. As usual you only feel the difference when you go back (in my case to my second-newest one, the T61, which I occasionally use for other stuff)...
As a long-time ThinkPad user, the new keyboard (which I have on my X1 Carbon) is not nearly as big of a problem as you're making it out to be. I got used to it fairly quickly, and I think I like it better now.
But more importantly, Lenovo has really raised the bar in terms of size and weight with the X1 Carbon. I don't think they are abandoning functionality at all.
I also own an x1 carbon -- it's a great laptop, linux runs on it flawlessly. If the battery was changable it would be perfect.
I've not had a problem with the keyboard, and I also own a thinkpad with a "real" thinkpad keyboard. I wouldn't say I prefer one over the other, they're both solid keyboards.
Thanks for telling me that - I fucking loved the keyboard on my previous ThinkPads, so that I a deal killer for me.
Typeing on that keyboard was soo nice.
I love the x220 keyboard, but the chiclet is getting a lot of praise. The spring keyboards are somewhat fragile and get messy, so it might even be an upgrade.
Think, as a brand, is over 100 years old.
If I had to use a PC, I'd use a ThinkPad. This was true before Lenovo took over the branding from IBM (they were already the manufacturer from what I understand), and it's true now that Lenovo is removing their branding from it. It's a solid machine and a great brand.
Yeah, the Thinkpad brand is really one of the few in the industry that I feel is confident in its own fundamentals. It knows it is good, and it knows why it is good. Besides Apple, I can't think of any other brand in the market that I can say that about.
This is a great idea. Allowing for two different brands to evolve with their respective markets.
But this also means they will compete in some of the markets. We'll see what happens.
It should be easier to pick a laptop then, as I don't think we will see any Lenovo with a non-glossy screen.
> But this also means they will compete in some of the markets. We'll see what happens.
I see this as an issue now that they are two separate groups, likely with their own KPIs and numbers to meet. As we see so often with other organisations, they tend towards in-fighting rather than (good) cannibalisation because of the "silo" structure they've created.
Lenovo have had a pretty good track history though, so hopefully it wont come to that.
The best they could do is ditch Thinkpad brand for their consumer grade machines (SL, R). T and X series are Thinkpads. The rest- not so much.
SL and R series "Thinkpads" are rubbish, imo. Not to mention the cheap Ideapad's- the build quality is on par with pretty much every other cheap notebook manufacturers.
Both SL and R-series have been discontinued for more than two generations already. The current ThinkPad series aimed at small businesses are the ThinkPad Edge (E-series) and L-series, the second one of them isn't supposedly that bad. You are also forgetting the W-series, which is the most expensive and which came from the T-series performance models aimed as an portable workstation. Besides that, R-series weren't bad at all, the latest generations were pretty much the same as T-series.
Don't forget the W mobile workstations.
Yup. I've got a W520 at work and its absolutely amazing. Fast, decent screen and even with a quad core i7 has decent battery life and even when being taxed is cool enough on the underside to use directly on my lap.
I agree. I was excited to hear we were getting Thinkpads at work, since I have an X220 at home. But alas, they were consumer-grade laptops designed for watching TV, not a patch on their higher-end devices. They shouldn't share a brand.
ThinkPad is amazingly solid. I had two so far and both were wonderful machine. Lenovo's service is pretty good as well. My latest laptop's Intel SSD drive went dead after a year. They shipped a replacement right the way with no question asked.
And that is one the main reasons why Apple isnt suited for professional users right there. When having a Dell Laptop some technican came the next day to my house and repaired my laptop without any cost. With Apple i can go to the nearest Store and hope that some of the hipsters there want to help me, after which i will have to wait until my repaired hardware comes back from wherever in the world.
Yes and as I found, those annoying hipsters actually are quite rude, arrogant and unhelpful (Kingston Upon Thames Apple Store, Surrey, UK).
An hour to get replacement earphones for my daughter's iPod due to the well known problem of the rocker switch which failing after a week! I asked "so what happens when these fail? Do I have to spend an hour a week down here?". The reply was simply "it's not my problem".
She owns a Cowon now.
Luckily the Cardiff store has significantly less hip and much more helpful staff. I hate having to book an appointment though; I know what's wrong, I just want to drop it off and for them to call me when they fix it under warranty.
I had an IBM era T43 for a while and currently have a T60 that's almost as old as Lenovo's take over of the brand, and it's still chugging along. A friend of mine recently upgraded to the t430u ultrabook and has been loving it. As far as laptops go I'm pretty sold on the thinkpad line for the foreseeable future.
I've got a 10 year old T-series (Think its a T21) in the cupboard. It did 7 years service for the original user for 4-5 hours a day. It was dropped and bashed around regularly.
I only keep it because it has a real serial and parallel port but its still going strong!
I used a T60 as a second monitor for my main laptop and an X40 as my travel laptop. Together they cost well under $150 and I could probably sell them today for what I paid for them. Great machines (although the T60 has a fan speed problem that I fixed with some third party software--without the fix it would be so annoying as to be unusable for me.)
I had the same thing with my T61. It was due to the sense wire on the fan being crimped slightly between the keyboard and roll cage assembly. I managed to fix it with some wiggling of the wire without resorting to fan control software. I also took the entire thing to bits and replaced the heatsink goo with Arctic Silver.
I paid approx $150 for this T61.
Oh, I've put this thing through it's fair share of abuse. It's fallen off the side of a fairly high couch while open, right onto the side of the screen at least twice. No damage. Once when I was living without furniture I had it on the floor and I managed to knock an entire glass of water over right straight into the most open side of it (the side with the fan intakes, ethernet port, and pc card slots), I pulled the power and battery quickly then drained it and toweled off the outside and let it sit for about 2 days, it was fine.
Has someone found out in the meantime whether it's possible to put an W520 replacement keyboard into the new W530? I heart the key mappings in the BIOS would be bad, but it would fit physically at least. But there was no real confirmation.
(I would actually try out the chiclets, but I need all 7 rows and use the pgup, pgdown, del, insert,pos1 and end keys and have them so deep in my muscle memory that I will be miserable when I get a new Thinkpad)
Thinkpads are great otherwise, the W520 is almost perfect.
I hope that this succeeds, because I hate not having a good brand to recommend to people who want a Windows laptop, but I am skeptical that refocusing on business needs is the way to build a product that humans will love.
I think Lenovo wants to be associated more with machines like the Yoga, even though the dependable ThinkPad workhorses are who brought them to the dance.
I think you're reading this backwards, I think this is like Toyota splitting off Lexus into a separate, high-end brand.
No, it's more like Chrysler spinning off Mercedes into its own high end brand.