What is up with Lenovo?

I happen to have an Apple store less than five miles from my home. Their service and support has always been top notch for us. Easier actually than getting a ThinkPad or any other brand machine serviced in my area.

I did however sell my Mac and I am using the T440s now. Digging it.

 

Apple doesn't offer accidental damage protection so the extra ThinkPad warranty can be easier to deal with in cases where there is damage to the laptop.

For being a consumer class laptop , Apple laptops have great warranty overall though.

 

If 90% of users want consumer grade laptops with Thinkpad logo on them, good for them, but I strongly believe that Lenovo should not forget those that were loyal to TP line... for years.

I think most of complaints would go away, if they would put newer specs inside the same(put your fav model here) shell, instead of making it thinner and lighter, why not keep the same size, but make it cooler and add one more 2.5" drive inside? Again, I'm talking about additional model, not replacing newer...

It's like those that like 5" smartphones, but there are some that think 3.7" or 4" is enough, and all they want is just a better camera and/or longer battery.

Just saying...

PS: maybe it would be a good idea to create a petition for keeping classic look and quality?

 

Does anyone remember this?

 

Yes. IMHO best keyboard ever.

 

Still have one stored away in the basement...along with a garden variety of model Ms...

 

I used to have one without the numpad. Loved it. If Lenovo released an updated bluetooth version I'd pay top dollar!

I don't mind the new Thinkpad chiclet keyboard. IMHO it's better than some of the less-than-stellar TP keyboards from years past (remember the keyboard lottery with three different manufacturers?!). Travel is still decent and the keys still give some feedback. Not a patch on mechanical keyboards, but pretty good for a laptop.

 

It seems that there is something like Gresham's law for keyboard layout at Lenovo [bad drives out good].

I was quite pissed last year about the *30 series keyboard layout and exactly what I feared came through: an even crappier keyboard layout. No more trackpoint buttons, no more F-buttons. That arrogant blog post by Lenovo topped it all... "Change Is Hard: Why You Should Give In to the New ThinkPad Keyboard "
Change Is Hard: Why You Should Give In to the New ThinkPad Keyboard - Products - Lenovo Blogs

Lenovo's absolute top blogpost [comments], but censored from the "Top Posts" section...

As far as I'm aware Lenovo never ever substantiated any of their claims or responded to serious questions about this change. Like the 350 hours of "user testing in four countries". Instead we give these strange claims: "We have seen end-users comfortably adjust to these changes in less than an hour." Well, if you're used to typing with the "numpad" on a *20 series Thinkpad you might get "used" to typing with the row of digits... but it will still slow you down bigtime...

While my anger is mostly about the layout, chicklet with it's flat keys (Lenovo is not the worst) is rather irritating. It's something that saves a mm in thickness, but costs a meter of frustration. I get the idea the Thinkpad keyboard layout was "designed" by engineers up untill the *20 series and is now made by some social studies freak or at least someone that never heard of 'keyboard shortcuts'. That also fits with the whole talk on the X1C that it needed a "personality"

At least when you're copying things from Apple (like the crappy keyboard), copy the good things; like the 16:10 screen. But nooo...

That keyboard layout is actually the reason I bought a W520 and not a W530 in summer 2012. Along with the missing eSata on the *30 series.

 

Oh the quarterly "Lenovo is going down" thread... let me jump in on that.

As someone already mentioned, Lenovo has become the #1 seller so they probably doing something right for them. 99% of their users don't use the Caps Lock so they eliminated it, same with Fn keys.

The only thing that Lenovo can do to appease it's ranting longtime users is offering a developer edition on some of the models. I think there they could showcase some of the better technologies and also charge a premium.

 

I thought that Apple was the #1 seller.

 

#1 PC seller, though methinks it still is HP.

 

A Mac is still a PC.

If my ThinkPad runs Linux , I don't called it a Linux computer , I call it a PC.

 

Tell that to the Apple fanboys.

#1 Windows PC seller, happy?

 

This is what REALLY REALLY annoys me- the chiclet keyboard IS inferior in terms of keyboard feel. It feels like you are hitting a cheap office calculator where the buttons have no depth whatsoever.

I hated the new chiclet keyboard so much I went and bought an x220 palmrest, x220 keyboard and converted my x230 to have the x220 keyboard. Perfect!

 

@Jobine,
1# Desktop/Notebook (includes Macs and PC) seller is Lenovo since July last year, see:

- Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 6.9 Percent in Fourth Quarter of 2013

- Holiday PC Shipments on Target as Lenovo Expansion Continues, According to IDC

Thats subjective. I think the old keys in the T420 are inferior in feel. Some may agree, some disagree. Most people seem to have no problem with the keys, only with the layout.

 

Have you read the 438 comments though? Everyone blasts the keyboard design.

Right, if we're going to organise a petition can we do it properly? Ie so that it doesn't just get 3,000 signatures! Who on here is best placed to organise this?

The petition should highlight:

-The keyboards are physically the same- therefore give us the option of having the non-chiclet keyboard back!
-Do not remove the touchpad buttons as physical buttons
-Stop trying to make the laptops thinner (I'd rather lighter?!) at the expensive of important things like the keyboard!!!
-With the exception of the X1, stop soldering RAM (t440s etc)! The t440s, t440 and x240 should have a minimum of 16GB ram!

 

So if the statistics are to be believed , Lenovo succeeded in copying Apple so their sales went up? When I see most of the new Lenovo computers , they look like Mac copies.

I wanted a 17" ThinkPad W series but it looks like Lenovo is just copying Apple (taking away 17" model , making thinner laptops , etc.)

 

If Lenovo's sales are rising amidst a slowing PC industry, they're probably doing something right. I'd imagine it has to do with appealing to what people want. It might be unfortunate, but most people (even business users) don't want a >1" thick PC anymore. My dad, who definitely falls into the core corporate demographic for business laptop usage, was far more impressed with the X1 Carbon than with any other recent Thinkpad. His main complaints regarding his X220 are low screen resolution and thickness/bulkiness.

He did comment that discrete buttons for the trackpad/TrackPoint is a much more intuitive setup than integrated buttons, however.

 

Lenovo should open some retail stores for their IdeaPad line to compete with Apple

I see much more people buying IdeaPads than ThinkPads that's why I'm mentioning that.

 

I do see a fair number of budget G-series IdeaPads around, but most of the Lenovo laptops I see on campus are either the Yoga 13 or a Thinkpad of some sort. Quite popular on the university campus, especially in the engineering school.

 

It would be interesting to find out what percentage of their sales are IdeaPads and the like, and what's left for ThinkPads...

 

I guess this is not the case here, it seems to be the other way around: Lenovo killed their 17" W-Series first, then Apple killed their 17" Macbook Pro.

Making Laptops thinner is a trend started by Intel.

They have some in China since many years, and IdeaPads can be found in various other places where Consumers buy Notebooks (for example Best Buy in the USA, Media Markt here)

Would be interesting, but Lenovo does not spilt their sales numbers apart, so we only can guess. But if I remember correctly, they said something about "4 million T-Series" every year when they announced the T431s in puplic...but no exact numbers about the ThinkPad sales.

 

Indeed, that would be interesting. Considering that all the budget laptops are essentially the same, though, I would guess that the factor that accounts for Lenovo's better sales figures would be its mid-tier segment, the sub-$1000 Thinkpads and the higher-end consumer lines (ie, Yoga). That's purely hypothetical and a guess on my part, though.

 

Not to mention the amount of money they make from selling desktops.

 

Indeed.

My employer is in the process of replacing all the old HP desktops with new Lenovo ones...so it's a five-digit-number-sale in my state alone for a single (albeit large) company...

 

Well, let's see. I've seen Ideapads at every single brick-and-mortar store i visited, but i've yet to see someone actually sell a Thinkpad in new condition. Also, Lenovo's Yoga 11s had 6 marketing videos on Lenovo's channel alone...

People just don't care about the classic Thinkpad look anymore, face it, the majority of us want simple devices for simple tasks. There is a reason chromebooks/ultrabooks are going up in sales, and DTR's are going down. This is caused by many factors. Just take a look at Intel's Ultrabook ads, you can even see a lady ditching what appears to be her thinkpad for an Ultrabook.

If Lenovo is #1, then they are clearly doing something right. Personally, i prefer my Lenovos (Y410p/L420) to my Dells. I though the new keyboard would be bad but i ended up liking it more than the old one.

And finally, I don't think Lenovo even cares about the old Thinkpad purists anymore, they are probably a minority. As the saying goes, "haters talk trash but i get richer when they're doing that".

 

There are a good number of B&M third party retailers that sell the Lenovo consumer lines and some TP Edge models can be found at office supply retailers. Most pre-built Apple products can also be found at these places.

What Lenovo truly lacks is ANY local sales access to their (non-Edge, true) Thinkpad lines. Even third party online access/inventory of 'buy it, ship it now' TPs is spotty at best. There is simply no place to see and buy TP products in person. Why not have distribution at least though some office/business supply chains/warehouses (e.g. Staples, Office Max/Depot, Costco etc.)?

...adding, based on Lenovo customer service and their general lack of reliable information I shutter to think about the idea of a Lenovo Genius Bar.

 

I was trying to say that Lenovo should have a Genius Bar but I guess they aren't clever enough to pull that off though.

Most people (regular consumers not business people) who buy laptops seem to have never hear about a NBD on site warranty , so guess what? Those people will say that Apple has the best warranty ever since they could just go to a Genius Bar and get warranty service (for the most part).

IdeaPads and Apple laptops are aimed towards regular consumers.
No one in their right mind buys an Apple laptop for CAD but many people buy Apple laptops for the same things that IdeaPads tend to do.

 

It depends on one's location. There are several retail outlets in NYC that carry higher-end ThinkPad offerings

ROTFL

 

Well, a Thinkpad Edge is not a real Thinkpad, it's an Ideapad with a trackpoint.

 

That's why the Edge is a disgrace to the ThinkPad name.

I've heard of people buying a ThinkPad Edge because it had the ThinkPad name and they eventually ended up with an Apple laptop instead.

ThinkPads aren't meant to be budget machines...

 

I had an edge 420 for two years before giving it to a relative. It's not the same as T, W, X series. The screen is lousy, a little heavy than T430, but anything else is very decent. I loved it.

 

None here in the LA area AFAIK. Good luck in the flyover country cities. I'd really like to see the new X1 in person.

 

Compare your Edge 420 to a MacBook Pro of the same year and tell me which seems to be a more premium laptop. IBM set the standards for screens , keyboards , features , etc. in their ThinkPad line so it's sad to see a product bare the ThinkPad name that doesn't fit with IBM's vision.

There is hardly anything high end about the Edge 420. The only thing I could think of would be the ThinkPad warranty.

The ThinkPad Edge models offered today still don't have as good screens as were offered about a decade ago on IBM / Lenovo ThinkPads.

 

There always were and have been budget models in the ThinkPad lineup, models that were cheaper in manufacturing and cheaper in quality. Back in the 90s it where the 3xx/5xx models or the "ThinkPad i-Series", which was made by Acer and had a more Consumer-oriented design, and under IBM in the early 2000s the Rxx(e) models. I have one here for myself, and R50e, which screams "El-cheapo". And while I agree that the Edges are not real ThinkPads, the R50e feels way cheaper and worse built compared to the Edge-Series.

It also had less features (no UltraBay for example, which was standard on all more expensive models back then). But not everyone had the money to afford a T or X ThinkPad back then (and still today), so why not give them a cheap options like the L-Series for example? I agree that the E-Series should be discontinued, but there is no reason why Lenovo should abandon the budget market.

And as a side note: The name "ThinkPad Edge" is dead.

You are generalizing way too much. Back then, not every ThinkPad had a good screen, in fact, only the most expensive models had good screens. The screen of my R50e (15" XGA TN) is so bad, I can´t stand it, except for the XGA screen of my former R60 (which R.I.P.) it is the worst screen I have ever seen.

Edge Series is not and never was supposed to be a premium laptop line. Just look at the price.

 

Because most in engineering are smart enough to not buy an Apple. It might also be aided by the fact that a lot of technical universities offer Thinkpads / Elitebooks to their students for quite attractive prices, often with on-campus instant warranty (no fix in <20 minutes and they will swap the HDD to another completely equal laptop).

I've read the majority of them... I think. And yes: they get blasted for it. They deserved that.

Yeah, well, when I was 13 or something I did a petition to get my schoolyard partially free of smoking.... personally handed it do the rector... never heard anything of it again, even though I collected signatures from almost every teacher, including the smokers, except for one very aggressive biology teacher.

As for the physically identical keyboard: that's only between the *20 and *30; with the *40 series they moved the entire (what's left of it) keyboard closer to the display to make the touchpad oversized.

 

Not to mention the fact thet they've changed the actual physical connectors on the keyboard and planar..

 

x201 keyboard is vastly superior to the x230..... I cant even begin to explain it. Have you used an x201 and x230?

 

I sold my X220 to go the X230 specifically because I preferred the typing feel on the X230. I prefer the feel of it, and my typing is slightly faster and more accurate on it. So, I'd disagree that the X201 is "vastly superior" (the X220 and X201 keyboards are very similar). If you prefer it, that's cool--but why people insist on claiming "superiority" for something which is personal opinion continues to baffle me. BTW, I'v been typing on the traditional TP keyboards almost since their beginnings, and I preferred the island keyboard from the first time I tried it.

For me, the difference is 1) the key tops seem a little larger, and 2) I used to occasionally get caught under the old key when typing really fast and not lifting my fingers up enough. I would occasionally end up popping off some of the key tops. The new keyboard allows me to lift my fingers less, which improves my speed. I'm not saying it's "better", but I prefer it.

 

I disagree, I like E330 except for its standard resolution screen and poor speaker. I'm still hoping lenovo would put HD+ or FHD screen on next E3*0.

don't open!

Spoiler

And I don't mind they replace the Capslock with Home+End

Please explain why dead.


*tight budget guy here :hi2:

 

Lenovo has decided to kill the "ThinkPad Edge" brand-name to simplify their product portfolio. Former ThinkPad Edge E-Series is now just called ThinkPad E-Series, as well as the S-Series.

So while the "blasted" name is dead, the products, the E-Series, are still there. My hope is that they kill this product line soon, but I guess they won´t...

 

I totally agree with you on the feel of the keys themselves, and it appears so does most of the ThinkPad users who tried the new keyboard design. But there are deficiencies with the layout. I've been using W530 since about a month or two since it came out, on daily basis, for 10+ hours every day, typing lots and lots, and I still keep making mistakes between Home, End and Insert keys while jumping all over the source code in editor, as well as occasionally going up or down a page or two instead of going one or two characters to the left or right. Those are mistakes that I never been making with old 7-row layout.

 

True for S-series, but I still saw Thinkpad E440 with Edge name in australia lenovo site. I haven't see E440, E445, and E145 physically yet. But as long they have Edge word carved on bottom-right of palmrest, Edge is not dead yet, at least for now

They still have love for tight budget thinkpadders

 

See: ThinkPad Edge is renamed It is a slow transition. If you look closely, you can see that the E-Series is no longer listed as "Edge" on the US website: ThinkPad E Series | Professional-Grade Laptops from Lenovo | Lenovo (US)

So the name is dead, even if it still appears in some places...

 

Lenovo is ditching Ideapad too, their new Y and Z series will only be called Lenovo Y/Z series.

 

If I didn't have the positive experience with E420, I probably would not have bought X220 and T430 two years late. The edge series are still much better than those consumer notebooks.

 

Thanks for the heads up. No wonder I was having trouble finding that post from the Top comments sidebar.... Now they just need to start deleting comments from the blogpost.

 

For those that only have a mid-three figure budget this series (whatever name they give it) is a valuable option. As a consumer, the proper comparison is to other options around that price point, not to more expensive "true" TPs. In that context, the Edge/E is a much better quality product for the money. That should be encouraged, regardless of what it is named.

 

I like Dell Vostros more than ThinkPad Edges.

 

While this is a valid point, I'd rather buy a second-hand higher-end ThinkPad than a new E series, but that's me...

The prices of used ThinkPads - many of them still under warranty - are extremely reasonable nowadays...