What is up with Lenovo?

How on earth do you " 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"? Do you have nails like this or something?:

 

Those are kind of scarey.

 

I would give a wide berth to a woman with nails like those.

PS: and even wider to a man

 

Creepy nails

Anyway I don't see Lenovo changing for the better anytime soon plus they are going the same way as others that sells cheap crap to the same people about every 1.5 to 2 years. I despise anything from HP/compaq.

 

Edges are not bad machines, but since L series is usually not that much more they are my personal choice. But if you are considering an Edge, you could even downgrade to Ideapad, get more performance and/or features, like the Yoga, Y, U and Z series.

One reason i prefer chiclet to regular style ... backlighting.

 

Technology-wise nothing stops manufacturers from making non-chiclet keyboards with backlighting. In fact, they've been on the market for a while and still are, just by Dell and not Lenovo. Some other manufacturers may have or had some too, I'm just not aware of them.

 

L series reminds me of the old R series to a degree and should be the lowest one on the totem pole to carry a ThinkPad name in my opinion. There are some decent offerings to be found there, just like with its predecessor...

Edge is just outright hideous...

 

No, I don't. I have normal fingers with short nails. My experience is what it is--I realize that some have such a strong emotional attachment to the keyboard that they're in disbelief that someones' experience could be different than there own, but that's my experience. I'm sorry it upsets you so much.

 

Ideapads don't have trackpoint, if not, I would be happy to have more options around. The other brands that have trackpoint like dell and HP are not widely available in my place, even if there are, they're more expensive than thinkpad E series. Their service centers are also limited.

I don't mind to buy second hand non-E series thinkpad, but none satisfy me currently to my criteria (lightweight and good battery life). The closest one is X220 core i5 without IPS display, but after some thoughts I eventually choose E330 core i5 because it has more powerful ivy bridge CPU and bigger screen size (13"). If I want to get X220, it should be the IPS one, but it's very rare in local market.

The other 2nd hand choices:
T430s = bad battery life without bay battery and very expensive even for 2nd hand price
X230 = still more expensive than E330. The IPS version is even much more expensive.

The T440 (HD+) looks like a better option, but it's not released yet in my place. If I got more budgets, T440s FHD is definitely my ultimate choice.

 

People need to learn how to fix and mend things instead of being so dependent on others for such simple things. If the warranty is for only a year I wouldn't buy it unless it is of a very high quality and not all cheap plastic. Breathe on it and the screen falls off while a old t500 is strong enough to beat someone to a pulp yet still be usable afterwards.

 

In all fairness, the difference between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge is rather small in most respects. I'd call in negligible myself.

Without knowing what specific market you're located in, it's tough to say much of anything.

Having said that, I've been selling used ThinkPads worldwide for the past decade and am far from being the only one...

Good luck with the E330.

 

With thin and light being a trend , it's becoming impossible or very hard to fix things yourself (e.g. see MacBook Retina Pro models).

 

And in the case of Apple: to use the maximum performance...

 

Don't worry, mate, I had the same issue is yours, though I don't think I ever managed to actually pop off any keys.

 

Posting on a x60 purchased in 2008 still with the IBM Thinkpad branding. I'll be on the market for a new laptop come this fall for graduate school. The main reason I purchased a Thinkpad to begin with was the fact I had fallen in love with Dell Latitude with the trackpoint.

I despise touchpads given the fact they are ergonomically subpar and inefficient when it comes to typing compared to trackpoints. I love the fact that I can type navigate the cursor without having to take my hands of the keyboard. Also the trackpoint is a god send when scrolling through websites with little strain on your hands.

While I will save judgement until I try out the new keyboard, my biggest qualm is the button less trackpoint. Again the only reason I purchased a Thinkpad was because I fell in love with the trackpoint. Hopefully the negative feedback on such drastic changes for the sake of sleekness over function is reversed.

 

Same here with regards to TrackPoint and typing, though ThinkPad was the very first laptop I ever owned. I'm supposed to get W540 with new button-less crap in about a week (if not delayed). Will share my experience with the TrackPoint once it's in and set up.

 

Nice article on Ars regarding this whole keyboard mess.

Stop trying to innovate keyboards. You

Personally I can't even find the energy to be mad about this anymore. They made the keyboard progressively worse over the past few generations and we complained to no effect. Lenovo clearly doesn't care about what anyone thinks, so I'm just hoping someone else picks up the torch for putting great keyboards on their laptops.

 

Apple is the leader now. Lenovo is just a follower.

 

Hopefully, this article will catch some attention at Lenovo and make them rethink. I was honestly shocked was I saw the Acer 5 row keyboard for the first time.

 

I'd bet on a snowball surviving hellfire sooner than Lenovo reversing its "keyboard re-design" strategy...

 

i doubt that the keyboard format will change.

 

I LIVE on my laptop. I cannot think of any instance where losing caps lock for a shift-doubletap would even be inconvenient much less a deal breaker. I'd be far more upset by the BS key smaller or gone or moved, but almost all mobile devices have used shiftshift from the beginning. I could see me maybe wanting an indicator on the screen to let me know I was in caps tho... maybe movable and sizable so I could put it wherever I want, with a transparency setting too... ya thats it....

 

It's the problem upside down. There are no useless keys on 10x key keyboard, much less on a 8x keys laptop keyboard. Quite a few people use these, daily, blindly, even if you and I don't ( I used Scroll Lock maybe 5 times in my whole life ).

Can you think of any situation, when the presence of a physical key, called 'Caps Lock', would be a deal breaker? Mind, nothing stops a person who never, ever, uses the function, to disable it, or remap to something else, like another "Ctrl" key, or to switch between English and the favorite national layout, or something else entirely.

 

:\ I guess my dream of an X260t with a 7 row keyboard is no more?

 

This. You don't like CapsLock - there are means in ThinkPad keyboard mapping tool as well as third-party tools to disable or remap it. Me - I use CapsLock daily when I need to enter LONG_CONSTANT_IDENTIFICATORS_IN_C_PLUS_PLUS_CODE. Because, you know, naming conventions, coding standards, that kind of thing.

 

I'm curious: what application, running on windows 8.1, uses, say, >4GB RAM?

 

Pretty much any application that has x64 version, as the main purpose of having this version is usually to access more than 2-3GB RAM. Photoshop/CaptureOne/panorama-stitching tools/software development tools/virtual machines/databases/scientific tools/etc. etc. Plus many applications, which COULD have been developed to save memory, but where not to, because RAM is cheap, and time (both development and execution) isn't.

Even browsers can lately consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM easily. Per tab

 

Not sure how you're consuming hundreds of MB of RAM in just a browser tab.. I'll usually have 5-6 tabs open in Firefox (probably the heaviest browser out there) and I use maybe 200MB max.

 

Among those that I've dealt with - virtual machine hypervisors (VirtualBox, VM Ware products), databases (MS SQL Server is a pig in that regard if left untweaked), some scientific simulations apps. Some games too, Supreme Commander being among more notorious.

Per process? I don't even know any major one that would be simply running as 64-bit process, with exception of compilers/linkers themselves and those IDEs that run within 64-bit JVM.

I seem to remember Chrome (when I was still using it) was consuming way more memory than Firefox, and I assume that thanks to using it for all kinds of caching it was performing better and giving impression of being lighter without actually being any lighter than other browsers. I don't know about nowadays though as I now do all my browsing on Linux.

 

Fixed it for you...

 

Chrome is a horrible memory hog. I have 4 Chrome tabs open as I type this, and Task Manager shows 9 Chrome processes running, consuming over 400MB of memory. The more Google tweaks Chrome the worse it seems to get.

 

Ha knowing Lenovo, they probably fired the IBM engineers that developed the original Think styled keyboards and let the Idea engineers run rampant over Think.

 

That seems to be indeed the case, judging from the end results.

 

Your dread is dead, mutilated and buried. Lenovo is even ditching tabletPC's for dual hinge convertibles.

 

My point is, I don't want a dual hinged convertible. Lenovo's X series tablets was the best product on the market in it's category (best battery life, Lenovo software, pen/touch screen drivers, build quality, keyboard quality, far surpasses the XT line from Dell and the 27xx line from HP), it's unfortunately I won't be buying any new ThinkPads until things start to drastically change.

 

Businesses want consumer features... If there was no profit (demand) for Lenovo's new designs, they wouldn't exist.

At least there will always be a crazy old coot like Ajukla66 making FrankenPads for the old timers to enjoy.

 

Too many Ideas, less Thinking...

 

Seems you are forgetting the Essential.

 

Well I don't want consumer features, I want old school business features. There is hardly any profit on the PC market, look at IBM. They completely abandoned it, and HP/Dell were thinking about going enterprise only. That and on 300-500 dollar models, most OEMs make 10-15 dollars PROFIT. The consumer market is a rat race to sell cheap crap and the most of it. I'm not looking for that. If the X260t was up to my specifications or mostly so, I would gladly pay 2-3k for it, and Lenovo can take my money.

I might be one of those old coots, minus the old part. When I think of Think brand, I think of the classic ThinkPad design, like a mountain. Tried and tested to last basically forever. I don't want glossy displays, touchscreen, Windows 8 garbage. I only buy gaming laptops for my gaming needs, but my normal use laptops for like surfing the web or productivity use were always business class (my Vostro 1500, Latitude 13, Latitude E6400, E6410, ThinkPad T61, T60, T410s, X201, X200T, X61t, X220T)

 

I have no doubts that some businesses want that, that's why companies have different product lines/styles... I'm not an expert, but I highly doubt that it was based on real demand, I think it was more like "we know better" and "let's make it a trend", you know like apple, since "we're not worse than apple, we're #1 pc manu!"... apple at least kept centered keyboard.

Why I think this way? Well for starters the yoga tablet and hybrid laptops that Lenovo has. It's a perfect example of a company experimenting and trying to innovate, but I cannot explain the decision of removing all options for those that don't need consumer features, they really just want a reliable work machine...

 

What's wrong with Lenovo? They're following market trends, and have earned a #1 spot because of it. As much as we'd prefer to believe otherwise, the dedicated professional market is very small (and shrinking), too small for any company to put significant focus into. What they'd rather do is upsell normal consumers into more "luxury" or "premium" models with higher margin. IBM sold off the PC division to Lenovo because it wasn't making them money -- they were almost completely targeting business, education, and enterprise, but that level of revenue isn't enough to sustain a business once competition increased.

What we have is the consumerization of business, where businesses and employees are becoming more accepting of cheaper computers (or tablets) that are more disposable, or allowing them to bring in their computer from home and work from it. On top of that, you have "legacy" systems bought in the last few years that are unlikely to be replaced any time soon, because their workload doesn't demand more power.

So, Lenovo is in a quandary -- do they keep with their history and just bump specs each year? Most consumers just aren't wow'd by matte black rubber, 4:3 screens, and ultranav with dedicated buttons. They want super sharp widescreens, cool touch capabilities, a razor thin/sleek/sexy profile, big trackpads, and other similar features -- consequently, things that are now proliferating the ThinkPad lines.

Take that new X1 Carbon that everyone loves to discuss -- or its keyboard, anyway. Lenovo wanted a "cool" bullet point to put on their slides, something different, so they pushed that "Adaptive Keyboard" that changes based on what app you're in. They also shifted around some keys that most consumers don't even use to make it different. True professionals do-not-care about any of that -- most would rather have a new X302 or similar with more power, reasonable thinness, classic keyboard, and no extra hoopla. They already know the keyboard shortcuts for their apps. This new X1 Carbon just isn't designed for a traditional professional -- it's designed for normal consumers.

Reality is, this is what ThinkPad is becoming, for better or worse. I'm not opposed to change, as long as it would equal or improve my own workflows. I have a W540 on order, and have a few ThinkPad Yoga's in the office. You get some good with the bad, and there's some adjustment, but ultimately, I still think they're the best machines on the market.

My biggest gripe with Lenovo? Being unable to get a timely "order -> ship" process for machines is something they really need to work on. Spending near $2,000 for a computer, it should be here within a week. They've did this long enough to know how to anticipate orders for each model line, and should know how their suppliers function. My W540 has been delayed several times now, and it's really just unacceptable at this point.

 

Nothing's wrong with what Lenovo's doing in the overall scheme of things...

...I just won't be ever buying from them again unless they reintroduce features that made me buy a Thinkpad in the first place.

Funny enough, I've never had any shipping issues with Lenovo whenever I bought my CTO W520. Nine day total, and it probably would have been shorter if I didn't order over a weekend.

 

As per their own admission, Lenovo operates at the lowest profit margin in the industry. See also here:

Lenovo Profit Margin 0992.HK Hong Kong

Lenovo: PC king with margin malaise | South China Morning Post

Apple

This is why the customer service is going in the toilet fast, and we are seeing unprecedented delays with shipments of new machines. The JIT concept does have its limits.

I'm getting a little tired of this simplistic view being repeated ad nauseam all over the web. Selling off the PC Division was a part of a much larger global strategy which the IBM started implementing while that part of the company was still making money in 1999/2000...

 

As much as "I am disappoint" with the situation, I think you're 100% correct in it's assessment. As to shipping - this is the first time I'm having my shipping rescheduled twice, all previous laptops got shipped and arrived way ahead of projected dates. Granted, this is also the first time I've ordered laptop on it's release date...

 

This I agree with. You can choose to have a smaller profile of high quality products (aka Lenovo from 2006-2009) or you can choose to be like: Acer/Gateway/Emachines, Dell, HP, ASUS, MSI, and all the other PC manufacturers in the world, sell the cheapest crap and the most of it. Lenovo is no different from that, I would prefer Lenovo go for lower volume sales but much higher profit margins, just like...Apple. Gosh what a concept.

 

Sorry to offend -- didn't think I needed to go into in-depth analysis on why it was sold. At the end of the day, they sold it, and you don't typically sell an asset that you believe has long-term profitability -- especially one that was core to their business for years.

It's moot, I probably shouldn't have even mentioned it, because it wasn't central to my point -- Lenovo is making the historically business-targeted line more consumer oriented, and because they're #1 in sales, it's unlikely to change. I'd love to see 4:3 screens, matte rubber casings, classic keyboards/ultranav -- I just have limited hope given how the models have been progressing.

I'd honestly expect them to discontinue the whole line before they'd start to go backwards on their design choices.

 

I'd love for Lenovo to take the stance of being the "Apple of the PCs". That's how I used to feel they carried themselves. I'd always move back and forth between a Mac and a ThinkPad, and always felt like they were equivalent build quality and experiences. In the last couple of revisions, however, I have felt the quality slip from Lenovo. I'd gladly pay a premium to get a better built, more business-friendly machine, I'm just not seeing it in the cards. :/

 

No offense taken. I've never owned IBM/Lenovo stock or was employed by either. Their business practices don't affect my life in any significant way.

With that out of the way, hardly anything that IBM ever did was "typical"...and selling off the PC Division was just the final step in tremendous change of course on all levels...

No argument from me on this one. Lenovo will not reverse its course. That much is clear

 

I was gonna blame Lenovo for slow shipping, but after waiting 11 days for my DAS keyboard with "express" shipping from NCIX i realized that shipping has more to do with the location i live in than who i am buying from.

Gotta love living in a rather isolated place, but at least it's nice here.

 

I have to say, I've checked out some PEI landscape shots and it does look pretty nice. Cold, I'd imagine, but nice.

I'm lucky that IBM service is quick for me, though probably it's because I'm practically up the road from Atlanta.