Z series notebooks ... discontinued?

Probably a stupid question. But why are the Z series notebooks no longer found on the lenovo site

 

Yes, they have been discontinued.

I think this question has been asked a few times. Like here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=135962

 

It is discontinued. Z is suppose to become the first thinkpad that have :
a. Wide screen
b. Firewire
c. Media card reader
d. Titanium

Those things are considered abnomination for T series purist. So they created Z as an experimental line in complement of T. Later, the Lenovo managers decide to include all of the features above to the T series, starting with T61. They replace the titanium with extra roll cage in the lid to compensate the weight.

Lenovo have already too much product line that making Z hard to fit in. They have thinkpad and 3000 series. 3000 have N, C, V and Y series. Thinkpad have T, Z, X, Xtablet and R series. 3000 is supposed to become the multimedia consumer notebook. And Z is supposedly become multimedia business notebook.

And now we have almost identical product between Z61, R61 and T61. How lenovo can differentiate the main philosophy between them? Multmedia business notebook surely cannot fit anymore to Z, as T and R get similar capabilities. Heck, even T61 and R61 are almost alike now. And dont forget about 3000 series. Very crowded.

Having some identical products considered inefficient in the product life cycle theory and then they decide to not longer develop Z and continue with T and R instead. We will not see any Z62 or Z70, etc. This do not mean that Z is a failed line or have any defect whatsoever, despite some unsatisfied owner in this forum. They just decide to restructure the line within Lenovo product catalogue.

And this does not mean that Lenovo abandoned Z completely too. They still adhere to the after sales service and parts regulation. Lenovo still update the drivers and BIOS (later with Virtualization enabled) in Vista. Since it share many similar parts with T and R, i think it is safe to assume that the Lenovo will still provide the update in the future until the cycle end, along with T60 and R60.

This machine have served me well for almost a year now without major problem. And it surely can handle Vista very good. Use search function, see many other insights here. And look at lenovo blogs. There are plenty of information here and there.

 

Actually, the one thing that the Z series had that the T and R series doesn't is a consumer-type video card. All we're getting for the T and R series is Quadro, workstation-level graphics.

 

Which is not surprising because Thinkpads are business laptops and not consumer laptops.

 

Not entirely true. Santa Rosa generation coincidentally came in the release of T61 and R61 - and all of them come in with Nvidia graphics.

But not in the previous generation where Lenovo still provide ATI and Nvidia graphic option. T and R are also available with consumer oriented graphic card, that is ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 and X1300. There are many specs of T60 with this card available in the internet.

T60 and R60 released in the same time with Z61 series, thus share the same platform (Intel 945 chipset). Z61 and T61 came in the different platform generation, and probably came at different Lenovo decision about which graphic should be used.

Since ATI is merging with AMD (and as i recall there is no thinkpad came with AMD processor), there might be conflict of interest between Lenovo and ATI and they decide to change completely to Nvidia solution. At least for now.

 

What kind of support can we expect to have for the Z series now? Are we just going to be offered comparable T61 models when we send them in for hardware service?

 

i'm pretty sure ibm carries refurbs