any place you found thinkpads popular?

i'm an MBA student in NY. 68 students in my classroom, a few macbook pro owners, all american (all running windows...), 4 thinkpad owners( two ppl have x200, one t400 and one t60 they're 2 chinese, korean, american), 1 ideapad owner, and 2 lenovo netbook owners

dell owners: about 25.
hp/compaq owners: about 15
sony vaio owners: about 10
toshiba owners: about 5 (they're all from asian countries, seems american hate toshiba...)

from my sample:
dell:37%
hp: 20%
sony: 15%
lenovo: 10%
toshiba:7%
apple: 5%
others: 6%

clearly dell is #1. dell offer 7% to 12% discounts to our school, and IT staff are experienced with dell laptop support, so they always encourage us to buy dell.
i don't know how many of dell owners really like dell, but those dell owners are from all over the world: american, indian, chinese, japanese, european...


in what situation, school or working place, do you find thinkpads very popular?

 

Thinkpads seem to be rife in finance, sales and IT.

 

Good question. Throughout my life and college, I've only run into thinkpads on a few occasions. Seriously, I've only been within a few feet of one a few times. I remember when I was much younger. I saw a family friend's thinkpad and I thought it was so cool. Since that time, I've always wanted one.

I can't say I've ever seen a Lenovo thinkpad, just IBM. I don't care what some say about their design. I think the "boring" rectangular black design is great.

I'll have one of my own within the next couple weeks, as long as everything goes right.

 

They're not horribly unpopular at my school, I'll maybe see 5-6 throughout a day.

Unlike you, half the laptops I see are Macs, then HP Pavilions and an assortment of Dell consumer/business models make up the majority of the rest. I'll maybe see 2-3 Acer/MSI/Asus netbooks in there too. Then 1 or 2 full sized Acer/Asus/Toshiba laptops (each).

 

many Australian high schools use Thinkpads exclusively. While, in Australian universities lot of people buy consumer laptops from stores, because they can try them before they buy and don't have to wait for delivery.

Thinkpads are used in many large corporations in Australia, but i think Dell and HP sells more because they have larger marketing and sales presence in Australia.

After all Lenovo is number four overall in the Tier one computer category, while HP is number one.

 

At my high school, there is a mix of cheap budget computers (understandable, given the low budgets that us poor high school students have ), Macbooks (usually prevalent among the younger demographic), and Thinkpads (seem to be quite popular at our school, likely because demographically, we have many students whose parents are computer engineers that know Thinkpad quality). Other business-grade laptops are far rarer.

On a side note, though, I have inducted a few other students into the Thinkpad ranks

 

i also noticed this very interesting:
initially i figured that girls should tend to love mac, but actually in my classroom i found it totally different...the more beautiful a girl is, the more shabby is her laptop: bulky ugly slow old ...

 

The message says "Buy me a Macbook"

 

I have not noticed that correlation at all. I know a broad mixture of cute girls who have all types of laptops. I think income and personal values with regards to money factor more into the laptop purchase than looks...(though looks can certainly correlate with other things).

 

I don't see very many ThinkPads at all, but the ones I do see are in the business school at my university. Like aznguyphan, I mostly see Macs, Dells, and HPs.

It's weird though, I don't think I even noticed ThinkPads until I bought one myself.

 

I work at a research institution in India. In the humanities and social sciences section, Thinkpads are rare. Including me there are probably 2 other people who use them. Though there are quite a few consumer-line Lenovos. In the hard sciences section, however, you see the black boxes everywhere. We also get a good deal from Lenovo for the Thinkpads actually. Very soon there is going to be an upgrade of all the machines that researchers use and I think Thinkpads will rapidly proliferate - or so the Lenov Reseller told me. Our admin staff however seem to be wedded to Dells and Acers.

 

Forgot to mention: at least in the California Bay Area, if you walk into any random Starbuck's or Peet's Coffee, you will find a pretty even scattering of Thinkpad and Mac users. Go to the Stanford campus and you'll find a greater variety, although you will still find many Thinkpads and Macs.

And the one time I visited a design firm (IDEO), I found an almost 50/50 split of Macs and Thinkpads - that was pretty surprising to me, since I imagined that the overwhelming majority of these designers would be using Macs.

 

Most students with TP here at the UofT are Chinese. I've seen quite a few among business school, engineering, life sciences students.

I definitely noticed a lot girls with Macs at the social science/arts libraries.

 

Bingo, ur right, cn_habs, I am one of the Chinese student in us. After I almost pulled my trigger on HP DV8T, I just found every other laptop just boring and not stylish, until I went to join CES2010 in vegas, then I found the new product of T410 and T510.

Then I found that they were so expensive sold in China, but here, relatively not expensive. So I just order 1 T510 because the Levono took the hand from IBM, they would not screw up their honor laptop. Lol.

 

Thinkpads tend to be fairly popular with MBA and Engineering students (although a chunk of these use Macs as well). However, liberal arts and life science people seem to focus more on Macs or consumer PC's. I rarely see HP or Dell business class machines unless they're a corporate issue.

 

At UT - Austin, the undergrad campus is littered with Dells and Macs. Most students are affluent so they get Macs via the educational discounts, and Austin is a... trendy place, for lack of a better word. Dell HQ is in Round Rock which is just a few miles north of Austin plus there's even greater educational discounts. About 70% of the laptops I see on campus are Dells or Macs. The next most popular is probably HP. Then the rest is a smattering of Asus/Acer/MSI/Samsung/Sony laptops and netbooks. I rarely see ThinkPads. They are more popular in the business school and engineering/math buildings, but just because it's Austin even those buildings are dominated by Lattitudes and Precision workstations and PowerEdge beasts. It's quite nice when you see another ThinkPad though. It's like you're in an elite in-the-know club.

 

The thing that ultimately swayed me a ThinkPad was that I was able to order *exactly* what I wanted and at a decent price. I'd nearly-ordered several different CTO Dell systems (mostly variations of Studio XPS or Studio 15/17) but could never quite get what I wanted, or if I did, the price was well north of what I wanted to spend. Really the only thing I couldn't get on my T510 that I wanted was a Blu-ray drive, but I could swap out my DVD drive at soem point if I really decide I need it. (I have Blu-ray in my home theatre already--I just wanted the ability to play them on the go on rare occasions.) The other thing I would have liked was USB 3.0, but with eSATA and the posibility of picking up a USB 3.0 ExpressCard later, it just wasn't a deal-breaker.

All that said--I've never found the ThinkPad design especially cool or visually interesting in the past. However, now that I've got my T510 in front of me, the look has really grown on me. I enjoy the understated simplicity of the design now. The only thing I don't like is that most people, taking a quick glance, would not be able to tell that this is a machine built in 2010, since the overall style has remained so similar for many many years. Before getting interested in ThinkPads recently, I would have been one of those people whom would see someone with a modern ThinkPad and think it was a relic from the 90's.

I guess I've been enlightened....

 

Oh, you'll find that actually quite helpful in some places where laptop thefts are common. Few common petty thieves would think to target such a "ghetto" laptop.

One of my friends was shocked to see my T500 boot into Windows 7 in under 30 seconds and fire up Mass Effect 2, something his shiny new Asus can't even do. Since my Thinkpad doesn't have any stickers, he had thought it was from the Pentium 4 era...

 

You know I never thought of the theft prevention aspect! Very cool!
Oh and I just peeled the stickers off my week-old T510 finally too. It's usually one of the first things I do--just looks so much cleaner without them. Plus, I already know what's in there!

 

Just don't expect to pick up any girls with your super cool thinkpad. My x200 is "ugly" .

 

What is the best way to remove the stickers?

 

Getting a corner started then keeping a lot of tension as you pull across. If it is pretty new there shouldn't be must residue. A little spit should remove the excess glue.

 

I think i know what you mean, it has that "im so amazing i dont need to be all super soft and feminine like a mac" look lol

 

Not true! Only that 'different' kind of girls are drawn to ThinkPad users.

Edit: I should have said Male ThinkPad users!

 

Fly transpacific; lots of ThinkPads making the trip, too.

 

I actually find the ThinkPad design quite elegant and visually appealing. It is understated; it has clean lines and looks quite different from the majority of machines that populate the market. I also find the black colour very striking!

I remember when I had come to India for a work-related visit (this is when I was based in the U.S. and was using an IBM ThinkPad - this would have been sometime in the mid 90s), my company had put me up in one of the best hotels in New Delhi. I was in the Coffee Shop waiting for a colleague to join me and I noticed a number of people glancing across towards me. Eventually, one of them walked over and asked me about the ThinkPad - costs, capabilities etc. I quite nonchalantly responded to the questions - I hasten to add that it was more a case of the blind talking to the blind; he seemed as clueless about computers as I was (and as I remain) - and the guy walked off seemingly impressed.

Now, I don't think this will happen in today's India. But given that I don't generally see ThinkPads in the wild as often as I do other machines (including Macs), the novelty factor may still exist! Or, maybe I am just dreaming!

 

I'm study at Engineering department in Taiwan, most of my friends are asus and acer fanatic user. but in my lab from 20 students there is 6 thinkpad user 2 mac user and the rest Toshiba, acer, asus, Hp and lenovo .but my professor prefer using mac.

in Taiwan most of people prefer X series than R series.

 

R series is just a desktop replacement machine. X series are the best type for university since you are carrying it around everywhere.

 

I find the R much lighter than my previous Acer machine. It certainly is not a problem carting it around. Of course, mileages may vary.

 

well, different people have different judgement. When I brought my T400 for the first time into my lab, one girl liked it and the other one asked me "is that really a new computer, looks like from 90's"......

it could be the girl who said like it just being polite to me though, lol

 

When I first got my shiny new T500, my friends thought it was from the stone age. They didn't even think it could play Starcraft!

 

Well at least in the US computers are commodities and accessories. They aren't tools. So people judge.

I judge when I have to fix someone's computer and I am like....*groan* such a horrible trackpad. Ahhh, this keyboard feels horrible.

 

My college had loads of them! But I think that was because it was a Thinkpad university. Only had to pay $2400 to get a $1000 spec'd thinkpad T60!

Where I work (well, for now at least) we're a combination of older Toshiba Tecras and newer Dell Latitudes.

 

Other way around? Haha.

 

Paid $2400 for my thinkpad through the college, required for curriculum. Priced it out on (then) IBM's website to be right around $1000

 

Oh, were you being sarcastic? Sorry. I thought you were happy to get a $2400 laptop for $1000 through your university.

 

I don't see many Thinkpad users here in the UK, usually the popular ones are the HP/Compaq, Dells and Acer. I did see a few during my time at university, probably the only time where I haven't felt so left out is where I went to Cebit 2009 in Hannover, Germany for a week exhibition. Lots of business professionals were using Thinkpads (unsurprisingly the IBM stand had a bundle of them).

Probably my favourite moment is when we were departing at the airport and we all had to queue and take our laptops out for inspection at security. I was with a colleague who dispises Thinkpads (based on looks) yet he was one of the minority as nearly everyone around were taking out their Thinkpads of all kinds - mainly T and X series. The look on his face was priceless! lol

 

I walked by a small coffee shop (not starbucks) in LA and it was unanimously macbooks, almost all unibodies. I'm going to bring my t500 in there someday.

 

the second student with a thinkpad at my unit

 

Ya, most people who want to actually get work done don't go to coffee shops .

A lot of young kids wanting to be seen I presume.

 

I am assuming you are joking here. I wrote almost half of my first book sitting at a coffee shop! I should also add that the book has been reviewed well!

But, I agree with you, sitting at the coffee shop I did notice Macs dominate the mobile computing platform. The rest were a sprinkling of Dells, Acers and HPs. At the time I was using a Sony Viao, which I have sworn never to use again. I am working on my second book on the ThinkPad that I just bought. Maybe I will mention the ThinkPad in the "acknowledgement" section of the book assuming of course that the machine continues to operate well.

On another note: The professor under whose supervision I worked at University began with a Dell, then moved to a ThinkPad. But sadly, he abandoned the ThinkPad after a few months and got himself a Mac. I was not too happy seeing that! When I asked him why, he said that he found it more comfortable to use. Of course, since then he has had a lot of problems with his Mac, but he continues to use it! I would have thought he would have abandoned the Mac too (like he did the ThinkPad), but alas!

 

Most TPs I've only seen were at libraries not Starbucks but it's mostly a personal preference thing. Some people simply don't mind noisy environments.

As for your prof, some men like good-looking laptops as well. To each his own.

 

@cn_habs...

Very true! Luckily the coffee shop I used to frequent was relatively quiet - mostly phd students and post-docs working on their stuff. But there is something to be said about liberal arts students using Macs. I still wonder why this is so? Group think maybe?

Re: the prof...just an observation on my part...as you said, each to his own.

 

B-school, but depends on which one. In Kellogg about 70-80% MBA students use Thinkpads.

 

At UNC-Chapel Hill, the majority of 18k undergrads (70, 80%?) use Thinkpads.

Laptops are mandatory, so I'd reckon we're up there in highest concentration. Spose it's on account Lenovo is headquartered down the road.

 

If I were to describe my T410 I would say its like a "wolf in a sheep's skin"
( in a good way, not the conventional connoation)
It's so subtle and understated that every one is quick to write it off. But, when the going gets tough the thinkpad gets going and catches everyone by surprise.
In a certain sense thinkpads are a classic irony. On the outside they look conservative, understated some would say boring. But on the inside magnesium roll cage, thinklight, spill proof keyboard etc.... its a totally different story.
My girlfriend thinks it a very manly notebook. Not pansy.
I like the fact that the only place it says "lenovo" is next to the left hinge and no place else.

 

I've only seen Thinkpads in medical and engineering settings. Literally all of the professors/grad students own a Thinkpad (X61/X200) at CU--all graphic/processor intensive applications are run offsite.