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Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

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Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#31

Post by InclinedPlane »

meaty wrote: post #22
InclinedPlane wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#32

Post by verroq »

dshep wrote: post #29
wyclif wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

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.

Personally Ubuntu's 6 month release update always break things for me. Most people I know usually just reinstall when a new version comes.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#33

Post by viraptor »

meaty wrote: post #19
msutherl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#34

Post by kybernetyk »

wyclif wrote: post #24
meaty wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#35

Post by svennek »

djmdjm wrote: post #11

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.…

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)...

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#36

Post by kybernetyk »

djmdjm wrote: post #11

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.…

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.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#37

Post by kybernetyk »

meaty wrote: post #18

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" lap…

> 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.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#38

Post by thejosh »

verroq wrote: post #32
dshep wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#39

Post by robotmay »

meaty wrote: post #20
kayoone wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

#40

Post by sp4rki »

dshep wrote: post #29
wyclif wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

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.

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