Alternatives to Thinkpad T530/430? There is no match for Lenovo in this category?

I will just cut to the chase and ask what are the alternatives to Thinkpad Laptops which meet the following standards:

1. Matt screen (14" or 15")
2. Good display quality with vivid color (IPS or good quality TN)
3. Good keyboard
4. Easily Upgradeable (memory, hard drive etc)
5. Rugged build quality
6. Cheap price from the outlet (refurbished are acceptable)

I am really frustrated my experience on Lenovo's outlet and I am thinking spending my money elsewhere. Twice they have cancelled my order and there is nothing wrong on my billing or shipping information. The recent order is delayed and then cancelled without any explanation.

 

Your best bet will be the Dell Latitude E6x30 series Dell's direct competitor, which is available from Dell Outlet. The HP Elitebook 8470p/8470w and 8570p/8570w are also good but more expensive. My experience with Dell's Outlet has been very positive on both the systems and support, and with the 25% off or sometimes even 30% off coupons you can get incredible deals.

For your requirements:

1. Latitudes and Elitebooks have all matte screens
2. T430 and T530 systems (other than 1080p T530s) don't have IPS or necessarily "good" displays, pretty much all other business computers of this segment are the same
3. Depends on your taste, personally I like how the Latitudes don't have chicklet keys. HP Elitebooks also have decent keyboards and much better touchpads.
4. Yes for Latitudes and Elitebooks
5. I would say Elitebooks are built better than current Thinkpads, Latitudes should be about equal
6. Dell Outlet is great

 

I am currently using an IPS screen and the poor display of T530 (1366 X 768) really turned me off. I heard that 1920x1080 screen on T530 is great and wonder if there is a counterpart from Dell. Could you tell me what specific screen do you recommend I get from Dell Latitude?

 

If you like everything else about that T530, just replace the screen or get a machine with a FHD panel. That's the only decent LCD available in the current full-size ThinkPad line-up.

As for the Dells, go into the Outlet as the other posted had suggested, and pick out a machine with an IPS LCD.

My pick would be HP, but they are on the expensive side of the fence. Nothing beats a Dream Color panel, though. Not in my book anyway.

Good luck.

 

I promised myself never buy a HP after my HP Dv2000t bit the dust with overheat GPU.

It is not thinkpad per se I don't like. Lenovo's customer service and billing department are forcing me to seek alternatives.

 

Well, you might be missing on some great laptops, and this is coming from someone who has gone through many of them, and values the screen above almost anything else.

That train of thoughts leaves Dell as pretty much your only choice I'd say.

My understanding was that you were less-than-thrilled with the HD panel of your current T530...which doesn't surprise me one bit. They are garbage, plain and simple.

The way I see it, here are your options:

a) Get a T530 with a FHD LCD

b) Swap your current LCD for a FHD one

c) Get something from Dell Outlet that would suit your needs.

Good luck.

 

I made the same vow after several HP laptops that I had bought around the same time melted down about a month after warranty expiration. This is the well known overheating problem. HP deliberately and knowingly makes their computers out of the crappiest designs and cheapest materials in order to boost their short term profits. I will never ever again give money to a company that takes this approach, because you know that mentality will spread, or already has spread, to their "premium" lines. I currently have Lenovo and Apple. Both are solid and reliable. Lenovo does have a weak base screen though.

 

I have experience with both Lenovo and Dell (outlet) so for what it's worth, I will share them. I won't place too much importance on what I'm about to mention since experiences of each person will vary greatly due to countless factors.

I have had the Thinkpad T530 with the FHD screen for a while now and really like it. Very very nice laptop. I also just ordered a Dell Latitude E6530 with the FHD screen from the Dell outlet. Since I have not received it yet, I cannot comment on it.

With Lenovo, there seems to be less integration between different layers of the company. That might explain some delays in responses, though I'm not certain in the least. In the end, howerver, it straightens out. The reps from Lenovo are very nice so it makes it all worthwhile. I would have no problem with ordering from Lenovo again based on customer service. Patience is the key. Of course, it is easier said than done.

The experiences I've had with Dell have been great. The phone hold times are virtually non-existent. The customer support agents almost instantly answer the phone and are very courteous. I placed a wrong order yesterday so I placed another one today. I chatted with a Dell sales rep and later called the number he gave me. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed of the transaction. I asked the rep to cancel the order and he says no problem but I need to be transferred to another agent. Since that agent wasn't available, he simply told me he will do it himself immediately. If that was not enough, he said the money would be immediately refunded back. So I check my account and in a matter of seconds, it's there!

So what to make of it? Nothing. Both companies offer good support and I'm fairly sure HP would offer the same.

 

I have used Dell latitude at work for the last eight years, first with their D series and then the E series. At home I have the Thinkpads, first E420 and then T430. Thinkpads are in general lighter, more portable, the cooling system is definitely better. Interestingly our group of twenty people all got the Dell latitude at about the same time, but more than half of them have had their Dell replaced by something from HP.

 

Current Dell Latitude lines are quite robust due to their Tri-Metal construction, though the trade off is that it's heavier than the equvalent ThinkPad. It's also slightly bigger too, their 14" notebook looks just as big as a 15" notebook in my eyes.



Depending on your preference the Latitude line still uses the traditional keyboard layout opposed to the chiclet style now adopted by HP and Lenovo. Personally I can't fault Dell's customer support as they have been very good in my experience, sometimes even replacing/upgrading to a newer model if things go wrong within the 3 year warranty period. I must admit that I had mixed experiences with Lenovo's support but this is probably because I'm based in the EU, I heard exceptional service for those based in the US however.

 

Personally I think that the Thinkpad is a better product than the Latitude, but I just can't handle how bad the customer support and service is from Lenovo. For example, the T430 I bought last year with the Intel 6300 Wifi was defective. They never found the problem so I wanted to return it. It took 3 months for the $1200 to be credited back. Every time I called it was "we can check your status in 3-5 days." I had to put in a complaint with the BBB to get a call and finally get my money back. Recently I also bought a Y410p for family, which also had a Wifi card issue. Now I am going back through the whole repair/return fiasco again.

Dell's support so far has been great. They give plenty of information, the repairs are fast, they will upgrade your computer many times if things go wrong, and the return takes about 2-3 days instead of 2-3 months. I am looking to buy a W540 when it comes out to upgrade my Latitude as it is the only workstation I have found to have such good battery life, but the support is the only thing that can make me spend $700 more and buy an Elitebook.

 

I'd like to echo that... TP > Latitude, but Lenovo support is awful (or just standard). With Dell's Latitude/Precision support they have the chat option, and they'll overnight parts to you if you can diagnose your problem. They almost always follow up afterward too. As far as I know with all Lenovo TP support you have to call some guy (or gal) in India, you have to send the laptop back to them or take it to a service center, the turnaround will take days to weeks, and obviously nobody ever gets back. Dell will also sometimes replace cracked plastics or screen bright spots, while Lenovo will always insist it's user-caused damaged.

 

No.

ThinkPads are supported from Atlanta, Georgia from a call center that is open 24/7/365. IdeaPads, on other hand...from someplace else.

They will overnight the parts - such as hard drive, keyboard or anything else that's considered a CRU (customer replaceable unit) - as well.

I've had maybe three or four "brushes" with the Depot over the past decade, but am well aware that there's a number of folks out there whose luck didn't quite match mine, so obviously, YMMV in that respect.

As for "user-caused damage"...that's a tough one. Some of the stories that I read on Lenovo's forum over the past few years were quite heartbreaking...

That's why I always advised my customers to get the accidental protection along with the warranty...many a times it ends up money being well-spent.

 

Well, that Atlanta Georgia call center must have a lot of Indian employees, because that's what I've gotten every time. Not that I have anything against Indians, it just feels low-quality... kind of like the plastic body on a Galaxy S3.

And yes, I'm aware that there are some CRUs, but Dell considered basically everything a CRU, and it's particularly with things like motherboards or plastics where I trust the service depot the least because I always get machines back with something not fixed or not seated properly, etc.

Although I will admit that I have used Lenovo support much less than Dell support so definitely YMMV. It's not any one particular thing that bothers me, it's just the aggregate of all the limitations, especially when the other camp has a system that I actually like.

 

I've spoken to folks wih Indian accents, sure. Along wih the ones sporting Carribean, NY and many others, including one gentleman who must've been either a New Zealander or South African.

Being that I speak with an accent myself, I guess it makes me somewhat more open to the idea that getting to a rep with a foreign accent doesn't necessarily mean that the call center was outsourced to their land of origin...

I'd trust an average end-user even less to swap a motherboard than a depot tech, but that's me...

 

So a different accents makes the quality feel different? Are we actually talking about customer service here or something different? Last time I dealt with someone from Dell who resolved the issue in a great way had an Indian accent. The last time I also spoke to someone from Lenovo was also with somebody with an Indian accent and my issue got resolved as well. I don't understand what the big deal is. If someone can do their job, it doesn't matter if they're in good ole' USA or thousands of miles away.

In fact, I believe I dealt with Lenovo's Morrisville center for support recently (not sure though) and also got great help from someone with an Indian name. Not unreasonable considering Morrisville has a large Indian population.

 

Yikes guys, it's got nothing to do with the nationalities or the accents; to me it's just the association that the support has been outsourced regardless of whether it is or isn't.

 

I'm pretty surprised to see people saying bad stuff about "Lenovo's" customer service. Thinkpads *aren't* serviced by Lenovo, but by IBM in Atlanta, GA (as ajkula66 said). As with my experience with them, I've had called them for the following (and what they did):

• Original battery stopped charging a few months into owning my W520 (a free replacement arrived less than 24 hours later)
• I chipped off a key on the keyboard a few months after that (they offered to send a tech to my dorm the next day, but I opted for them to ship it. Arrived less than 24 hours later)
• Space key started dying on me a few weeks ago (arrived sometime between 24 and 48 hours, because they were "out of stock", I was told)
• The laptop felt a little hot, and I didn't want to fix it myself because I was curious about in-home service (they sent a tech about 24 hours later with a fan assembly, but he had to come back again the next day because IBM gave him the fan for the dual-core W520, not the quad-core part that I needed)

And all the Atlanta techs I ever spoke to all spoke in a General American English accent (similar to newscasters), though some had a small hint of a Southern accent, and one sounded African-American to me. No Indian accents or anything (you can test this yourself, so I hear, by trying to get them to say something with a long-o sound like in "book"). But, so long as the support is of high quality, why should accent matter anyway? Now, as for **actual** Lenovo service (Ideapads and such), I dont' know much about, but I bet they're no better than other consumer-class support...

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Back to the original question, the HD screen on the T530 is basically garbage, as stated earlier. The FHD display, on the other hand, is much better (95% NTSC color gamut vs ~40-50% for the HD display, somewhat brighter, and overall looked better), but it's an expensive option compared to other FHD options in the Dell and HP business laptops ($250 retail vs <$100 retail for Dell/HP, but they use ~60% NTSC color gamut FHD displays). If you're going to look at refurbished laptops, I'd suggest that you check out HP's Business Outlet as well as Dell's, as both have some great prices on their laptops (I bought an Elitebook 8570p with base i5, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, FHD, 1yr depot, and Intel 6205 for $649, or $848 when I added a 3yr NBD + Accidental). Personally, I found HP's outlet to be better than Dell's simply since it's so much easier to search than Dell's (just Ctrl + F for models/features you want, whereas with Dell you have to click through *everything* to find something good).

 

Yes.

The above statements are free from delusion.

(Anyway, try to imagine a Silicon Valley without accents of any kinds. Or RTP. Or Austin...)

 

What is BBB? I want to file a complaint through it or thought other channels which cut through the corporate bureaucracy

 

Can you recommend some Asian brands? Asus, Acer or Samsung? Are they good? Underrated?

 

BBB is the Better Business Bureau ( United States and Canada BBB Consumer and Business Reviews, Reports, Ratings, Complaints and Accredited Business Listings). Usually, companies take BBB complains pretty seriously since frequent negative comments can be a PR disaster, though they're not legally-binding iirc (so a shady company can ignore them if they want).

From what I hear, Asus warranty honoring is a hit-or-miss, though you can get a 1yr depot + 1yr accidental on some of their laptops. As for reliability, they're okay-ish (pretty much all consumer-class laptops are more or less the same build quality, and miles behind business-class). Acer, though, is the exception and their hardware isn't up to par with most of the consumer-class laptops, so I wouldn't touch them with a 20ft pole unless I was buying a disposable system that I honestly didn't care about keeping around. Supposedly they've gotten *a bit* better, but but a bit better than bad isn't all that attractive. Samsung's pretty overrated imo; same build quality as most other consumer-class laptops but they charge extra for the name (their specs certainly don't justify their prices).

You do know that Lenovo is a Chinese company, right?