" How To Kill The Thinkpad "

Selling the laptop business to lenovo was the worst thing, I belive IBM ever did even worse than it's failed licensing agreement over Windows OS in the 80's. Since the Lenovo take over of the thinkpad it has been down hill for this amazing piece of technology by far the best notebooks in terms of build quality, durability warranty and corporate appeal. Now it's rediculous you have to wait months to buy a laptop. Most people haven't gotten their T61's yet lets even not think about mentioning the Thinkpad T61p. We have received many excuses as to why the delays ie. we can't find a screen manufacturer hmm, how about forgetting to install the front bezel on thousands of machines, parts shortages you know the drill. And one last thing to top it off if you guys haven't noticed the T61 is no where close to the quality of the t60s or t42s they are using cheap parts to assemble these machines as you can see the price of the T61 is very cheap I guess they're passing down the savings hmm go figure.

 

Doesn't it feel better to get it off your chest?

 

it's true though
as my friend might say
this is a rookie mistake
not the kind of mistake a huge company makes

 

They are a rookie in direct sales....the corporate market which they are used to got their orders perfectly.

 

Yea these shipping delays suck. Ive decided to just order from a retailer.... i actually want to use my computer over the summer.... not wait for it.

 

Considering that all thinkpads that predated lenovo (t43 and behind) had bad issues with the motherboard cracking from stress, which was later fixed by lenovo with internal roll cages.... I would have to say Lenovo is doing a great job.

My t60 is awesome, the X61 I am reviewing is awesome, so I dont see how they are doing anything bad.

Wait times have always been a problem. It was a problem with the T42 was being sold, with the T43 was being sold, when the z60m was being sold, etc etc. This is NOT a Lenovo problem. The business laptops are in very high demand, and average consumers get the lower priority compared to high volume contracts.

Oh, and regarding the price. IBM had severly inflated the price on its old laptops. Top of the line models almost reached 4k with the t41p or t42p. The T60p 15" version from Lenovo was around the 2800 mark. T61 prices are even lower since component costs for everything has dropped. Ram is close to 1/3 the price for an insane amount compared to what it used to be, 2.5" drives are booming, and processor prices are also very low.

 

I agree with dietcokefiend. Take a look at the real history not just your inflamed anger from the delays.

The product is still awesome, the support is top notch (when there are not 10,000 people calling 5x a day asking where their order is...), and lenovo has even brought the prices down to be competitive!

 

But back in the day, the US Justice Dept essentially forced IBM to give up control of the OS for the PC, or else risk being broken up by law.

In contrast, selling the PC division was a voluntary business move because PCs and laptops were deemed to have a relatively unprofitable future.

 

I love his avatar

 

Man I hope not.

The fact that the t dropped so much is the only reason I w/with the t61 this time around instead of an R or Z.

It's hard to argue with price drop = quality drop. Harder that they're narrowing their profit margin on anything.

 

But the T60 and X60 were in fact IBM designs.

As for the T61, many longstanding thinkpad fans (witness over at thinkpads.com) are thumbs-down on the T61 because it is bigger & fatter and more power hungry.

As for the X61, let's see if the hot right palm rest issue is fixed (especially for ones with the Atheros-chip wifi)

 

The T61 and X61 are early yet, heck a lot of the type of people who post info about them on the net do not even have them yet or have not had them long.

Give them a bit of time before saying what is wrong with them...

 

Lenovo moved/outsourced T61 production to a Compal plant in china - same line that assembles Dell Inspirons.
This plant is infamous for its low cost and poor quality.
So no kidding that quality for T61 could be an issue compared to before... well we will see...

 

Well, there's no could about page five on that review where the chinese guy is bending the "carbon-plastic composite" like it's a credit card.

 

The palmrest is still quite warm, but I did notice that there are in fact 2 fans inside the x61, as the models with WWAN in them get a small one right under the middle of the palmrest. Still warm though since both mini-pci-e cards are located on the right side.

My T60 has mitsubishi made carbon/plastic palmrests, and when its not mounted and secured down it is VERY flexible. The fun part is that it bends quite far without cracking though.

I will have an X61 for the next couple of weeks. Give me your methods of torture and I will put it through its paces. I have already had the thing apart once to inspect its structure and component layout.

These types of arguments ALWAYS come up for each new model line. Remember the ****storm when the T60 first came out? Same thing right now with the T61.

 

If compal is making the t61 there is no hope. I've seen the crap they make including disgusting looking hp and dell notebooks. These notebooks not only look like crap they are crap. They start to fall apart after a few months, the paint scratches and peels, hinges crack etc. They look like used painted pizza boxes. Has anyone seen a dell inspiron lately it looks like a toy remeber those Vtec all in one learning laptops of the 90's for 3-8 year olds. Next to my professional looking T60p.

Let me ask this if you're baking a cake you first get all the ingredients then you begin the process, right? You don't go run to 7-eleven to get eggs and sugar, yeast etc after you preheat the oven and make the batter. Then lenovo knows how much in demand the thinkpad is, it is rediculous they don't have enough screens etc. They have plenty of time to develop and implement and deploy new products they've had the intel rosa specs for months and the t61 has been in developmet for a long time. They need to get all the ingredients together before baking the thinkpad because alot of customers are going hungry for the T61.

 

I think my C100 is one of the cheapest models Compal makes for any PC maker, and it has held up a heck of a lot better than my brothers Dell 5150. I have had it apart completely 3-4 times tinkering around inside of it, and it still doesnt creak when I lift it up.

I even use the LCD cover as a plate when I am eating pizza near my computer desk. Any sauce wipes off easily, and its a good dual purpose.

Do you even have any electronics or notebook repair background?

They have backorders because many government offices who used to be on dell contracts are switching back to IBM for computer support, and Lenovo for hardware. Like I mentioned before, business with large contracts are put in front of regular consumers.

 

What I don't get is my t60p cost $3600 when released and when purchased in January was down to about $2800. Then how come a similarly equipped
t61 on launch is like close to $1000 cheaper. Even Elmo knows something is wrong!!! I mean I am not complaining about saving money but no company reduces profits by 33%.

 

Big part of the price drop came from the Intel/AMD war when intel slashed CPU prices 2/3 in some cases. As the T60p contained the higher end chips, the price drops were seen quite easily on that. Since then, prices have dropped even lower (along with ram, HDs, etc)

 

The 33% you are refering to is not a 33% drop in profits, but gross cost.

Lenovo is simply responding to the current market conditions. Everything is just getting cheaper and to be able to hang with your competitive set (all laptop makers) you need to drop prices.

Do a little research on laptops in general and you will see prices have fallen across the board. Laptops are no longer a luxury for the super rich.

 

Yes I do. I am a pc repair technician with many years of experience. I used to play with 286's and 386's and ISA slots and 20MB hard drives, monochorme screens remember those.

 

Exactly. The "60 series" was the last ThinkPad series developed by IBM, everything from then on is Lenovo.

Matt

 

The plastic on my z series is pretty flexible too. Loved the notebook in general, am upgrading to the t series assuming it is an upgrade in htis department.

So, deos my z60m NOT have this mitsubishi carbon composite plastic, so that I will find a differnece in the material b/t z and t61?

 

My first "laptop" was a Compaq Portable III... 286 12mhz, 1mb ram, 256k video, double thick 3.5" Type 38 40mb HD, and 1 5.25 floppy. Oh and the blazing 1200 baud modem. And yes, I do remember the wonderful screens, mine had an awesome "Plasma" screen, only catch... orange only.

 

Actually I thought the X60 and T60 were quite favourably received even at first (except for the loss of colored striping on the nav buttons)... i remember wanting to dump the T43 because the t43/sonoma was disappointing

 

dietcokefiend: how much did it weight ? LOL like 20 LBS. Oh I miss those days.

 

Between 30-40lbs. I still have the leather carrying case for it that could probably carry my entire full tower desktop inside of it.

 

Is it true Thinkpad production is outsourced to Compal? Any sources? If it is indeed true, I will actually lose faith in Lenovo mainly because every notebook I see coming out of Compal suck. My last Toshiba notebook is a Compal product and the thing feels like a plastic toy compared to other non-Compal manufactured notebooks. Toshiba and Dell are some of the manufacturers that have suffered quality problems as result of outsourcing production to Compal. Compaqs (before they merged with HP) used to source from Compal too, but I'm not sure if they still do it.

 

If it is compal it hasnt changed anything in terms of "thinkpadness". Like I said before the x61 I have feels as durable as my T60.

 

I agree. I have read Andrew's review and the T61's seem sturdy enough (waiting for mine to arrive for the final verdict). I guess only time will tell on the parts quality, but I figure I have a 3 year damage protection warranty... if anything breaks in that time, I'm throwing my thinkpad off a cliff and demanding a new one. I figure, after the **** Lenovo has put me through I deserve that much. The only thing I'm scared about is the fan quality. My current HP laptop was produced there, I've had it for 2 years now with no "degradation" in quality except for the fans making obnoxiously loud noises due to (I suspect) a problem with the bearings.

P.S.: If you work for lenovo, I didn't say anything about throwing it off a cliff, and if you still don't believe me... I was just kidding.

 

I wish

 

Support is horrible. The REASON that people are TRYING to call (waiting 30-40 minutes each time) is that Lenovo has totally screwed up he order process and is unwilling to provide the customers with any reliable information.


Lenovo's corporate decision is to minimize the number of pi$$ed of customers. So those that have been waiting on their orders since April are getting pushed further back while the new orders are getting shipped out quickly.

This has been by far the worst purchasing process I have ever experienced in my life.

 

Wow, really? I have had much worse from some places!

Also shipping is not exactly support. And the reason they do not want to keep sending email updates out is that it takes a LONG time to send 10,000 emails at once and continually do so. Notice how long it took to get out the freebie emails (they are still working on it). It is just plain hard to get updates out in a timely matter.

 

All thinkpads are designed by Yamato lab, right? Btw, IBM still has a considerate amount of share for thinkpad.