The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
The Tx00 series was available for an abnormally long amount of time. The typical refresh cycle is 1 year, as other posters have noted. If you are referring to the withdrawal of the X201s series, however, that is because the series' 12.1" 1440x900 panels were in short supply.
The OP was not referring to "usual business cycle" (of, say, "refreshing" the T410 by the T420), but to the fact that Lenovo withdrew/discontinued certain products only a few months after releasing them.
X301 was out for quite a while. The X201s maybe discontinued due to poor sales or lack of WXGA+ screen option.
Most company would discontinue a certain model in the middle of the cycle if there is a lack of consumer demands or when core parts supply become unavailable.
My friend bought this Lenovo ThinkPad W510 43195RU last October and recommend it to me, I checked with Lenovo and get to know it was discontinued starting from this month...
Sandy Bridge was supposed to be refresh to those previous generation chipsets but it was pulled off the market due the fault in chipset.
New revision is coming and pretty much everything worth waiting for is on hold now. That has caused few months gap in availability. Usually old and new revisions overlap a little, so consumers will always have models to choose from.
Good thing is, when you get your hands on the latest revision of W510 it will be better than the old one.
Well that's funny you say that cause that's one reason why Lenovo is one of the big 3 companies that supply business notebooks to the government and big corporations is their good part availability. You can still order Dell parts for very old laptops, same with HP. I should think certain Lenovo parts should be compatible with slighly older revisions of the same model, as buying whole new parts hurts the bottom line, and is an IT department's worst nightmare.
Lenovo provides parts for ThinkPads for many years, which is a very good reason to consider them, and yes, some of the parts have compatibility within one or more generations of systems that use the same mechanical assemblies. For example T61 / T400 / T500 keyboards are interchangable. Ultrabay devices , AC adapters, and some batteries are other examples.
Also, there are what we called "workhorse models" - a configuration that is kept in the business for an extended period of time to allow global companies to standardize on a particular model and continue to purchase it as part of a phased roll out. This is a bit in contrast to other parts of the market, notably consumer where product cycles are much shorter as the customer often makes purchase decisions based on what is new and hot.
The W510 is still available on the web - the 4318 model types.
As for the X301, my personal opinion is that the T400s and T410s incorporated many of the design points of that series and so there may not have been enough differentiation between 13" and 14" displays to have both models in the portfolio. Also, the X series is ultra portable, and so there may have been a strategic focus toward the smaller systems - the X201 and X100e / X120e.
I know this has been beaten into a bloody pulp... but if Lenovo had refreshed the x301 it would have been a great product... (put in a i5/ 4 gb ram/ ssd/ etc) this form factor would rock... but then again...
The part availability for repair and manufacturing are slightly different, as the former can use refurbished and second hand parts, where the latter can't. Also, it is not strange to see customers wait for a few weeks to get a specific part sent from other countries, which is not a luxury you can afford in manufacturing a laptop for customer.
Lenovo have learnt from their past encounters with parts shortage, which lead to many orders been pushed back and left many people unhappy.
As of now, my gf's T43 just ran out of 5 years warranty end of December of last year, and in November 2010 i sent the machine for a new LCD and FAN. So i think most of the business laptops are in the same boat when it comes to such things.
Right, I was just speaking on a general term. The problem is with consumer models, and companies like Sony, Toshiba, Acer/Gateway/eMachines is their part availability is woeful at best.
Consumer models fluctuate wildly, with some models only lasting 1-2 years before an entire refresh/whole new model. Those 3 companies have terrible part availability or are very slow at sourcing parts. It's the reason why Lenovo, HP, and Dell are the big 3.
At least I can tell you from a Dell business standpoint, they want at least 4-5 years of models using the same parts, and generally same design so they don't have to retrain the IT department every year. That and most Dell business notebooks last much longer than that.
i don't hold out high hopes for aftersale services when it comes brand such as Sony, Toshiba (they were fairly good once) or any Acer owned subsidiaries.
HP, Dell and Lenovo are the big three because they cover the full spectrum of laptop industries, they market full varieties of models. Currently, Acer is ahead of both Dell and Lenovo, so they are not to be sneezed at.
When it comes to consumer laptop contract manufacturing outsourcing and marketing/selling cheap laptops, there are very few can match Acer.
Personally, i prefer the Thinkpads because i am so used to them, and have lots of parts that i can interchange between the machines that i have.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
