Are Lenovo ThinkPads as good as IBM ThinkPads were?

Sahclohn,

I think if people are fair, they will find ThinkPads from Lenovo to be an equal or greater value than ThinkPads were under IBM.

First, Lenovo has continued to innovate with the roll cage, active protection, ThinkVantage technologies like Rescue & Recovery, Access Connections, and Presentation Director. Lenovo has broadened the ThinkPad portfolio from the ultalight X200 and X300 models, all the way to the W700 mega ThinkPad that provides a 17" panel, color calibration, a digitizer, and dual hard disk capabilities including RAID support.

Second, service remains strong. IBM continues as Lenovo's support and service provider for the ThinkPad product line.

Third, Lenovo offers the ability to purchase ThinkPads through many leading business partners, some retail stores, and direct via phone or web. Direct orders can be custom configured.

Fourth, Lenovo is extremely price competitive with ThinkPad SL models starting at $499 on the web today.

Mark

Mieses,

You are entitled to your opinion, but I would just suggest that your opinion be held to the same standards as the one I expressed. I don't think it's fair to broadly discount the specific points of fact about the product - i.e.the inclusion of a magnesium rollcage, etc, simply by labeling my comment as marketing fluff. I work in a customer service position, I manage our forums, I interact regularly with product engineering and I hear from thousands of customers on a daily basis.

I do think the products, on whole, are equal or better than their predacessors. There are some puts and takes. IBM NEVER sold a ThinkPad in the sub thousand dollar price point. You get a lot of technology and quality for the price today. The systems weight less, have longer battery life, and perform better than their predacessors. Are there some design points available at points in time in the past which are no longer available today? Yes. But I think if we are all fair, that is the case with most things.

For example, we've gone wide screen as has most of the industry and a number of customers prefer the 4:3 ratio displays. On this point, the new machines may be judged as "not as good" as the old ones because the design went in a direction that not everyone prefers. Also on displays, IPS was a favored and oft-commented technology that is no longer available in our product line due to supplier roadmaps and likely price competitiveness.
On balance, we have some 400 nit brightness display panels available on some of our models which is twice the standard brightness spec. We have also implement LED backlighting on some models. Some technologies become obsolete, and new ones are introduced.

There are other details - stereo mix, implementation of audio on display port, stripes on all the trackpoing buttons, etc, etc as some of those "details" that you reference. We try to listen to customers who make articulate points based in fact which can be considered for present and future systems.

I'm not looking to start a pitched debate here - it's fair that we have our detractors, and those who prefer other brands.

Best regards,

Mark

Michael,

I agree that your experience is unfortunate. The IdeaPads come with a Vista preload and technical support is tasked with supporting the preload environment. We recognize that some users may have their own legitimate XP licenses and wish to downgrade, so we've provided many of the drivers for XP on the support website. Unfortuneately, not all the pre-loaded applications are supported under Vista.

The BIOS shouldn't care whether Vista or XP are being used. Without seeing a screen shot of your BIOS and which fields are being marked as "Invalid", I can't really explain what has occured there. It could be that the wrong BIOS was flashed, the code was corrupt (either on our site or corrupted during download), or for some reason the flash didn't complete properly. None of these conditions would be your fault, and I would expect support to help you resolve the BIOS issues with your system, even if they are not able to provide support under XP.

In any event, if you are still stuck and want some help getting your machine back to proper working condition, please find me in our forum. http://forums.lenovo.com - you can find me as Mark_Lenovo there.

You can send me a private message, we can trade specific information as needed to arrange for your repair. I apologize for your experience thus far.

Mark

Charles,

http://forums.lenovo.com

I would prefer that members post their questions in public to give the community a chance to respond to them as the forum is peer to peer. If a person has tried the forum or needs to get in touch with me, then they can use the private message function. PMs can be sent via the little envelope at the top of the forum, found in the header area.

On to your other questions...

1) The discussions above about XP and BIOS were a bit confusing because they were talking about IdeaPads, not ThinkPads. IdeaPads can run XP, and we have drivers for them, but they are officially supported with the Vista preloads, and many of the applications like veriface, etc are supported under Vista. IdeaPads ship with a Vista Home version rather than the business, 32,64, or ultimate versions that qualify for the XP downgrade option as part of their licenses. ThinkPads, like your W700 tend to ship with business 32,64, or Ultimate and generally qualify for an XP downgrade option you can select when you order them. I don't expect you to have any significant issues with XP on your W700.

2) I believe this is the discussion you are referencing.

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/me...

Longer discussion with more background
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/me...

3) On forums.lenovo.com, there is a specific board for the W series, and you should find members who have either W500 or W700 systems there. You may also want to check out http://forum.thinkpads.com

4) I'm primarily on the Lenovo forum and can be found as Mark_Lenovo there.

Best regards,

Mark