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I never understood how some people seem to not know that Lenovo and IBM are not the same company. When Lenovo, a completely different company, bought the right

I never understood how some people seem to not know that Lenovo and IBM are not the same company. When Lenovo, a completely different company, bought the rights to manufacture IBM products in 2005, the Think* brand was no longer IBM. The author states, eventually, his point being that Lenovo lost it’s mojo, but it never had any. The Thinkpads people remember with mojo were the IBM ones, and some Lenovo branded ones after the handoff, but that’s really just residual “mojo” from the old teams and processes. Lenovo was never good, and really isn’t now, and has a long record of bad behavior.

kmlx 5y ago
i think the fact that people associate Lenovo “thinkpads” with quality products says a lot about how much “mojo” the ibm “thinkpad” brand had. and in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Just because people liked them doesn’t mean they were profitable.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Also to a point Lenovo had one of the original ThinkPad labs. Don't know how much is still there tough but that's why Lenovo is not just Lenovo to me.
- toast0 5y ago
  > in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm. IBM got out of an industry they didn't want to be in, but they still have a lot of positive brand feelings, and a large stake in Lenovo (not sure if they still hold that). Where's the bad for IBM? They sold off their PC server line to Lenovo about a decade later, so clearly the first deal wasn't too bad. IBM seems to want to focus on Enterprise, so getting rid of things that individuals use, while still having relationships to sell them (because individuals exist in the enterprise), seems to work for them. After IBM bought SoftLayer, Lenovo servers started showing up instead of SuperMicro.
- Izkata 5y ago
  I think it's an indicator of how bad other brands are. I bought my first Thinkpad in 2019 and (with the exception that its battery is internal) like it way more than my previous HP (1), Dell (1 personal/3 work), and Asus (2) laptops.
iforgotpassword 5y ago
This is oversimplified if not wrong. You make it sound something like Lenovo bought the ThinkPad brand long after IBM stopped making them. They bought all the know how, engineers, a full rnd lab iirc. The first couple generations of Lenovo ThinkPads were very similar if not indistinguishable from the IBM ones, and I agree with most people here that even current models are still among the best laptops you can get.
syshum 5y ago
I dont know I used both IBM Thinkpads, and Lenovo ThinkPad's including current gen. I do not find Lenovo ThinkPads to be any worse than the business offers from Dell, or HP. In some ways they are better, in some ways there are worse I would avoid the non-Think* lines, as just like with the Consumer lines of Dell they suck... They did introduce a Think branded L line recently, these I are approaching that consumer level branded as business line, but the T and P series are still very good IMO
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > but the T and P series are still very good IMO Never had a P, but had my hands on recent Ts and Xs and they're definitely an order of magnitude worse than their respective ancestors. They're much harder to crack open and replace parts (some even have RAM soldered to the motherboard!), the shell is much more fragile, and there's so many tiny hardware failures that they're hard to list... my two favorites: - something with the internal speakers/cables preventing it from making sound in a pseudo-random way (some positioning of the computer reliably triggers it, but there's no reliable position to have sound) - lid detection sensor going crazy and putting systems to sleep because the screen has just moved a little... i can't explain to you how confused was the person who came to me with this problem that the laptop was going to sleep automatically and thought it was haunted or virused :) (and of course no BIOS option to disable the faulty sensor, we had to disable sleep mode on the OS) Even the modern Ts (professional series) don't have a CDROM drive anymore. Being able to replace it with a second SSD/HDD was definitely a cool feature.
  - syshum 5y ago
    This is all true, however my comments was comparing them to modern competitors on the market today, not the older ThinkPad which IMO is an unfair comparion and it unlikely IBM would have continued or been any different in the modern market as customers are demanding lighter, thinner laptops and have generally not rejected non-repairable non-upgradable options Every major laptop vendor is going to the soldered ram, non-repairable, units. I dont like it, but to say "Lenovo is trash" because of that but then not acknowledge that Dell, HP,Apple, Microsoft, etc are all the same way is deceptive
philliphaydon 5y ago
At this point I wouldn’t buy any non-Lenovo laptop. I don’t know any other brand (excluding framework) that has a web page where I can enter the model number of my laptop and buy any part and order it and repair the laptop myself.
- yread 5y ago
  HP also does it and they even have videos on youtube from hp support explaining how to replace each of the parts. Lenovo has lost a lot of the quality in comparison. Typos in documentation and invoices, all kinds of support service nightmares even for people with most expensive support policies, X1 Extreme G4 shitty heatsink, thermal throttling to 800MHz, just take a look at forums.lenovo.com
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  Yeah I dont get the first commenter, Lenovo is great !
- cowpig 5y ago
  You might be interested this this then: https://frame.work https://frame.work
  - prox 5y ago
    Sounds like a fun computer!
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    ...they specifically mentioned that as the exception.
    - cowpig 5y ago
      hah I missed that
  - hyproxia 5y ago
    They still don't sell parts.
tomcooks 5y ago
Some of the beloved classics x230,x220, etc are full Lenovo, and people specifically look for those
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  The nice thing about the x220 at least when I got mine was that they where retired fleet laptops so you could get them dirt cheap and throw a few new components in them. I dread the day that the CPU and graphics are finally truly obsolete...

kmlx 5y ago

i think the fact that people associate Lenovo “thinkpads” with quality products says a lot about how much “mojo” the ibm “thinkpad” brand had. and in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm.

bradleyjg 5y ago
Not necessarily. Just because people liked them doesn’t mean they were profitable.
agumonkey 5y ago
Also to a point Lenovo had one of the original ThinkPad labs. Don't know how much is still there tough but that's why Lenovo is not just Lenovo to me.
toast0 5y ago
> in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm. IBM got out of an industry they didn't want to be in, but they still have a lot of positive brand feelings, and a large stake in Lenovo (not sure if they still hold that). Where's the bad for IBM? They sold off their PC server line to Lenovo about a decade later, so clearly the first deal wasn't too bad. IBM seems to want to focus on Enterprise, so getting rid of things that individuals use, while still having relationships to sell them (because individuals exist in the enterprise), seems to work for them. After IBM bought SoftLayer, Lenovo servers started showing up instead of SuperMicro.
Izkata 5y ago
I think it's an indicator of how bad other brands are. I bought my first Thinkpad in 2019 and (with the exception that its battery is internal) like it way more than my previous HP (1), Dell (1 personal/3 work), and Asus (2) laptops.

iforgotpassword 5y ago

This is oversimplified if not wrong. You make it sound something like Lenovo bought the ThinkPad brand long after IBM stopped making them. They bought all the know how, engineers, a full rnd lab iirc. The first couple generations of Lenovo ThinkPads were very similar if not indistinguishable from the IBM ones, and I agree with most people here that even current models are still among the best laptops you can get.

syshum 5y ago

I dont know I used both IBM Thinkpads, and Lenovo ThinkPad's including current gen. I do not find Lenovo ThinkPads to be any worse than the business offers from Dell, or HP. In some ways they are better, in some ways there are worse I would avoid the non-Think* lines, as just like with the Consumer lines of Dell they suck... They did introduce a Think branded L line recently, these I are approaching that consumer level branded as business line, but the T and P series are still very good IMO

southerntofu 5y ago
> but the T and P series are still very good IMO Never had a P, but had my hands on recent Ts and Xs and they're definitely an order of magnitude worse than their respective ancestors. They're much harder to crack open and replace parts (some even have RAM soldered to the motherboard!), the shell is much more fragile, and there's so many tiny hardware failures that they're hard to list... my two favorites: - something with the internal speakers/cables preventing it from making sound in a pseudo-random way (some positioning of the computer reliably triggers it, but there's no reliable position to have sound) - lid detection sensor going crazy and putting systems to sleep because the screen has just moved a little... i can't explain to you how confused was the person who came to me with this problem that the laptop was going to sleep automatically and thought it was haunted or virused :) (and of course no BIOS option to disable the faulty sensor, we had to disable sleep mode on the OS) Even the modern Ts (professional series) don't have a CDROM drive anymore. Being able to replace it with a second SSD/HDD was definitely a cool feature.
- syshum 5y ago
  This is all true, however my comments was comparing them to modern competitors on the market today, not the older ThinkPad which IMO is an unfair comparion and it unlikely IBM would have continued or been any different in the modern market as customers are demanding lighter, thinner laptops and have generally not rejected non-repairable non-upgradable options Every major laptop vendor is going to the soldered ram, non-repairable, units. I dont like it, but to say "Lenovo is trash" because of that but then not acknowledge that Dell, HP,Apple, Microsoft, etc are all the same way is deceptive

philliphaydon 5y ago

At this point I wouldn’t buy any non-Lenovo laptop. I don’t know any other brand (excluding framework) that has a web page where I can enter the model number of my laptop and buy any part and order it and repair the laptop myself.

yread 5y ago
HP also does it and they even have videos on youtube from hp support explaining how to replace each of the parts. Lenovo has lost a lot of the quality in comparison. Typos in documentation and invoices, all kinds of support service nightmares even for people with most expensive support policies, X1 Extreme G4 shitty heatsink, thermal throttling to 800MHz, just take a look at forums.lenovo.com
secondaryacct 5y ago
Yeah I dont get the first commenter, Lenovo is great !
cowpig 5y ago
You might be interested this this then: https://frame.work https://frame.work
- prox 5y ago
  Sounds like a fun computer!
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  ...they specifically mentioned that as the exception.
  - cowpig 5y ago
    hah I missed that
- hyproxia 5y ago
  They still don't sell parts.

tomcooks 5y ago

Some of the beloved classics x230,x220, etc are full Lenovo, and people specifically look for those

EamonnMR 5y ago
The nice thing about the x220 at least when I got mine was that they where retired fleet laptops so you could get them dirt cheap and throw a few new components in them. I dread the day that the CPU and graphics are finally truly obsolete...