I went from my own homemade machines, to exclusively Apple hardware, to owning a t420 (wanted the old keyboard). I'm in the process of leaving the Apple ecosystem and going back to Linux (Arch to be specific) because I dislike the direction Apple is going (the Mac App Store was the inflection point that made me want to leave). The Thinkpad brand was the obvious choice because of upgradeability, quality, dependency, and the fact that they make some of the best laptops for Linux. Even better than Zareason and system 76 hardware IMO. Making the perfect business computing tools AND at the same time the perfect Linux portable hardware is a big plus in my book. Even more than unibody pieces of aluminum and the retina bs that while commendable to a point, I've found is more of a nuisance than anything else.
Anyways, Lenovo earned a customer by keeping the Thinkpad brand alive and maintaining it's quality standards. Any step to make the brand better is AOK with me.
This will save the following thing happening again and again:
1. Someone asks me for a laptop recommendation.
2. I tell them "ThinkPad T-series" and state you can get them online for the price of a mid-range laptop in a retail outfit from http://www.lenovo.com/ with a direct link to the product page - they say thank you.
3. Some time passes
4. I get a call from the person saying they bought a "Lenovo" laptop at their local electrical supplier and it's rubbish and they'll never trust a recommendation from me again. They have inevitably bought a cheap Lenovo close-out machine which has died after 3 months (their cheap machines are crap).
5. Argument ensues and email is re-sent with "ThinkPad" highlighted. Much "aaaah" is to be had.
4 times so far. People just don't get the difference between good and crap, which is to be honest, where Apple are quite good.
Apple's secret is to only built good stuff and don't try to serve the cheap crap market. I hope the new ThinkPad brand will do the same.
They've already started down this road IMO, dropping their near-perfect keyboard for a trendy chiclet one in the x230. To be fair, it's a great chiclet keyboard, but it doesn't have the action of the old ones.
Only because it looks nice doesn't mean it's useless. And only because it's functional doesn't mean it has to look like a plastic brick from an 80s sci-fi movie.
Right now I own a cheap Asus for instance and it has swallowed tea, coffee and water. Besides the keyboard getting a little sticky, nothing happened. I probably got lucky, since I am talking about a piece of shit low-end laptop.
But Thinkpads are designed for accidents. The T line has to pass military tests. Soldiers used Thinkpads in Irak. That plastic brick from the 80s can take abuse like no other laptop on the market.
And besides, I do not care about how shinny and good looking my laptop is. I do care about functionality. Macbooks are great for their touchpad and their high resolution screens. But thinkpads are great in this regard - great keyboard, awesome pointing stick, HD+ available on all models, not to mention things I wish Macbooks had, like the Ultrabay, which allows you to easily put something else in place of your DVD drive. Something like an SSD, or maybe an extra battery.
Something else I love about Thinkpads and HP EliteBooks, something which even low-end models have (ThinkPad L series, Thinkpad Edge, HP ProBook), is the easy access to the internals, without voiding the warranty. On Thinkpads, even the low-end ones, it's really easy to change the hard drive or to add an extra memory stick. On ProBook you don't even need a screwdriver. This is useful not just for upgrading it, but also for cleaning the internal fan and other maintenance stuff. This allows businesses to have in-house hardware support, without having issues with the provided warranty.
There's a lot of things I like about MacBooks. But IMHO, if I were operating a business, I would give MacBooks only to developers that know what they are doing and really want one.
Most of us don't need to look at the keyboard when writing, chiclet keyboards are completely ok for that. You don't really need the peaked edges to find the keys.
The new chiclet is way better when you have gotten used to it. As usual you only feel the difference when you go back (in my case to my second-newest one, the T61, which I occasionally use for other stuff)...
But more importantly, Lenovo has really raised the bar in terms of size and weight with the X1 Carbon. I don't think they are abandoning functionality at all.
I've not had a problem with the keyboard, and I also own a thinkpad with a "real" thinkpad keyboard. I wouldn't say I prefer one over the other, they're both solid keyboards.
Typeing on that keyboard was soo nice.
It should be easier to pick a laptop then, as I don't think we will see any Lenovo with a non-glossy screen.
I see this as an issue now that they are two separate groups, likely with their own KPIs and numbers to meet. As we see so often with other organisations, they tend towards in-fighting rather than (good) cannibalisation because of the "silo" structure they've created.
SL and R series "Thinkpads" are rubbish, imo. Not to mention the cheap Ideapad's- the build quality is on par with pretty much every other cheap notebook manufacturers.
An hour to get replacement earphones for my daughter's iPod due to the well known problem of the rocker switch which failing after a week! I asked "so what happens when these fail? Do I have to spend an hour a week down here?". The reply was simply "it's not my problem".
She owns a Cowon now.
I only keep it because it has a real serial and parallel port but its still going strong!
(I would actually try out the chiclets, but I need all 7 rows and use the pgup, pgdown, del, insert,pos1 and end keys and have them so deep in my muscle memory that I will be miserable when I get a new Thinkpad)
Thinkpads are great otherwise, the W520 is almost perfect.
