5 ms·

I'm relatively unfamiliar with ThinkPads and happened to be looking at them yesterday. Here's my problem with ThinkPads (as well as most other Windows laptop ve

I'm relatively unfamiliar with ThinkPads and happened to be looking at them yesterday. Here's my problem with ThinkPads (as well as most other Windows laptop vendors): http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/?menu-id=laptops http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/?menu-id=laptops Which ThinkPad are you talking about? ThinkPad X, ThinkPad T, ThinkPad W, ThinkPad Yoga, ThinkPad E, ThinkPad L, or ThinkPad Helix, or ThinkPad 11E? Let's say we're talking about ThinkPad T.. Which model? T440p, T450, T450s, T540p, or T550? And ThinkPad is just one line of Lenovo's products, they also have: Y Series, Z Series, Yoga Series, 500 Series, Flex, Edge, U Series, Lavie, B Series, 100 Series, S Series, G Series, and finally Chromebook. As a consumer, I have a hard enough time deciding between Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book... or Macbook Air vs Macbook vs Macbook Pro. When presented with so many options from one company I simply close the webpage. After all, how can they possibly make the product as good as MS's offering if they have so many models?

kuschku 11y ago
They can make it better than MS's offering because they are providing you with exactly what you need. Take for example me, compsci student. I wanted to have a sub-600€ laptop with good hardware and good battery life, but did not care much about display. I ordered a thinkpad, replaced the HDD with an SSD, and am now happy with it. The trick is called customization: Being better because they can deliver exactly what you need.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice
- Joeri 11y ago
  No, they really do have too many models. The yoga line is nice, but they clearly don't invest much individual resources on the design of each of the other models, which tends to make them generic. I have a work-supplied s540, and it's a decent workhorse laptop, but a macbook it is not. It's too generic for that. I was also pretty disappointed that the coating had blemishes. Even a cursory visual QA check would have detected those, so either they're shipping product sight unseen, or they're deliberately deciding to ship blemished goods.
  - lqdc13 11y ago
    There is nothing more generic than a macbook
    - niels_olson 11y ago
      No, there's nothing that espouses the "Modern" (capital M) design ethos as thoroughly as a macbook.
mandeepj 11y ago
This is one of the reasons why I never bought a Lenovo because I am not sure which one to buy. Too many choices. They did the great job in confusing the heck out of me.
jakub_g 11y ago
After a very long deliberation (few years:) I went with T450 (non-retina) this summer and I am very happy. I chose it over T550 due to slightly lower dpi (I have a a 15 inch Dell at work with T550's resolution and everything is unpleasantly small, on T450 it's fine). I took SSD, 16gb ram, no DVD, 2 cores (quad core was very expensive) and 2 batteries which makes it very light, yet with proper screen size; very fast and the battery lifetime is amazing (10-20h) Only thing I don't like is touchpad, but I usually disable it and use track point. I preferred touchpad in my old asus laptop which was lower than keyboard level hence one would rarely click it by accident. I chose T450 over T440 since in ..50 series Lenovo readded physical buttons over the touchpad (in ..30 and ..40 they were replaced with touch zones on the touchpad and long time Thinkpad users were really furious about that on forums)
- lqdc13 11y ago
  The DPI is really a software problem. More DPI should only be better except for battery use. IMO Touchpads/clickpads on those are a deal breaker. They are so bad that it is almost impossible to be nearly as productive as with a mouse. On the other hand, Apple really got the clickpad right.
  - bluecalm 11y ago
    I am surprsied reading those comments. A touchpad on my x250 is fantastic and very customizable. I hate touchpads in general but after customizing it to be very sensitive and proper dead zones (to avoid clicking on accident in areas I often put a part of my hands) even started to like it. I customized to very low sensitivity and I use only for clicking these days as trackpoint is just much better an interface.
    - TurboHaskal 11y ago
      Lenovo should simply stop shipping touchpads on their X series. Anyone that doesn't like the trackpoint can buy a MacBook clone instead.
  - rudycrrmm 11y ago
rayiner 11y ago
We use thinkpads at work. They're okay, but they're not Surface/MacBook level of quality. My T450s has bad backlight bleed at the bottom, the trackpad is a major regression from my T430, and it was chock-full of crapware before I nuked it and reinstalled windows. Apple isn't perfect, but the sort of annual model lottery that is notable when it happens in the Apple world is par-for-course in the PC world.
sampo 11y ago
> Let's say we're talking about ThinkPad T.. Which model? > T440p, T450, T450s, T540p, or T550? T450s. When looking for a competitor to Apple, go for the T-series, but also take a look at the X-series. T5XX has 15" screen and numpad in the keyboard, so unless you like numpad, forget those. 440 is the older series, before it there was 430 series, and presently 450 is the current line. "p" stands for "performance", basically it's a laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, if you are heavily into gaming or video production. It makes the laptop thicker, heavier and consume more power. Usually you forget the "p" option. Also Apple makes do with just the integrated Intel graphics, so we don't need NDIVIA either. "s" is maybe for "slim". T4XXs is the flagship, and the plain T4XX is an economy version. The T4XXs is, in my opinion, the best competitor for Apple laptops.
- Twirrim 11y ago
  > When looking for a competitor to Apple, go for the T-series, but also take a look at the X-series. Sure. Joe Average has no clue about that though. Most of the main vendors suffer from the same proliferation of models. Look at Dell: Latitude - For Business Vostro - for Small Business (WTF? Why is this a different model from Latitude?) Inspiron - For Home and Home Office (Seriously? Why isn't this satisfied by either of the other two models?) Precision Workstations - For professional creators (that seems like a reasonable distinction, but then looking at the specs it's not really, it's just a slightly higher spec than other models) XPS - For the Ultimate experience (Okay.. but what about Precision Workstation then? Why on earth does something called the Ultimate have worse spec than some of the other not-ultimate models?)
  - oblio 11y ago
    Plus their sites are abysmal. It's like they were built with technology from the 90's and nobody told them about UX.
    - andor 11y ago
      It's like they were built with technology from the 90's HTTP, HTML and Javascript?
xur17 11y ago
I went through this when trying to help my younger sister choose a laptop for college. HP had a sale / coupon, and the number of laptop choices was overwhelming. Not only do they have 3 product groups, but they have ~10 products in each group, and you can customize each product even further. I spent over an hour narrowing down the list of laptops (with names that told me nothing) to the few that met her price / performance budget. After that experience, I can totally understand how Apple does so well. Most consumers want LESS choice, not more.
freshhawk 11y ago
The human biases related to paradox of choice type issues are real, but there are all sorts of ways to manage that for yourself. You end up with something objectively better if push through the psychological toll that a lot of choices takes on humans. Sometimes this is clearly worthwhile, sometimes not. It's totally reasonable to make the choice that a lowest common denominator set of features is acceptable if it means you don't have to deal with the pain of choices, but you don't magically get something better as well. I do this for all kinds of things where the extra effort to get "the best" isn't worth the mental cost, but I make that choice mindfully. I only vaguely remember the annoyance of having to pick from the myriad of Thinkpad choices years ago. For example, Apple makes great stuff but isn't designing things for my needs in a work laptop at all. I place no value on appearance since it's just a tool to me, I'm in a very keyboard-centric software environment so a trackpoint keyboard is the best mouse for me on this machine. I need various ports to plug things into more than I need clean lines. I need features and battery life more than I need portability. And while I try to discount status concerns here as much as I can, if I'm honest the people it's most useful for me to impress with my work laptop are more impressed by novelty/customization (arch linux + tiling wm + vim-keybindings everywhere setup) than with Apple product beauty anyway. When people refer to a laptop being "ugly" it strikes me as about as meaningful an opinion as if someone told me my cordless drill or vacuum was ugly. Now that I mention it, that's the reason I find the current designer culture (intuitive design is the be-all and end-all of design) to be fairly anti-creator. The people who create things with technology, who craft code or video or sound or images in order to build valuable things do better with tools that allow for expertise. They benefit from the payoffs that investments in mastering expert interfaces bring with them. They want the option to climb a learning curve if it's the only way to reach the heights. I find calls for the systematic removal of this option to be troubling, especially when they are aimed at young people. So, as a consumer, value being given limited choices when it makes sense for you but please don't lobby for it to be more universal!
- outworlder 11y ago
  What advantage do we have with this whole confusion of product lines with meaningless names? In many cases they could be replaced by a couple of lines with optionals for customization and that's it.
outworlder 11y ago
That's the issue right there. You get swamped by options, some may be good, most are crappy. How can you tell? Sometimes they'll add a letter and an otherwise good product will be a crappy mess.
jabits 11y ago
I think that complaining about "too much choice" is disingenuous. One of the things I don't like about the Apple eco-system is that there is hardly any choice. Choosing between a tablet and a laptop is not really making a choice. It must be hell for you to by a car...
- nogridbag 11y ago
  I'm a fan of Mazda. Your analogy would make more sense if instead of Mazda offering a choice of compact (Mazda 3), sedan (Mazda 6), or sports car (Mazda Miata), instead Mazda decided to build a lineup of: * Mazda6L (Our most green Mazda 6) * Mazda6 Yoga (Our Mazda 6 that transforms into a Miata) * Mazda6W (Our power version) * Mazda6T (Our version which includes more gizmos) * Mazda6X (Our version which includes even more gizmos) * Mazda6 Helix (Our version that's like our Yoga but different) * Mazda611E (Our rugged version for teenagers who are careless) .. and then within each type, have specific models like Mazda6T 554p, Mazda6T 440s, etc. .. and then allowing you to further customize each Mazda6 model down to the finest detail. ...and then repeat for each type of car in their lineup (Mazda3, Miata, SUVs, etc). Yes, if this were the case then I would have a very hard time buying a car! :)
  - sjwright 11y ago
    Mazda in Australia is particularly straightforward as far as full-range car companies go. Three cars (2, 3, 6) three SUVs (CX3, CX5, CX9) a ute (BT-50) and a sports car (MX-5). Each of these has a few levels of trim. Some have choice of engine, boot style. Overall it's very easy for consumers to comprehend. Whereas take BMW, which seems to have a really simple product line but has endless subtle variations in the same segment. 5 series Sedan vs 4 Gran Coupé vs 3 Grand Turismo, anyone? Then try to comprehend the endless options for each model. Then try to comprehend the relative cost of one model versus another (or one trim versus another) factoring in the inclusion or exclusion of particular features. It's insane.
  - MagnumOpus 11y ago
    Oh, you mean like having a * Mazda 6 SE Saloon * Mazda 6 SE-L Saloon * Mazda 6 Sport Saloon * Mazda 6 SE Tourer * ... ... and then within each trim level, with or without nav ... and then within each, auto or manual transmission ... and then within each, petrol or diesel engines (sometimes several power levels) ... and then of course colours, paints and fabrics and alloy wheels and all that cosmetic stuff. Admit it, there's more different option in a car configurator even at Mazda than in a laptop manufacturer's line-up.
orkoden 11y ago
T and X are the ones you want.
munchbunny 11y ago
You make a very good point for the average Joe. With that many options, you better hope Joe has a tech savvy friend to make the recommendation, and that said tech savvy friend doesn't just say "get a macbook" because these days that's a perfectly good recommendation 99% of the time. As a long-time Thinkpad owner, there are really only two answers for most tech-savvy users with typical needs (media, browsing, travel, and maybe programming): The X series and the T4XXs models.

kuschku 11y ago

They can make it better than MS's offering because they are providing you with exactly what you need. Take for example me, compsci student. I wanted to have a sub-600€ laptop with good hardware and good battery life, but did not care much about display. I ordered a thinkpad, replaced the HDD with an SSD, and am now happy with it. The trick is called customization: Being better because they can deliver exactly what you need.

mmanfrin 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice
Joeri 11y ago
No, they really do have too many models. The yoga line is nice, but they clearly don't invest much individual resources on the design of each of the other models, which tends to make them generic. I have a work-supplied s540, and it's a decent workhorse laptop, but a macbook it is not. It's too generic for that. I was also pretty disappointed that the coating had blemishes. Even a cursory visual QA check would have detected those, so either they're shipping product sight unseen, or they're deliberately deciding to ship blemished goods.
- lqdc13 11y ago
  There is nothing more generic than a macbook
  - niels_olson 11y ago
    No, there's nothing that espouses the "Modern" (capital M) design ethos as thoroughly as a macbook.

mandeepj 11y ago

This is one of the reasons why I never bought a Lenovo because I am not sure which one to buy. Too many choices. They did the great job in confusing the heck out of me.

jakub_g 11y ago

After a very long deliberation (few years:) I went with T450 (non-retina) this summer and I am very happy. I chose it over T550 due to slightly lower dpi (I have a a 15 inch Dell at work with T550's resolution and everything is unpleasantly small, on T450 it's fine). I took SSD, 16gb ram, no DVD, 2 cores (quad core was very expensive) and 2 batteries which makes it very light, yet with proper screen size; very fast and the battery lifetime is amazing (10-20h) Only thing I don't like is touchpad, but I usually disable it and use track point. I preferred touchpad in my old asus laptop which was lower than keyboard level hence one would rarely click it by accident. I chose T450 over T440 since in ..50 series Lenovo readded physical buttons over the touchpad (in ..30 and ..40 they were replaced with touch zones on the touchpad and long time Thinkpad users were really furious about that on forums)

lqdc13 11y ago
The DPI is really a software problem. More DPI should only be better except for battery use. IMO Touchpads/clickpads on those are a deal breaker. They are so bad that it is almost impossible to be nearly as productive as with a mouse. On the other hand, Apple really got the clickpad right.
- bluecalm 11y ago
  I am surprsied reading those comments. A touchpad on my x250 is fantastic and very customizable. I hate touchpads in general but after customizing it to be very sensitive and proper dead zones (to avoid clicking on accident in areas I often put a part of my hands) even started to like it. I customized to very low sensitivity and I use only for clicking these days as trackpoint is just much better an interface.
  - TurboHaskal 11y ago
    Lenovo should simply stop shipping touchpads on their X series. Anyone that doesn't like the trackpoint can buy a MacBook clone instead.
- rudycrrmm 11y ago

rayiner 11y ago

We use thinkpads at work. They're okay, but they're not Surface/MacBook level of quality. My T450s has bad backlight bleed at the bottom, the trackpad is a major regression from my T430, and it was chock-full of crapware before I nuked it and reinstalled windows. Apple isn't perfect, but the sort of annual model lottery that is notable when it happens in the Apple world is par-for-course in the PC world.

sampo 11y ago

> Let's say we're talking about ThinkPad T.. Which model? > T440p, T450, T450s, T540p, or T550? T450s. When looking for a competitor to Apple, go for the T-series, but also take a look at the X-series. T5XX has 15" screen and numpad in the keyboard, so unless you like numpad, forget those. 440 is the older series, before it there was 430 series, and presently 450 is the current line. "p" stands for "performance", basically it's a laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, if you are heavily into gaming or video production. It makes the laptop thicker, heavier and consume more power. Usually you forget the "p" option. Also Apple makes do with just the integrated Intel graphics, so we don't need NDIVIA either. "s" is maybe for "slim". T4XXs is the flagship, and the plain T4XX is an economy version. The T4XXs is, in my opinion, the best competitor for Apple laptops.

Twirrim 11y ago
> When looking for a competitor to Apple, go for the T-series, but also take a look at the X-series. Sure. Joe Average has no clue about that though. Most of the main vendors suffer from the same proliferation of models. Look at Dell: Latitude - For Business Vostro - for Small Business (WTF? Why is this a different model from Latitude?) Inspiron - For Home and Home Office (Seriously? Why isn't this satisfied by either of the other two models?) Precision Workstations - For professional creators (that seems like a reasonable distinction, but then looking at the specs it's not really, it's just a slightly higher spec than other models) XPS - For the Ultimate experience (Okay.. but what about Precision Workstation then? Why on earth does something called the Ultimate have worse spec than some of the other not-ultimate models?)
- oblio 11y ago
  Plus their sites are abysmal. It's like they were built with technology from the 90's and nobody told them about UX.
  - andor 11y ago
    It's like they were built with technology from the 90's HTTP, HTML and Javascript?

xur17 11y ago

I went through this when trying to help my younger sister choose a laptop for college. HP had a sale / coupon, and the number of laptop choices was overwhelming. Not only do they have 3 product groups, but they have ~10 products in each group, and you can customize each product even further. I spent over an hour narrowing down the list of laptops (with names that told me nothing) to the few that met her price / performance budget. After that experience, I can totally understand how Apple does so well. Most consumers want LESS choice, not more.

freshhawk 11y ago

The human biases related to paradox of choice type issues are real, but there are all sorts of ways to manage that for yourself. You end up with something objectively better if push through the psychological toll that a lot of choices takes on humans. Sometimes this is clearly worthwhile, sometimes not. It's totally reasonable to make the choice that a lowest common denominator set of features is acceptable if it means you don't have to deal with the pain of choices, but you don't magically get something better as well. I do this for all kinds of things where the extra effort to get "the best" isn't worth the mental cost, but I make that choice mindfully. I only vaguely remember the annoyance of having to pick from the myriad of Thinkpad choices years ago. For example, Apple makes great stuff but isn't designing things for my needs in a work laptop at all. I place no value on appearance since it's just a tool to me, I'm in a very keyboard-centric software environment so a trackpoint keyboard is the best mouse for me on this machine. I need various ports to plug things into more than I need clean lines. I need features and battery life more than I need portability. And while I try to discount status concerns here as much as I can, if I'm honest the people it's most useful for me to impress with my work laptop are more impressed by novelty/customization (arch linux + tiling wm + vim-keybindings everywhere setup) than with Apple product beauty anyway. When people refer to a laptop being "ugly" it strikes me as about as meaningful an opinion as if someone told me my cordless drill or vacuum was ugly. Now that I mention it, that's the reason I find the current designer culture (intuitive design is the be-all and end-all of design) to be fairly anti-creator. The people who create things with technology, who craft code or video or sound or images in order to build valuable things do better with tools that allow for expertise. They benefit from the payoffs that investments in mastering expert interfaces bring with them. They want the option to climb a learning curve if it's the only way to reach the heights. I find calls for the systematic removal of this option to be troubling, especially when they are aimed at young people. So, as a consumer, value being given limited choices when it makes sense for you but please don't lobby for it to be more universal!

outworlder 11y ago
What advantage do we have with this whole confusion of product lines with meaningless names? In many cases they could be replaced by a couple of lines with optionals for customization and that's it.

outworlder 11y ago

That's the issue right there. You get swamped by options, some may be good, most are crappy. How can you tell? Sometimes they'll add a letter and an otherwise good product will be a crappy mess.

jabits 11y ago

I think that complaining about "too much choice" is disingenuous. One of the things I don't like about the Apple eco-system is that there is hardly any choice. Choosing between a tablet and a laptop is not really making a choice. It must be hell for you to by a car...

nogridbag 11y ago
I'm a fan of Mazda. Your analogy would make more sense if instead of Mazda offering a choice of compact (Mazda 3), sedan (Mazda 6), or sports car (Mazda Miata), instead Mazda decided to build a lineup of: * Mazda6L (Our most green Mazda 6) * Mazda6 Yoga (Our Mazda 6 that transforms into a Miata) * Mazda6W (Our power version) * Mazda6T (Our version which includes more gizmos) * Mazda6X (Our version which includes even more gizmos) * Mazda6 Helix (Our version that's like our Yoga but different) * Mazda611E (Our rugged version for teenagers who are careless) .. and then within each type, have specific models like Mazda6T 554p, Mazda6T 440s, etc. .. and then allowing you to further customize each Mazda6 model down to the finest detail. ...and then repeat for each type of car in their lineup (Mazda3, Miata, SUVs, etc). Yes, if this were the case then I would have a very hard time buying a car! :)
- sjwright 11y ago
  Mazda in Australia is particularly straightforward as far as full-range car companies go. Three cars (2, 3, 6) three SUVs (CX3, CX5, CX9) a ute (BT-50) and a sports car (MX-5). Each of these has a few levels of trim. Some have choice of engine, boot style. Overall it's very easy for consumers to comprehend. Whereas take BMW, which seems to have a really simple product line but has endless subtle variations in the same segment. 5 series Sedan vs 4 Gran Coupé vs 3 Grand Turismo, anyone? Then try to comprehend the endless options for each model. Then try to comprehend the relative cost of one model versus another (or one trim versus another) factoring in the inclusion or exclusion of particular features. It's insane.
- MagnumOpus 11y ago
  Oh, you mean like having a * Mazda 6 SE Saloon * Mazda 6 SE-L Saloon * Mazda 6 Sport Saloon * Mazda 6 SE Tourer * ... ... and then within each trim level, with or without nav ... and then within each, auto or manual transmission ... and then within each, petrol or diesel engines (sometimes several power levels) ... and then of course colours, paints and fabrics and alloy wheels and all that cosmetic stuff. Admit it, there's more different option in a car configurator even at Mazda than in a laptop manufacturer's line-up.

orkoden 11y ago

T and X are the ones you want.

munchbunny 11y ago

You make a very good point for the average Joe. With that many options, you better hope Joe has a tech savvy friend to make the recommendation, and that said tech savvy friend doesn't just say "get a macbook" because these days that's a perfectly good recommendation 99% of the time. As a long-time Thinkpad owner, there are really only two answers for most tech-savvy users with typical needs (media, browsing, travel, and maybe programming): The X series and the T4XXs models.