6 ms·

I would also like to know this. Sadly, the only advice I have is: Anything but Lenovo. I've had a few over the years from different jobs, and they typically a

I would also like to know this. Sadly, the only advice I have is: Anything but Lenovo. I've had a few over the years from different jobs, and they typically always seem to have exceptionally poor performance.

revorad 15y ago
I'm surprised to hear about your bad experience with Lenovo. Most people seem to really like them. What went wrong for you?
- manuscreationis 15y ago
  Replying to both questions about my bad experiences: One of my first work laptops was a handed-down lenovo, so that may or may not have been lenovos fault... However the person doing the handing down was certain not buying a new lenovo. It performed ok, but never anything stellar. It had a lot of weird quirks - it would suddenly flip it's CapsLock state, so i'd need to turn it on to shut it off. It would stay like that till I rebooted. Eventually, the red button died... but it didn't just die, it forcibly dragged my mouse to the bottom of the screen. I had to fight with the thing to find the option to disable the button in the control panel before I could regain control of the computer. Plugging in an external mouse didn't help, the red button overrode all mouse commands. Finally ,the thing all but gave out on me. I got a 2nd hand me down laptop, a Dell, before finally getting a real PC to work from. That was my old job... This current job, I have a T410, and I hate the thing. Everyone here has the same laptop (one guy has a slightly better model, but he hates his as well). They lock up, they have poor performance, they come with worthless bloatware, things fail for no reason... it goes on and on. Here are some examples: Performance: It came with 4GBs of RAM. My old Dell had 4GBs, and I could keep 2-3 Visual Studios open at a time, no problem. This thing struggled to keep a single instance open. Keeping 2 open, damn near unusable. It would routinely take me 40-50 seconds to switch applications around (this is not an exaggeration. It would lock up and become unresponsive for a number of reasons, mainly switching between applications). For a developer, this is killer. Sometimes while typing, the USB port my keyboard is attached to will die. Sometimes redocking fixes this. Sometimes I need to reboot. Same thing for my bluetooth mouse. Sometimes I can pull the nub out and re-insert it and fix the problem, other times I have to reboot. Unlike the keyboard, the bluetooth nub stays with the laptop itself, so it isn't just that the dock has issues (Although it could... it was made by Lenovo) Speaking of undocking, sometimes the screen goes dark, and never comes back. Other times, when I redock it, it's forgotten the video settings. Occasionally, it will only partially forget them, and turn on one of the 2 external monitors. I'd say I need to fix the monitor setup atleast 2-3 times per week. Sometimes when it goes to sleep, it can't wake up. When it isn't docked, and I'm using the built in screen, the color pallet gets off-kilter, and there is massive dithering over wide portions of the screen. Whole swaths of things get dithered, with green and red dots filling in the blanks. The severity of this seems to change day to day - sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's the entire screen, sometimes it's just a portion... This isn't just my issue, mind you - Every single person in our team has these laptops, and experiences these issues. ThinkPads used to be great, when IBM owned the brand. They were rock solid tanks. Lenovo destroyed the name and the quality. If I never use another Lenovo for as long as I live, I could die a happy man
  - revorad 15y ago
    So what brand laptops do you like?
  - polyfractal 15y ago
    Wow, that's pretty crazy. Honestly, of the problems you mentioned I've only encountered the "trackpoint drift", on my old T60. It tended to happen because the rubber trackpoint would get stuck, not because of the hardware itself. Could be different in your case. The Lenovo bloatware isn't too horrible in my opinion, are you sure there wasn't extra (non-Lenovo) crap loaded? I routinely run two VS instances on my Edge 420 and it only has an i5 & 4Gb memory Maybe the T410 is just a shitty model. Sorry you had such a bad experience with Lenovo, I can totally understand why you'd never want to try them again =(
- quangv 15y ago
  I think low-end Lenovo's (especially older models they did right after acquisition of IBM thinkpad division), are not as refine and of the same quality as their Thinkpads T-Series... I bought an R series Lenovo for my sister, a few years ago thinking that the only difference would be added size and weight... boy was I wrong! But now I have a newer Lenovo L512, and they redeemed themselves...
polyfractal 15y ago
I find this surprising as well - I love my Lenovos. Six years ago I had a Thinkpad T60 and loved it to death. It is still going strong after six years (although it did need a fan replacement after five). I'm currently on an Edge 420 and it is a pretty nice machine. Not as nice as their business lines (T series, W series) but a killer bargain for the price - especially because I got a refurb from their outlet. Basically, I'm going to buy Lenovo for the rest of my life if I can.

revorad 15y ago

I'm surprised to hear about your bad experience with Lenovo. Most people seem to really like them. What went wrong for you?

manuscreationis 15y ago
Replying to both questions about my bad experiences: One of my first work laptops was a handed-down lenovo, so that may or may not have been lenovos fault... However the person doing the handing down was certain not buying a new lenovo. It performed ok, but never anything stellar. It had a lot of weird quirks - it would suddenly flip it's CapsLock state, so i'd need to turn it on to shut it off. It would stay like that till I rebooted. Eventually, the red button died... but it didn't just die, it forcibly dragged my mouse to the bottom of the screen. I had to fight with the thing to find the option to disable the button in the control panel before I could regain control of the computer. Plugging in an external mouse didn't help, the red button overrode all mouse commands. Finally ,the thing all but gave out on me. I got a 2nd hand me down laptop, a Dell, before finally getting a real PC to work from. That was my old job... This current job, I have a T410, and I hate the thing. Everyone here has the same laptop (one guy has a slightly better model, but he hates his as well). They lock up, they have poor performance, they come with worthless bloatware, things fail for no reason... it goes on and on. Here are some examples: Performance: It came with 4GBs of RAM. My old Dell had 4GBs, and I could keep 2-3 Visual Studios open at a time, no problem. This thing struggled to keep a single instance open. Keeping 2 open, damn near unusable. It would routinely take me 40-50 seconds to switch applications around (this is not an exaggeration. It would lock up and become unresponsive for a number of reasons, mainly switching between applications). For a developer, this is killer. Sometimes while typing, the USB port my keyboard is attached to will die. Sometimes redocking fixes this. Sometimes I need to reboot. Same thing for my bluetooth mouse. Sometimes I can pull the nub out and re-insert it and fix the problem, other times I have to reboot. Unlike the keyboard, the bluetooth nub stays with the laptop itself, so it isn't just that the dock has issues (Although it could... it was made by Lenovo) Speaking of undocking, sometimes the screen goes dark, and never comes back. Other times, when I redock it, it's forgotten the video settings. Occasionally, it will only partially forget them, and turn on one of the 2 external monitors. I'd say I need to fix the monitor setup atleast 2-3 times per week. Sometimes when it goes to sleep, it can't wake up. When it isn't docked, and I'm using the built in screen, the color pallet gets off-kilter, and there is massive dithering over wide portions of the screen. Whole swaths of things get dithered, with green and red dots filling in the blanks. The severity of this seems to change day to day - sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's the entire screen, sometimes it's just a portion... This isn't just my issue, mind you - Every single person in our team has these laptops, and experiences these issues. ThinkPads used to be great, when IBM owned the brand. They were rock solid tanks. Lenovo destroyed the name and the quality. If I never use another Lenovo for as long as I live, I could die a happy man
- revorad 15y ago
  So what brand laptops do you like?
- polyfractal 15y ago
  Wow, that's pretty crazy. Honestly, of the problems you mentioned I've only encountered the "trackpoint drift", on my old T60. It tended to happen because the rubber trackpoint would get stuck, not because of the hardware itself. Could be different in your case. The Lenovo bloatware isn't too horrible in my opinion, are you sure there wasn't extra (non-Lenovo) crap loaded? I routinely run two VS instances on my Edge 420 and it only has an i5 & 4Gb memory Maybe the T410 is just a shitty model. Sorry you had such a bad experience with Lenovo, I can totally understand why you'd never want to try them again =(
quangv 15y ago
I think low-end Lenovo's (especially older models they did right after acquisition of IBM thinkpad division), are not as refine and of the same quality as their Thinkpads T-Series... I bought an R series Lenovo for my sister, a few years ago thinking that the only difference would be added size and weight... boy was I wrong! But now I have a newer Lenovo L512, and they redeemed themselves...

polyfractal 15y ago

I find this surprising as well - I love my Lenovos. Six years ago I had a Thinkpad T60 and loved it to death. It is still going strong after six years (although it did need a fan replacement after five). I'm currently on an Edge 420 and it is a pretty nice machine. Not as nice as their business lines (T series, W series) but a killer bargain for the price - especially because I got a refurb from their outlet. Basically, I'm going to buy Lenovo for the rest of my life if I can.