7 ms·

Lenovo splits the Think brand into a separate group

56 points by fdmvsh 14y ago

djt 14y ago
This is a great idea. Allowing for two different brands to evolve with their respective markets.
- miahi 14y ago
  But this also means they will compete in some of the markets. We'll see what happens. It should be easier to pick a laptop then, as I don't think we will see any Lenovo with a non-glossy screen.
  - elithrar 14y ago
    > But this also means they will compete in some of the markets. We'll see what happens. 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.
    - djt 14y ago
      Lenovo have had a pretty good track history though, so hopefully it wont come to that.
bitwize 14y ago
I think Lenovo wants to be associated more with machines like the Yoga, even though the dependable ThinkPad workhorses are who brought them to the dance.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  I think you're reading this backwards, I think this is like Toyota splitting off Lexus into a separate, high-end brand.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    No, it's more like Chrysler spinning off Mercedes into its own high end brand.
philwelch 14y ago
If I had to use a PC, I'd use a ThinkPad. This was true before Lenovo took over the branding from IBM (they were already the manufacturer from what I understand), and it's true now that Lenovo is removing their branding from it. It's a solid machine and a great brand.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Yeah, the Thinkpad brand is really one of the few in the industry that I feel is confident in its own fundamentals. It knows it is good, and it knows why it is good. Besides Apple, I can't think of any other brand in the market that I can say that about.
ww520 14y ago
ThinkPad is amazingly solid. I had two so far and both were wonderful machine. Lenovo's service is pretty good as well. My latest laptop's Intel SSD drive went dead after a year. They shipped a replacement right the way with no question asked.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  I had an IBM era T43 for a while and currently have a T60 that's almost as old as Lenovo's take over of the brand, and it's still chugging along. A friend of mine recently upgraded to the t430u ultrabook and has been loving it. As far as laptops go I'm pretty sold on the thinkpad line for the foreseeable future.
  - meaty 14y ago
    I've got a 10 year old T-series (Think its a T21) in the cupboard. It did 7 years service for the original user for 4-5 hours a day. It was dropped and bashed around regularly. I only keep it because it has a real serial and parallel port but its still going strong!
    - gabemart 14y ago
      I used a T60 as a second monitor for my main laptop and an X40 as my travel laptop. Together they cost well under $150 and I could probably sell them today for what I paid for them. Great machines (although the T60 has a fan speed problem that I fixed with some third party software--without the fix it would be so annoying as to be unusable for me.)
      - meaty 14y ago
        I had the same thing with my T61. It was due to the sense wire on the fan being crimped slightly between the keyboard and roll cage assembly. I managed to fix it with some wiggling of the wire without resorting to fan control software. I also took the entire thing to bits and replaced the heatsink goo with Arctic Silver. I paid approx $150 for this T61.
zachrose 14y ago
Think, as a brand, is over 100 years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_(IBM) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_(IBM)
fest 14y ago
The best they could do is ditch Thinkpad brand for their consumer grade machines (SL, R). T and X series are Thinkpads. The rest- not so much. 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.
- shalmanese 14y ago
  Don't forget the W mobile workstations.
  - philjohn 14y ago
    Yup. I've got a W520 at work and its absolutely amazing. Fast, decent screen and even with a quad core i7 has decent battery life and even when being taxed is cool enough on the underside to use directly on my lap.
- fdmvsh 14y ago
  Both SL and R-series have been discontinued for more than two generations already. The current ThinkPad series aimed at small businesses are the ThinkPad Edge (E-series) and L-series, the second one of them isn't supposedly that bad. You are also forgetting the W-series, which is the most expensive and which came from the T-series performance models aimed as an portable workstation. Besides that, R-series weren't bad at all, the latest generations were pretty much the same as T-series.
- rjh29 14y ago
  I agree. I was excited to hear we were getting Thinkpads at work, since I have an X220 at home. But alas, they were consumer-grade laptops designed for watching TV, not a patch on their higher-end devices. They shouldn't share a brand.
djmdjm 14y ago
I hope this doesn't mean further abandoning the Thinkpad design values (centered around excellence in functional design) to compete on the ones that Apple has been so successful on (excellence in visual design). If they do they won't win and will mess up an excellent and unique brand in the process. 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.
- wyclif 14y ago
  The older ThinkPad keyboard design is the example I thought of immediately. The classic ThinkPads had keyboards designed for people who touch type— they were supremely functional. Not a "buckling spring" IBM Model M keyboard— they use foam rubber under the keys like all other modern keyboards, I suspect—but still more responsive and better for people like me who don't need to look at the keyboard when programming or writing. Now they've replaced their time-tested, solid keyboards for Mac-style "chiclet" keys. Agreed; it's just not the same.
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    I would kill fr a laptop with a model M keyboard built into it. There must be some way to simulate spring action in a thin keyboard setup. 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.
    - wyclif 14y ago
      Sure, you don't have to have the peaked edge keys. But that's like saying you don't need a tactile keyboard at all. Those high, peaked keys with responsive feedback are perfect for me (I type 70-80 wpm).
- svennek 14y ago
  Having a W530 and typing a lot, I can tell you that I will never wish to go back to the old keyboard (having had multiple older T-series). 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)...
sp4rki 14y ago
I think this is a good idea. Thinkpads have evolved to a point where - regardless of IBM or Lenovo being the brand behind the product line - the name is a synonym of dependability and quality. I think that by separating the brand from the rest of the Lenovo pack, and giving it it's own two feet they might steal quite a bit of Apple's customers. 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.
- msutherl 14y ago
  I feel the same way. The ThinkPad is the only computer that could potentially tempt me away from my MacBook. So far I'm stuck to OS X though (dreaming of Arch minimalism).
  - meaty 14y ago
    Arch is a maintenance nightmare if you want to be productive.
    - danieldk 14y ago
      I have never used Arch, but I heard it uses rolling releases. Could you expand a bit more in the typical problems an Arch user would run into?
    - wyclif 14y ago
      I'm puzzled by this comment. Arch values elegance, code correctness, and minimalism. Initially Arch installs a very minimal base system, and package management is done via rolling release. Perhaps you should explain exactly how Arch is a "maintenance nightmare."
meaty 14y ago
Great idea. 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/ 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.
- wyclif 14y ago
  Yep, an exercise in classic brand fragmentation on their part. Better avoided. This move can only help. I hope it reduces confusion about their professional ThinkPad products.
- kybernetyk 14y ago
  > 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.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    Right. Most of the laptops at Best Buy are under $600, $400 below Apple's lowest offering.
jfb 14y ago
I hope that this succeeds, because I hate not having a good brand to recommend to people who want a Windows laptop, but I am skeptical that refocusing on business needs is the way to build a product that humans will love.
atesti 14y ago
Has someone found out in the meantime whether it's possible to put an W520 replacement keyboard into the new W530? I heart the key mappings in the BIOS would be bad, but it would fit physically at least. But there was no real confirmation. (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.

56 points by fdmvsh 14y ago

djt 14y ago

This is a great idea. Allowing for two different brands to evolve with their respective markets.

miahi 14y ago
But this also means they will compete in some of the markets. We'll see what happens. It should be easier to pick a laptop then, as I don't think we will see any Lenovo with a non-glossy screen.
- elithrar 14y ago
  > But this also means they will compete in some of the markets. We'll see what happens. 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.
  - djt 14y ago
    Lenovo have had a pretty good track history though, so hopefully it wont come to that.

bitwize 14y ago

I think Lenovo wants to be associated more with machines like the Yoga, even though the dependable ThinkPad workhorses are who brought them to the dance.

InclinedPlane 14y ago
I think you're reading this backwards, I think this is like Toyota splitting off Lexus into a separate, high-end brand.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  No, it's more like Chrysler spinning off Mercedes into its own high end brand.

philwelch 14y ago

If I had to use a PC, I'd use a ThinkPad. This was true before Lenovo took over the branding from IBM (they were already the manufacturer from what I understand), and it's true now that Lenovo is removing their branding from it. It's a solid machine and a great brand.

jlgreco 14y ago
Yeah, the Thinkpad brand is really one of the few in the industry that I feel is confident in its own fundamentals. It knows it is good, and it knows why it is good. Besides Apple, I can't think of any other brand in the market that I can say that about.

ww520 14y ago

ThinkPad is amazingly solid. I had two so far and both were wonderful machine. Lenovo's service is pretty good as well. My latest laptop's Intel SSD drive went dead after a year. They shipped a replacement right the way with no question asked.

InclinedPlane 14y ago
I had an IBM era T43 for a while and currently have a T60 that's almost as old as Lenovo's take over of the brand, and it's still chugging along. A friend of mine recently upgraded to the t430u ultrabook and has been loving it. As far as laptops go I'm pretty sold on the thinkpad line for the foreseeable future.
- meaty 14y ago
  I've got a 10 year old T-series (Think its a T21) in the cupboard. It did 7 years service for the original user for 4-5 hours a day. It was dropped and bashed around regularly. I only keep it because it has a real serial and parallel port but its still going strong!
  - gabemart 14y ago
    I used a T60 as a second monitor for my main laptop and an X40 as my travel laptop. Together they cost well under $150 and I could probably sell them today for what I paid for them. Great machines (although the T60 has a fan speed problem that I fixed with some third party software--without the fix it would be so annoying as to be unusable for me.)
    - meaty 14y ago
      I had the same thing with my T61. It was due to the sense wire on the fan being crimped slightly between the keyboard and roll cage assembly. I managed to fix it with some wiggling of the wire without resorting to fan control software. I also took the entire thing to bits and replaced the heatsink goo with Arctic Silver. I paid approx $150 for this T61.

zachrose 14y ago

Think, as a brand, is over 100 years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_(IBM) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_(IBM)

fest 14y ago

The best they could do is ditch Thinkpad brand for their consumer grade machines (SL, R). T and X series are Thinkpads. The rest- not so much. 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.

shalmanese 14y ago
Don't forget the W mobile workstations.
- philjohn 14y ago
  Yup. I've got a W520 at work and its absolutely amazing. Fast, decent screen and even with a quad core i7 has decent battery life and even when being taxed is cool enough on the underside to use directly on my lap.
fdmvsh 14y ago
Both SL and R-series have been discontinued for more than two generations already. The current ThinkPad series aimed at small businesses are the ThinkPad Edge (E-series) and L-series, the second one of them isn't supposedly that bad. You are also forgetting the W-series, which is the most expensive and which came from the T-series performance models aimed as an portable workstation. Besides that, R-series weren't bad at all, the latest generations were pretty much the same as T-series.
rjh29 14y ago
I agree. I was excited to hear we were getting Thinkpads at work, since I have an X220 at home. But alas, they were consumer-grade laptops designed for watching TV, not a patch on their higher-end devices. They shouldn't share a brand.

djmdjm 14y ago

I hope this doesn't mean further abandoning the Thinkpad design values (centered around excellence in functional design) to compete on the ones that Apple has been so successful on (excellence in visual design). If they do they won't win and will mess up an excellent and unique brand in the process. 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.

wyclif 14y ago
The older ThinkPad keyboard design is the example I thought of immediately. The classic ThinkPads had keyboards designed for people who touch type— they were supremely functional. Not a "buckling spring" IBM Model M keyboard— they use foam rubber under the keys like all other modern keyboards, I suspect—but still more responsive and better for people like me who don't need to look at the keyboard when programming or writing. Now they've replaced their time-tested, solid keyboards for Mac-style "chiclet" keys. Agreed; it's just not the same.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  I would kill fr a laptop with a model M keyboard built into it. There must be some way to simulate spring action in a thin keyboard setup. 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.
  - wyclif 14y ago
    Sure, you don't have to have the peaked edge keys. But that's like saying you don't need a tactile keyboard at all. Those high, peaked keys with responsive feedback are perfect for me (I type 70-80 wpm).
svennek 14y ago
Having a W530 and typing a lot, I can tell you that I will never wish to go back to the old keyboard (having had multiple older T-series). 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)...

sp4rki 14y ago

I think this is a good idea. Thinkpads have evolved to a point where - regardless of IBM or Lenovo being the brand behind the product line - the name is a synonym of dependability and quality. I think that by separating the brand from the rest of the Lenovo pack, and giving it it's own two feet they might steal quite a bit of Apple's customers. 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.

msutherl 14y ago
I feel the same way. The ThinkPad is the only computer that could potentially tempt me away from my MacBook. So far I'm stuck to OS X though (dreaming of Arch minimalism).
- meaty 14y ago
  Arch is a maintenance nightmare if you want to be productive.
  - danieldk 14y ago
    I have never used Arch, but I heard it uses rolling releases. Could you expand a bit more in the typical problems an Arch user would run into?
  - wyclif 14y ago
    I'm puzzled by this comment. Arch values elegance, code correctness, and minimalism. Initially Arch installs a very minimal base system, and package management is done via rolling release. Perhaps you should explain exactly how Arch is a "maintenance nightmare."

meaty 14y ago

Great idea. 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/ 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.

wyclif 14y ago
Yep, an exercise in classic brand fragmentation on their part. Better avoided. This move can only help. I hope it reduces confusion about their professional ThinkPad products.
kybernetyk 14y ago
> 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.
- smackfu 14y ago
  Right. Most of the laptops at Best Buy are under $600, $400 below Apple's lowest offering.

jfb 14y ago

I hope that this succeeds, because I hate not having a good brand to recommend to people who want a Windows laptop, but I am skeptical that refocusing on business needs is the way to build a product that humans will love.

atesti 14y ago

Has someone found out in the meantime whether it's possible to put an W520 replacement keyboard into the new W530? I heart the key mappings in the BIOS would be bad, but it would fit physically at least. But there was no real confirmation. (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.