[syshum]

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

[zibzab]

Agreed. Lenovo has some pretty crappy stuff right now, but they still make the best laptops in the market.

And let's not forget the excellent Linux support on the thinkpad line (partially thanks to Ubuntu?).

[5e92cb50239222b]

> And let's not forget the excellent Linux support on the thinkpad line (partially thanks to Ubuntu?).

From what I heard, mostly thanks to thankless employees at Red Hat who get these machines for work and batter them into submission (by reverse-engineering the hardware and writing device drivers). Lenovo only deserves the middle finger here.

Edit: or maybe it does not. Read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978330

[jwildeboer]

Well, actually ;)

That relationship has become a lot better over the years. We get early access to new hardware, Lenovo did a lot to get fwupd integrated, etc.

No OEM preload necessary on the business line machines. RHEL/Fedora installs just fine OOTB. Some problems remain, especially with Thunderbolt (docking stations) but that’s not just Lenovos fault, IMHO.

Disclaimer: Red Hatter since 2005

[syshum]

I am torn... Do I thank RedHat for Linux support on laptops, or do i hate RedHat for killing CentOS....

[5e92cb50239222b]

It's not a monolithic solid entity, is it? As I see it, those doing actual work deserve praise and respect (Red Hat does a lot of kernel and low-level plumbing work), while management is… typical management. Same as Mozilla and some other companies.

[sam_lowry_]

...for systemd, hate them for systemd!

[gtirloni]

Love and hate. That's the way of the Linux wizard.

[raffraffraff]

> And let's not forget the excellent Linux support on the thinkpad line

...Unless it has an Nvidia GPU

[collegeburner]

Fr I wish Lenovo used its position to push nvidia for better linux support and open drivers.

[southerntofu]

> 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.

[jwildeboer]

> Even the modern Ts (professional series) don't have a CDROM drive anymore.

Missing a DVD drive I * might* be able to understand, but CD-ROM? That ship has sailed, latest with universal support for USB boot or booting via network, IMHO.

[syshum]

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

[hackerfromthefu]

Some lenovos are still fairly upgradeable, such as the thinkbook 16p

[arp242]

Soldered RAM is smaller and cheaper. Optical drives are comparatively huge. These things are all reasonable trade-offs.

Also, you can still use a second drive; I have the NVME drive and added a 3.5" SSD I had lying around. Not all models have that obviously, but not all models had the UltraBay either.