[sennight]

"There's a sucker born every minute." -- Somebody in the 1800s marketing Ye olde Apple® Pro Stand™.

I expect the trend to continue, as individuals find it more and more difficult to keep up with the marketing induced conspicuous consumption cycles - they'll accidentally rationalize an already reasonable position: treating durable goods like consumables is stupid and should be scorned instead of aped.

[eliasmacpherson]

It was not always conspicious consumption, but certainly yes consumer buying power has gone down and so has the price performance ratio, particularly over the last ten years.

There were legitimate improvements between every generation of thinkpad I am aware of up to the Tm30 series, the Tm40 series was a a sidegrade and so was each that followed up until the arrival of the Ryzen chips.

key: Xm30/Tm30 with m for model - m = 2/4/5

[sennight]

I was speaking about the broader electronics market. I don't really view anything post Lenovo sale to be a thinkpad - there is practically zero design continuity. I think the [T|W]520 was the last IBM design, the product of a left seat right seat transition, where Lenovo's contribution was restricted to basically slapping their badge on it. After that the consistent method of segmenting by travel/performance design consideration was replaced by an explosion of confusing product offerings that seem to be a lot of distinction without difference. Oh, and they immediately (no joke, the first order of business) got rid of the most iconic thing about the brand: the nice keyboard. It really makes you wonder why they even bother pretending.