[fest]

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.

[fdmvsh]

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.

[shalmanese]

Don't forget the W mobile workstations.

[philjohn]

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.

[rjh29]

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.