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by nooneelsebut 4803 days ago
While from a business standpoint, this is perfectly viable and a smart move on IBM's part, in the long-term, seeing how Lenovo has ruined the Think brand, I would be wary of spinning off any more operations to Lenovo.

They just don't have clear product focus, but in this world, I guess shareholders rule. Even if those shareholders don't act in the best interest of the company.

2 comments

>seeing how Lenovo has ruined the Think brand

Did they really?

This actually looks like a great laptop, could some point out what's wrong with it? The screen isn't too big and it has a nice resolution, which isn't easy to find.
First of all, there's no seventh row on the keyboard. Second, the Trackpoint buttons are gone. Third, the Thinklight has been replaced with a backlit keyboard, which is egregious as the Thinklight allowed one to illuminate documents or other materials as well as the keyboard.

It's just like any other laptop now. And when you're used to 1440x900 (I'm on a MacBook Air) 160 horizontal pixels is really worthless and screws up the proportions. What ThinkPad users want, and have wanted for ages is a 16:10 display, excellent engineering, and the TrackPoint front and center.

Lenovo is squandering all of the above.

Thank you for your reply.

I've had two Thinkpads in the past (A21 and A31) before I switched to a Macbook Pro. I don't remember the thinklight being very useful, but that may just be me. Not sure how well the trackpad works as a mouse button.

It's a shame 16:10 has not been adopted by more laptop manufactures, it's a great resolution. Even 4:3 may be ready for a comeback, I'd really like to see a Chromebook in action, although I would prefer to run a more traditional Linux operating system on it.

Many people are worried about the switch to a chicklet-style keyboard. I've been very happy with my previous employer-provided Thinkpad T-series laptops and purchased an X220 online, knowing the keyboard would be great. I wouldn't order one of these new ones without trying it first.
Virtual TrackPoint buttons built into the trackpad. No thanks.
Thirty day standby sounds kickass.
I remember when they spun/sold off a lot of their peripheral production to Lexmark. Now their systems are going to Lenovo... I think IBM is really following Microsoft/Oracle... interesting that this comes as the likes of Oracle and MS are losing mindshare regarding up and coming developers.