Lenovo, the Treasure Hunter of Tech

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-08/lenovo-targets-mobile-as-tech-empire-grows-on-castoff-businesses

by vinhnx • 12 years ago

59 47 12 years ago

cft• 12 years ago

I can feel the end of American economic might. Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp will not cut it. Pretty sad.

rgbrenner• 12 years ago

Facebook is a 10 year old company. Lenovo is a 30 year old company. Might want to give Facebook a little more time before making comparisons.

seanmcdirmid6• 12 years ago

Lenovo...king of the low margin low growth PC market. The end is nigh for the Americans? When they start making real yuan, let's talk. Btw, why is business week blocked by the GFW?

jordanb• 12 years ago

It seems to me that Lenovo's modus operandi is to buy high quality brands with a great deal of goodwill from loyal customers, and then drive down costs by producing steadily more inferior products in order to soak up the difference as profit.

It's essentially a slash-and-burn strategy though. Eventually customers realize that the brand doesn't mean what it used to mean and move on. I used to be happy to pay a premium for Thinkpads because they were unparalleled in for quality and ergonomics. I've decided that my T410 will be the last Thinkpad I will own. I don't know what my next laptop will be, but I know for sure it will not be a Thinkpad.

adventured2• 12 years ago

I think you need to learn a lot more about the US economy, if you think WhatsApp is representative of the world's largest and most productive manufacturing economy.

The US is the largest in: software, internet, communications, media, manufacturing, pharma / biotech, defense contracting, aerospace, energy, finance, agriculture

And somehow you think Instagram is a big deal? Laughable. Any idea how many $10 billion companies there are in the US?

austinz• 12 years ago

Fascinating story. Lenovo's rise to prominence reminds me of Haier, especially the presence of a charismatic, ambitious leadership figure not content to settle for just the domestic market. But why are there raccoons all over the article?

adventured2• 12 years ago

Raccoons are often considered to be intelligent trash scavengers.

RevRal• 12 years ago

Next up: How Lenovo Escapes Heat Death

pointernil• 12 years ago

All well and nice but:

What is the current Thinkpad worth its once trustworthy brand? The way to drive and keep the profits seams to be to lure customers who trusted a brand for years into buying quite frankly ridiculously manufactured surrogate products with the brand-label in the right place... well maybe turned 180 for the new coolness factor ;)

sandGorgon2• 12 years ago

Thinkpads are truly awesome - but the problem is that lenovo is buying into the macbook hype machine without putting thought around it's design process.

for example, I recently bought a T430S as opposed to one of the newer T440 ranges. the touchpad is an abomination - and plus they soldered one of the RAMs to the motherboard. Seriously ? One of the biggest differentiators that thinkpads have is their upgradability.

I can easily upgrade the CPU of a T430 series [1] and bump up the ram to 16 gb. the newer thinkpads lose both those abilities. The Thinkpad designers have not been able to make up their minds on what they want to build - which is why we see lines like T430/T430s/T430u/T430e and T440/T440s/T440p.

[1] http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/684625-t430-upgrade.h...

existencebox• 12 years ago

I have heard through coworker word of mouth, through discussions with lenovo engineers, that the touchpad changes have not been positively received even by the internal engineers. Pretty much everyone I've talked to (including my unfortunate fiancee who had the misfortune of buying one of these) thinks that touchpad is the worst thing since various laptop producers started going towards chicklets. I really wonder how these companies push forward despite (from my point of view) SIGNIFICANT customer pushback. Am I really stuck this far in an engineering bubble, or are things really so disconnected?

kiallmacinnes• 12 years ago

I actually like the touchpad on my T440s, it took some getting used to compared to my old T430s though...

reirob3• 12 years ago

It is really that bad. I sent a new machine back - it was worthless for me [1].

For me it is not so much the touchpad changes (I do not use the touchpad) as the lack of physical trackpoint buttons. But even when I tried the new touchpad I absolutely hated the touchpad-is-a-button functionality. It does NOT feel good, sounds horible and is far from being ergonomic. For me personally it would be best to be able to buy Thinkpads just with trackpoint + buttons, but without touchpad.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7729110

thom2• 12 years ago

Then you have something like the X1 Carbon which compounds the touchpad issues with a wacky keyboard layout.

nextos• 12 years ago

I can't agree enough. They don't seem to understand that they're destroying a great brand. If they want to create minimalistic MacBook-like designs, they should come up with new models. But at least some T, W & X Thinkpads should stay true to their IBM origins.

Thinkpads are workhorses. MacBooks are mostly targeted towards the consumer market. Glossy screens are just one proof of this. They are great machines. I type this from a MacBook Air. But better laptops should exist for developers. However, manufacturers seem too busy copying Apple's design cues and upgrading their enormous product lines.

mindslight• 12 years ago

The thing is they have created a gazillion other indistinguishable lines, which I presume are even junkier due to not having the head start of IBM designs.

Sometimes I question whether my recent upgrade to a T61 was a good investment. A faster processor and more than 8GiB would be nice. Power efficiency and LCD technology has gotten a lot better and I could learn to live with a shortscreen. And playing with a T431 for a short time, the changed trackpoint buttons didn't seem that bad.

Then I read articles like this and their comments and remember the reasons I generally keep my head in the sand for the technology upgrade cycle.

null_ptr• 12 years ago

On a tangential, what's the deal with glossy instead of matte screens on all mainstream laptops? Is it that they're more durable and easier to clean? Do the colors look better?

reirob3• 12 years ago

Cannot agree enough. I have ordered the T440s and after playing 2 days with it I sent it back and started a hunt for a T430s. I was lucky to get one through a distributor where it was used for demonstration.

For me the absolute no-go was the lack of physical trackpoint buttons - as I am a trackpoint user and normally always switch off the trackpads. So on the T440s (and I believe on all the new Thinkpad series) if you switch the trackpad off you do not have buttons any more (under Linux)! WTF! And if you switch it on, then the click on the virtual buttons is moving the mouse cursor when you try to click on it! It drew me absolute crazy. Even under Windows, where the virtual button support is better, the use is way more unergonomic than before (for example you cannot anymore keep the thumbs on the buttons and click by pressure - now you have to lift and then press the thumbs). Unlike other Thinkpad users I actually like the feel of the new keyboards, but Lenovo managed even there to screw things up, with every model: On the 30s (T430) they forgot the spaces between groups of 4 F-Keys. In the 440 they have them, but they screwed up the trackpoint-buttons. And on the new X1 Carbon they do not have F-Keys anymore at all! I still do not understand how they could screw up the most distinctive characteristics of the Thinkpads (absolute best keyboards, absolute best trackpoint + accessible design).

I hope they will wake up.

thom2• 12 years ago

Yeah, I was minutes away from buying an X1 Carbon until I saw the home and end keys where my pinky expects Ctrl to be mapped.

rawland• 12 years ago

May I cite you in my blog? You pretty much nailed it down!

Maybe some remedy for you: Managed to somewhat re-enable the old "IBM" design by making the top 10% of the the touchpad insensitive to mouse movement, while still detecting _where_ you press. So I basically "emulate" three buttons at the top, while the rest of the touchpad, truly is a touchpad:

http://rscircus.org/post/72978821261/t440s-clickpad-fix-whic...

ZanyProgrammer• 12 years ago

I used to own a ThinkPad Edge-I bought it when I was much poorer than I am now, and needed a decent laptop. It was nice to have a relatively cheap computer with the TP branding, but over time I came to realize that it was nothing more than a generic cheap 14 inch laptop with the TP branding.

When you consider what TPs used to be, and what people think of when they think of TPs...well, either the Edge wasn't a true ThinkPad, or Lenovo is seriously diluting the brand. See also the ThinkPad tablet they came out with.

dublinben• 12 years ago

Your first suspicion was correct. The Edge line aren't true Thinkpads at all. Even the most recent mainline Thinkpads are a significant departure from the values of Thinkpads in the past.

stickhandle• 12 years ago

Typing on an ideapad Y510p - its an excellent machine. I know that phones and tablets have the seat at the head table right now, but I can't imagine not having a laptop sitting on the kitchen table. Others seem to be dropping that ball ... or at least racing to the bottom. Lenovo laptops always seem a smart choice.

balladeer• 12 years ago

I use their P780. I bought it for the battery and I was right the battery is beyond excellent and I am saying this based on 2 day's use with 3G ON.

But the rest of the things on that phone are either bad or just mediocre. Not to mention the bloat and poor software leave a lot to be desired and a near certainly that there's nothing post 4.2. On top of that they use MediaTek that apparently stops custom ROMs from coming into picture.

Aloha• 12 years ago

I've had 4 ThinkPads - T21, T42, R60, and now a T510 which I bought new in 2010. My plan is to buy a MacBook next time around, because when you look at price for performance, the MBP Retina blasts pretty much everything out of the water - even the T530 - Apples pricing over the last 4 years has come down, and Lenovo has stayed the same.

Lenovo, the Treasure Hunter of Tech

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