Lenovo takes over the people of IBM PC divisions along with
the research centers in USA/JAPAN as well as the ShenZhen
plant which used to produce 50% of IBM ThinkPad notebooks.
The plant was a joint venture of IBM and Great Wall Group
but now is under control of Lenovo (used to be called
Legend Group). Therefore I guess ThinkPad will still be
a top brand in the notebook world and one still need to
pay the premiums for a ThinkPad.

Learning from the lessons of my poor Dell 600M, my brother
decided to buy a IBM T41 last year. It is great even though
the price is higher. Dell is not that cheaper outside USA
and the quality of Dell notebooks really sucks. Dell
desktops are quite okay though.

Still put this into the greater context of PC industry,
who wins and who lose? Cheaper (read lousier) vendors like
Dell wins and IBM is out. IBM is out of the harddisk
business and now out of the PC business. Who knows what
is the next sector it will lose? Without the access to
the desktop, it will lose the server business and the
service business later. Let's wait for another 10 years
and see how IBM performs.

With globalization, cheaper goods will be all over the place
and the quality standard will of course suffer when the
mass market consumers prefer to buy cheaper stuffs. 

Another thing is that I do not think buying a 2nd-hand
notebooks will be a good idea unless you are a collectors.
3 (at most 4) years is the average economic life of a 
desktop/notebook. 

Regards,
Xiaofan



-----Original Message-----
From: Howard Winter 
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 5:48 AM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: [EE] Laptop Choice (was: Board House Quality)
...
> Everytime I look into a new laptop, I look at IBM first.
...
Me too, but sadly they're now out of the laptop business, 
and it remains to be seen if Lenovo, who bought the 
business from them, will maintain their standards.  I've 
had half a dozen IBM laptops, and although the 
earlier ones (which must have lasted at least 6 years) 
fell apart physically, this seems not to have happened 
with the later ones.  I think they saw the problem and 
designed it out.  I always buy second-hand, by the way, 
so when I get them they are already some way into their life, 
and showing no signs of it!  I recently bought a 
T23 that's approaching its 4th birthday, for what I consider 
a bargain price (about the same as 2 ICD2s!) and 
having changed the US keyboard for a UK one, and put in more
 memory, I reckon it should last me at least three 
years - possibly much more.

...
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