Lenovo Notebooks

[dd74]

Any one have any experience with them? I've had two IBM Thinkpads, which I liked very much. They were strong, well made units. Does Lenovo stack up to their level?

Dell would be my other choice. Maybe Gateway...

Thanks

[porsche4life]

Dell's are way better than a gateway imho. I have a 500$ dell laptop and it rocks.

[KaptKaos]

Love Lenovo. Pricey tho.

[RANDY P]

Concerning the Dells, I use a D420 (last year's 12.1" Latitude)-

Compared to a similar Lenovo one thing that is nice is that the DVD drive is seperate and attaches by cable to the unit, versus requiring a docking station on Lenovo.

Lenovo doesn't offer anything like that.

To get one with built in CD / DVD on Lenovo you need to go to a 13" or greater screen.

I like my D420 it's pretty well built and it's fairly decent of a performer for it's size - only drawback is that I still haven't gotten the SD card reader to work after 2 trips to service.

rjp

[Bill Douglas]

Toshiba.

[porsche4life]

Im using a vostro 1500 and everything works perfectly.

[JavaBrewer]

My business laptop is a newish Lenovo, a T61. I spec'd it with big 7200 RPM drive and 3 GB of RAM running XP. My only complaint is that the built-in wireless antenna is pretty weak compared to the Thinkpad it replaced. Before the company moved to IBM we were using Dell Latitude machines and I also had no issues with them.

[island911]

Originally Posted by KaptKaos

Love Lenovo. Pricey tho.

Yep! I just priced one out yesterday. They do have all the cool stuff though. High res LED backlighted displays, SSHD, Bluray .... I stopped when the price climbed above 5K.

[MRM]

Just bought a Lenovo T60p with all the bells and whistles and the extra graphics stuff for just under $1,000. Running XP, lots of memory, super fast DVD/CD-ROM. It's been indestructible in the four or so months I've had it. No problems with it at all. When I go to depositions a third of the lawyers in the room have almost identical laptops. Check their web site for closeout and overstock sales.

[tangerine911S]

Rensselaer Polytech (my alma mater) hgas been outfitting its students with Thinkpads and now Lenovos for some time. I upgraded from the Thinkpad to the lenovo junior year when the company changed and both were very solid, reliable computers than ran CAD and other intensive engineering and architechture programs well. I now have a Macbok Pro but the Lenovo was great and I recommend them.

[BGCarrera32]

I use an HP mobile workstation series (don't recall the number off hand) with an nVidia graphics card, 2 GB of ram and XP. I run CAD/CAM on it and it has been hands down the best PC I've used in my working career in 15 years. Had it for 6 months now. Wireless antenna is very good, boots up fast, super high resolution LCD screen.

[Palum6o]

I had a T61 and loved it - I'm probably going to buy another one when they come down in price a little. I now have a Vaio no good POS - or maybe because I'm running Ultimate which I'm not used to yet. The T61 is built like a tank.

[dtw]

On a T61 here. Great machine, the IBM and now Lenovo Thinkpads are the best machines I've ever had, and I've had them all, and used them in high travel, high traffic environments.

For those not aware, Lenovos ARE Thinkpads. Lenovo is the current form of IBM's old PC business.

Caveat: I have not used any of Lenovo's consumer-class machines. From what I understand, they are not nearly as robustly made.

[p911dad]

I have a T61 and I like it fine. I like the IBM keyboard feel, which is the finest in my humble opinion, and the little red noodle in the middle. My other choice was an Apple- all my kids have those and love them, totally think I am a dinosaur staying with Microsoft stuff.

[onewhippedpuppy]

I've ordered 5 Dell laptops over the last two years for family members, all have been flawless. You can get a Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, CD/DVD burner, and big HD for under $600. I have a Gateway that was given to me by my father, despite their bad reputation it has been problem free.

[cgarr]

I am on a Lenovo right now, its a few years old, everyone here uses it, its 3000 N100 got it for like 500 bucks new, only thing, we did have the hard drive go bad but IBM sent out a new one PDQ with all the disks to restore, I think I would get another one.

[JavaBrewer]

Originally Posted by gmeteer

My other choice was an Apple- all my kids have those and love them, totally think I am a dinosaur staying with Microsoft stuff.

That's why they're still kids. I have a Power Mac at home for the family, a Ubuntu linux box for my work stuff, and the company supplied Lenovo. The OS's are equally good. Mac is getting a ton of hype when in reality it doesn't do anything easier or better than Win or Linux.

[campbellcj]

My company has been using the Thinkpads for more than 10 years and I noticed no real change in quality before/after IBM sold out to Lenovo. We have mostly T series and some older R, Z and A series too. However, the shipment lead times absolutely SUCK! It takes weeks to get a customized build notebook and even mundane stuff like spare batteries can take 6-8 weeks as well. That is ludicrous.

Also, since they are now Chinese controlled, several of my customers and I assume certain government agencies do not allow them on premises. Thus I'll be switching standard brands shortly -- probably going with HP.

[dd74]

Originally Posted by dmoolenaar

Mac is getting a ton of hype when in reality it doesn't do anything easier or better than Win or Linux.

Yes, that's what I'm finding out. For my particular uses, I've found I just don't need a lot of what OS X offers. It's in fact more difficult for me to learn the in-roads and out of the filing system. At any rate, Windows seems more intuitive for what I do.

[Normy]

Here's an interesting tidbit-

Recently, the hard drive on my Vaio died an ugly, squealing death. I managed to get all the data off of the old drive, save for some two years of house pictures [!$#@%^&*!]. I took the laptop to a shop in Fort Lauderdale near my house, and the technician there was able to transfer the data and replace the hard drive. While I was in his shop, I noticed that he was selling Lenovo's. During conversation, I asked him about various computers. Here's his rundown:

1. Apple: They think they have something different, but they don't. OS is indeed a little easier to use, but their computers are NO better quality than any other computer. Apples are more about style than anything else.

2. Sony Vaio: Same as above, but with Windows.

3. Dell: Great customer service...and they need it-!

4. Lenovo: No better quality than anything else, but Lenovo uses standard components and more importantly....standard software.

This is where my Vaio had all SORTS of problems after I had it rebuilt. I didn't have a Sony Vaio recovery disk [my bad], which is something I should have made after I bought the thing. The disk allows you to re-install the Vaio-specific Windows XP components so that your computer will work. It seems that Sony uses proprietary CD/DVD software, and even has their OWN tailored version of Windows XP! This is where the problem came. He installed a new drive and initially installed his own standard XP and some DVD software that he used and enjoyed on his own computer. The problem is...they weren't compatible with anything that Sony originally developed.

Problem: I was prepared for a hard drive failure: I have a home-based backup drive that keeps all my data. As soon as I got the empty laptop home, I hooked it up to my back up and asked the backup to reinstall all my data. And it did just that, including a bunch of Sony bundled software that came with the original hard drive...

::sounds of squealing tires and then a big CRASH!::

Yep. She shut down COMPLETELY! Wouldn't do anything at all. It worked fine for a day or so, but waited until I was away out flying in Baton Rouge when it happened. Dammit!

Back to the laptop shop: The guy that owned the place managed to get ahold of a Vaio disk for my computer, and was able to rebuild the whole XP and software suite.

-From what he has told me, he sells [and uses exclusively] Lenovo laptops because Lenovo doesn't play any games like this. Their software is generic and if the drive crashes, you simply reinstall everything from outside disks and the machine works just fine. They don't have any proprietary software.

[Least...that's what I've been told...]

N!