I'm relatively unfamiliar with ThinkPads and happened to be looking at them yesterday. Here's my problem with ThinkPads (as well as most other Windows laptop vendors):
Which ThinkPad are you talking about? ThinkPad X, ThinkPad T, ThinkPad W, ThinkPad Yoga, ThinkPad E, ThinkPad L, or ThinkPad Helix, or ThinkPad 11E?
Let's say we're talking about ThinkPad T.. Which model?
T440p, T450, T450s, T540p, or T550?
And ThinkPad is just one line of Lenovo's products, they also have:
Y Series, Z Series, Yoga Series, 500 Series, Flex, Edge, U Series, Lavie, B Series, 100 Series, S Series, G Series, and finally Chromebook.
As a consumer, I have a hard enough time deciding between Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book... or Macbook Air vs Macbook vs Macbook Pro. When presented with so many options from one company I simply close the webpage. After all, how can they possibly make the product as good as MS's offering if they have so many models?
> Let's say we're talking about ThinkPad T.. Which model?
> T440p, T450, T450s, T540p, or T550?
T450s.
When looking for a competitor to Apple, go for the T-series, but also take a look at the X-series.
T5XX has 15" screen and numpad in the keyboard, so unless you like numpad, forget those. 440 is the older series, before it there was 430 series, and presently 450 is the current line.
"p" stands for "performance", basically it's a laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, if you are heavily into gaming or video production. It makes the laptop thicker, heavier and consume more power. Usually you forget the "p" option. Also Apple makes do with just the integrated Intel graphics, so we don't need NDIVIA either.
"s" is maybe for "slim". T4XXs is the flagship, and the plain T4XX is an economy version. The T4XXs is, in my opinion, the best competitor for Apple laptops.
> When looking for a competitor to Apple, go for the T-series, but also take a look at the X-series.
Sure. Joe Average has no clue about that though. Most of the main vendors suffer from the same proliferation of models. Look at Dell:
Latitude - For Business
Vostro - for Small Business (WTF? Why is this a different model from Latitude?)
Inspiron - For Home and Home Office (Seriously? Why isn't this satisfied by either of the other two models?)
Precision Workstations - For professional creators (that seems like a reasonable distinction, but then looking at the specs it's not really, it's just a slightly higher spec than other models)
XPS - For the Ultimate experience (Okay.. but what about Precision Workstation then? Why on earth does something called the Ultimate have worse spec than some of the other not-ultimate models?)
Compared to the Yoga 2 (or is it 3?) non-pro (proper HD rather than faux retina or faux HD), the 'proper' Thinkpad is a generation of CPU behind with half the RAM and double the price.
The backlit 'chicklet' keyboard on the Yoga Whatever(tm) is also subjectively better than the barrage of nipples and buttons that come with those 'legendary' Thinkpad keyboards. The screen is of a magnitude more vibrant and you can run two disks - mSATA SSD + normal SATA SSD/spinny-disk. Plus touch is just a feature, not something that is a special requirement. The hinge seems better engineered too, even if it never gets used in 360 tablet mode.
There is proof of pudding in that my colleagues with 14" Thinkpads have those stands and external monitors, with external keyboards and mice, rarely with the machines being 'un-docked' or taken home. Meanwhile, my off-brand Yoga Whatever(tm) gets carried around as intended, used on trains and used at home.
Sure some of the shiny has worn off the fibreglass in the palm-rest area but I actually do not care, I don't like the feel of Apple-style aluminium, plastic is more me when it comes to what I want to rest my palms on. The build quality is absolutely fine on Yoga Whatever(tm), same power connector as Thinkpad with same USB3 connector.
I downgraded from Windows Whatever to Ubuntu and admittedly the wifi does need 'make install' every time the kernel changes, but it runs a full set of dev tools fine (my colleagues desk-bound machines run 'Outlook', a web browser and nothing else, maybe 'Excel').
I prefer a standard linux distro as the Apple dev environments don't have the repository 'apt-get install' thing done very well. Horses for courses but there are surprises in the consumer range that are better for getting work done and a worthy contender for Apple competitor. Actually I would be annoyed if company policy forced me to have either a proper Thinkpad or a proper Apple computer, the Yoga Whatever(tm) with 14" deep-colour proper-HD screen hits the sweet spot for me.
I went through this when trying to help my younger sister choose a laptop for college. HP had a sale / coupon, and the number of laptop choices was overwhelming. Not only do they have 3 product groups, but they have ~10 products in each group, and you can customize each product even further.
I spent over an hour narrowing down the list of laptops (with names that told me nothing) to the few that met her price / performance budget. After that experience, I can totally understand how Apple does so well. Most consumers want LESS choice, not more.
The human biases related to paradox of choice type issues are real, but there are all sorts of ways to manage that for yourself. You end up with something objectively better if push through the psychological toll that a lot of choices takes on humans. Sometimes this is clearly worthwhile, sometimes not.
It's totally reasonable to make the choice that a lowest common denominator set of features is acceptable if it means you don't have to deal with the pain of choices, but you don't magically get something better as well. I do this for all kinds of things where the extra effort to get "the best" isn't worth the mental cost, but I make that choice mindfully. I only vaguely remember the annoyance of having to pick from the myriad of Thinkpad choices years ago.
For example, Apple makes great stuff but isn't designing things for my needs in a work laptop at all. I place no value on appearance since it's just a tool to me, I'm in a very keyboard-centric software environment so a trackpoint keyboard is the best mouse for me on this machine. I need various ports to plug things into more than I need clean lines. I need features and battery life more than I need portability. And while I try to discount status concerns here as much as I can, if I'm honest the people it's most useful for me to impress with my work laptop are more impressed by novelty/customization (arch linux + tiling wm + vim-keybindings everywhere setup) than with Apple product beauty anyway. When people refer to a laptop being "ugly" it strikes me as about as meaningful an opinion as if someone told me my cordless drill or vacuum was ugly.
Now that I mention it, that's the reason I find the current designer culture (intuitive design is the be-all and end-all of design) to be fairly anti-creator. The people who create things with technology, who craft code or video or sound or images in order to build valuable things do better with tools that allow for expertise. They benefit from the payoffs that investments in mastering expert interfaces bring with them. They want the option to climb a learning curve if it's the only way to reach the heights. I find calls for the systematic removal of this option to be troubling, especially when they are aimed at young people.
So, as a consumer, value being given limited choices when it makes sense for you but please don't lobby for it to be more universal!
IMHO there is a difference between choice and the chaos you have with most vendors. I appreciate that there are different variants of Thinkpads, but why are they so cryptically? A customization based system would be better IMHO. Pick a screen size + maybe for 15.6 bulky vs ultrabook style, then pick the upgrades you want. Ideally just a bunch of sliders.
Some options really are unnecessary. Like "Do you want to spend $15 to upgrade the network card to the 3x3 model? (no, we can't tell you if you need that or not or even what it means, you gotta know that yourself)".
Makes the design step more difficult (because you shouldn't have crazy intransparent dependencies between upgrades), but is more user friendly. Give 2 or 3 preset options for users that don't want to fiddle.
This is something a dealer might be able to implement on top of the existing offerings, but I haven't seen it yet. Screenfulls of base models, then another page of dropdowns. No way to tell what specific options each of the base models offers (or doesn't offer).
What advantage do we have with this whole confusion of product lines with meaningless names? In many cases they could be replaced by a couple of lines with optionals for customization and that's it.
yeah. My Mac Air is a custom build - but getting to it was a conceptually simple process. Mac Pro/iMac/Mac Mini/Macbook Pro/Mac Air? Low-end Air or high-end Air? Want to customize that?
Apple's got about fourteen separate computers they'll sell you (plus tablets/phones), but that's folded away behind six distinct products that come in two or three stock configurations. If you had to choose between those fourteen things up front it'd be a lot more conceptually complicated.
We use thinkpads at work. They're okay, but they're not Surface/MacBook level of quality. My T450s has bad backlight bleed at the bottom, the trackpad is a major regression from my T430, and it was chock-full of crapware before I nuked it and reinstalled windows. Apple isn't perfect, but the sort of annual model lottery that is notable when it happens in the Apple world is par-for-course in the PC world.
This is one of the reasons why I never bought a Lenovo because I am not sure which one to buy. Too many choices. They did the great job in confusing the heck out of me.
You make a very good point for the average Joe. With that many options, you better hope Joe has a tech savvy friend to make the recommendation, and that said tech savvy friend doesn't just say "get a macbook" because these days that's a perfectly good recommendation 99% of the time.
As a long-time Thinkpad owner, there are really only two answers for most tech-savvy users with typical needs (media, browsing, travel, and maybe programming): The X series and the T4XXs models.
After a very long deliberation (few years:) I went with T450 (non-retina) this summer and I am very happy. I chose it over T550 due to slightly lower dpi (I have a a 15 inch Dell at work with T550's resolution and everything is unpleasantly small, on T450 it's fine).
I took SSD, 16gb ram, no DVD, 2 cores (quad core was very expensive) and 2 batteries which makes it very light, yet with proper screen size; very fast and the battery lifetime is amazing (10-20h)
Only thing I don't like is touchpad, but I usually disable it and use track point. I preferred touchpad in my old asus laptop which was lower than keyboard level hence one would rarely click it by accident.
I chose T450 over T440 since in ..50 series Lenovo readded physical buttons over the touchpad (in ..30 and ..40 they were replaced with touch zones on the touchpad and long time Thinkpad users were really furious about that on forums)
T450 has 130dpi, T550 has 140dpi. It is small but noticeable difference.
It is a software problem that for pragmatic reasons I don't want to get into. Good luck setting non-integer scaling on current operating systems (like 1.25 or 1.50). It's either not supported, or the effect is blurry. It's a different story for retina screens, you set scaling to 2.00 and you're fine. But I was talking about non-retina.
I am surprsied reading those comments. A touchpad on my x250 is fantastic and very customizable. I hate touchpads in general but after customizing it to be very sensitive and proper dead zones (to avoid clicking on accident in areas I often put a part of my hands) even started to like it.
I customized to very low sensitivity and I use only for clicking these days as trackpoint is just much better an interface.
That's the issue right there. You get swamped by options, some may be good, most are crappy. How can you tell? Sometimes they'll add a letter and an otherwise good product will be a crappy mess.
They can make it better than MS's offering because they are providing you with exactly what you need.
Take for example me, compsci student. I wanted to have a sub-600€ laptop with good hardware and good battery life, but did not care much about display. I ordered a thinkpad, replaced the HDD with an SSD, and am now happy with it.
The trick is called customization: Being better because they can deliver exactly what you need.
No, they really do have too many models. The yoga line is nice, but they clearly don't invest much individual resources on the design of each of the other models, which tends to make them generic. I have a work-supplied s540, and it's a decent workhorse laptop, but a macbook it is not. It's too generic for that. I was also pretty disappointed that the coating had blemishes. Even a cursory visual QA check would have detected those, so either they're shipping product sight unseen, or they're deliberately deciding to ship blemished goods.
I think that complaining about "too much choice" is disingenuous. One of the things I don't like about the Apple eco-system is that there is hardly any choice. Choosing between a tablet and a laptop is not really making a choice. It must be hell for you to by a car...
I'm a fan of Mazda. Your analogy would make more sense if instead of Mazda offering a choice of compact (Mazda 3), sedan (Mazda 6), or sports car (Mazda Miata), instead Mazda decided to build a lineup of:
* Mazda6L (Our most green Mazda 6)
* Mazda6 Yoga (Our Mazda 6 that transforms into a Miata)
* Mazda6W (Our power version)
* Mazda6T (Our version which includes more gizmos)
* Mazda6X (Our version which includes even more gizmos)
* Mazda6 Helix (Our version that's like our Yoga but different)
* Mazda611E (Our rugged version for teenagers who are careless)
.. and then within each type, have specific models like Mazda6T 554p, Mazda6T 440s, etc.
.. and then allowing you to further customize each Mazda6 model down to the finest detail.
...and then repeat for each type of car in their lineup (Mazda3, Miata, SUVs, etc).
Yes, if this were the case then I would have a very hard time buying a car! :)
Mazda in Australia is particularly straightforward as far as full-range car companies go. Three cars (2, 3, 6) three SUVs (CX3, CX5, CX9) a ute (BT-50) and a sports car (MX-5). Each of these has a few levels of trim. Some have choice of engine, boot style. Overall it's very easy for consumers to comprehend.
Whereas take BMW, which seems to have a really simple product line but has endless subtle variations in the same segment. 5 series Sedan vs 4 Gran Coupé vs 3 Grand Turismo, anyone? Then try to comprehend the endless options for each model. Then try to comprehend the relative cost of one model versus another (or one trim versus another) factoring in the inclusion or exclusion of particular features. It's insane.
I admit that other makes allow more customization and there's regional differences too (Mazda USA offers far less customization than Mazda Japan or Europe specifically because their research determined us Yanks like less choices).
But I think your example is way off. You're showing Trim Levels which are equivalent to prepackaged options list like CPU, memory, Red type cover vs Blue type cover, black stylus vs silver stylus. It's still the same model (Mazda6), still the same chassis, same body, same car! And cars are far more complicated than laptops! Buying a car in the USA for 99% of the general public basically comes down to choosing the Model (Mazda6), choosing the trim level (Grand Touring), choosing the color, and then settling for whatever your nearest dealers have on the lot :)
In comparison, the ThinkPad T models have different chassis, different physical sizes, different weight before you even start customizing things like CPU, memory, batteries, etc. And remember we're only talking about the T series.
ThinkPad is pretty embarrassing; you're supporting a company that decided to MITM all its users traffic to inject advertising using factory-installed malware by trusting the same certificate, whose private key can be extracted from any Lenovo product and trivially used to MITM all the others.
Lenovo needs to fail hard and fast. I recognize we'll probably never get those responsible into prison, but at least we can make sure they never work again.
If you wouldn't buy or recommend a Volkswagen after dieselgate, you certainly shouldn't buy or recommend a Lenovo product after Superfish.
Is that supposed to be better? The same people profit from ThinkPad purchases as the other notebooks. In fact withholding it from ThinkPad indicates a deliberate campaign not to put it where a tech-savvy user might see it.
I support the company that makes the closest thing to a product I want. Reimaging the computer is a lot easier than installing your own pointing stick.
I don't think people understand the magnitude of this betrayal. When you buy a tool, it should obey you, and any deviations from that expectation should be disclosed upfront.
Imagine if you bought a car that detected when you were driving to a particular business, locked out steering, and instead drove you to a competitor that had "partnered" with the manufacturer. You totally own the car, and no one ever told you it had this "feature."
Imagine if you bought a gun that would refuse to fire when pointed at people who had purchased protection from the manufacturer. You don't find out about this feature until the guy invading your home has it.
Lenovo lied to your face. It sold laptops that claimed to navigate to the websites you entered in the URL bar, but instead displayed a version edited by Lenovo on behalf of its partners.
Normalizing this sort of thing is not okay and anyone buying Lenovo post-Superfish shares the moral responsibility when this is our future.
Considering we apparently don't "own" our Kindle ebook purchases, I can see a future where our hardware purchases are on indefinite loans to us rather than outright purchases.
No, I don't think YOU understand how unusable some people find a touchpad compared to a pointing stick. Your examples are still better than a car that does not run or a gun that explodes in my hand as soon as I touch it.
You even tried to fabricate examples where the surprise factor of the product not working as expected at a key moment was the bulk of the problem. As if that's somehow not the biggest flaw of a touchpad.
Wait, really? So the things mentioned in the comment thread on this¹ post mean less to you than getting a trackpoint?
In any case, Lenovo isn’t the only manufacturer that includes a pointing stick in their laptops. HP’s EliteBook series, for example, has one. There’s a full list of manufacturers here².
Yes, far worse. A laptop without a nub-style pointer is effectively keyboard-only. Worse than keyboard-only if there is no way to disable the touchpad.
I know that elitebooks, latitudes, etc used to have these too. None of them do anymore.
Have you tried a Macbook Pro in the last few years? I agree most (if not all) Windows laptops' trackpads are unusable, but I've always liked Apple's.
Many Windows OEMs maintain their cheaper-than-Apple status by optimizing the things people compare (gigahertz, RAM capacity, HDD capacity) and putting in the cheapest shit possible on the rest (pixel density, keyboards, cases, hinges, and especially trackpads).
Macbooks don't have them, never have, and probably never will. The quality of the touchpad is not the issue. You are trying to sell a blind man a book by saying "no seriously, this one has REALLY BIG print" because you don't believe he's truly blind.
Hijackability is probably a feature of most consumer grade devices - accidental or not. What Lenovo did was a specific attack that enabled them blatantly to inject their own content and also did so crappily that it opened a whole back door. It's not like I expect my outdoor to be burglar proof. I do expect, however, for my door manufacturer not to give out keys and assist the tupperware sales reps to help themselves in to my living room.
One of the challenges of being the 'commodity version' is that a lot of value gets squeezed out of the pipeline.
One way to look at it is that a laptop is made up of a bunch of parts, sometimes those parts come in subassemblies, and every time someone touches a part, a small bit of margin is taken out to pay for that touch. This is the reason that vertically integrated (from chips to finished product) has a higher profit margin, it collects all of those bits into one chunk.
For a long time the windows Laptop market has been all sub-assemblies coming together at the last stage. Not much margin left for the laptop "maker" after they pay for the folks who built the motherboard, the folks who build the disk drive, Intel for making the CPU, Hynix or Samsung for making the memory modules, Sharp or Toshiba for making the display, and then pony up still more cash to Microsoft for an OS.
Apple's advantage is that they tightly control the supply line, using their own OS, and by not licensing their software elsewhere can charge a premium price for additional margin.
By going into competition with their partners, Microsoft took the the only path possible to compete with Apple, be vertical. Interesting to see what that means long term.
How much really is there to "veticalize" ? Microsoft won't build hard-drives, cpu's , memory modules, or display. And i think the big OEM's already design their own motherboards and assemble.
So the only thing MS can save is OEM margin, and it's supposed to be razor thin(maybe 10%) .
I use a Razer Blade. It's bafflingly the only laptop that exists that has premium build quality, doesn't weigh a ton, and has actually good graphics. Its form and quality is pretty much equivalent to a black Macbook Pro, but it manages to fit a GTX 970M in there. I recommend it to anyone looking to do portable work that requires a good GPU (like game dev).
Somewhat off topic, what're Vaio users migrating to? I look every year or so to see what the current laptop offerings are, and nothing has convinced me to leave my 5+ year old Vaio.
I have a Sony Vaio Pro 13.3", 1080P, i7, 256GB SSD, 8GB, 2.3lbs, touchscreen; dual booting, but primarily running in Linux. It will cover me through this entire tech cycle.
The above mentioned "premium fatal flaw" in this case is the terrible internal wifi, but a micro-usb wifi has corrected that. I also fixed IMO the glossy display with a screen protector. Other than those two issues, I really like it.
When it's finally time to replace it I'll be looking at Microsoft or Dell. Maybe even Apple or ASUS. Probably not Lenovo, because they seem to be trying to destroy the Thinkpad brand. If I had to buy a computer right now without further research it would be the Dell XPS 13.
Have you tried the internal Wifi with a newer Linux distribution? I'm using Ubuntu 15.04 and it works great :) No disconnects, speed good be better though ...
Regarding a replacement: What do you think about the Librem 13? It's one of my favorites along with the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo X1 Carbon.
I'm running Mint 17.2 which switched to following Ubuntu LTS releases only. So, I haven't tried a newer Ubuntu, but the wifi is terrible in Win8 too. The "Panda Ultra 150Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00762YNMG was my solution for a massive range/reliability increase.
I'm really happy to see the Librem 13 nearing existence, but it's not ideal for me: i5 only, no back-lit keyboard. Up to 16GB and the matte screen is awesome though. The X1 Carbon 1st/3rd Gens are great, but Lenovo is being so bad recently.
I've seen it, but it only runs 6hrs (vs 10-14hr) on the battery, weighs 2X and costs 2X my current machine. Plus 15" is too large. I'm really happy to see the progress on freedom-respecting hardware, I'm just not willing to make that many sacrifices at this time.
FWIW, I have the Dell XPS 13 running Linux (and Windows 10 from a USB 3 SSD), and it's great. I bought the one that comes with a Windows license and installed Fedora 22 on it. It was pretty rough around the edges at first, but with several BIOS upgrades and kernel updates, it runs perfectly now.
Honestly, the post-privatization Dells have been my go-to now (I just got work to get me a Latitude E7250, although the new XPS 13s also are tempting).
That said, it seems like the next laptop I'm getting just might be this Surface Book, or the next iteration of it.
Sony recently released the Vaio Z Canvas (who comes up with these names???) which you can demo/pre-order in the Microsoft Store. I tried to use it, but I believe the keyboard was dead (I guess since it fully detaches from the display and was not being actively charged). It also seems nearly impossible to use on your lap.
Dell XPS 13, 2015 model. That's what my family (who have two Vaio's) moved to, at least, and they're very impressed with them. Of course, they were relatively expensive, but hey, you pay for quality regardless of vendor in my experience.
What model is it ? I'm looking to buy and old 10 or 11inch my teacher had around 2008. It was said the laptop case was carbon fiber based. It had a core2duo inside. A really cute machine.
As far as I know (and searching around seems to confirm this) Sony is out of the laptop business and just produces tablets. I should've phrased myself a little better, "what laptops are Vaio owners switching to".
I have tried and failed to buy X1 Carbon last month - i needed it to ship in less than a month, and their online ordering has no expedited shipping (not even an option, wtf?) and doesn't tell you when they will deliver it by (wtf??) and they don't sell X1 in any store in the area (wtf???)
I truly fail to understand this - the best laptop is not sold in stores, and takes over two weeks online. The other Lenovos are, but not that one.
I hope MS is better with this, but I don't have experience yet.
Yes, and while Thinkpad is excellent, it's not really a 'cool' option. The Surface Book's design (and price point) places it solidly as a competitor to Macs.
My last three laptops have been Thinkpads, but Lenovo seems determined to destroy that brand as well. Microsoft may be the only company selling hardware that is trustworthy.
I can only hope that this compels Lenovo to ship a non-16:9, with a great screen, hi-res at low-size with 16GB of RAM. (I've found it hard to find vendors carrying 16GB SODIMMs for the X250.)
I wonder what the heat scenario will be like with the Surface Book. If it turns hot like a MacBook, that'll set yet another disappointing precedent.
Finally though, it's nice to see MS doing what people have been asking for years.
As a traveling consultant, the durability of the Thinkpad design is nice, but holy hell does it suck to carry through an airport, or to shove under the seat in front of you. I've had to switch to a backpack for my laptop, since a normal bag puts too much weight on one side of my body. A backpack is so much less professional than a laptop bag.
And then I drop it from a table onto a cement floor and the body cracks and the lid won't close anymore. So why do I put up with a laptop that's 50% heavier than a Macbook yet still breaks when I drop it from a table?
Or maybe Thinkpads are supposed to be used on desks at all times.
It doesn't sound like you are making fair comparisons between Thinkpads and Macbooks. My 15" T550 is just .2 lbs heavier than a 15" Macbook Pro. The charger for my T550 is much lighter than the one I have for my Macbook Pro, so the overall weight might actually favor the Thinkpad. The 13" business-class ultrabooks that Lenovo sells are pretty close in weight to the 13" Macbook Pro and the Macbook Air.
It sounds like you are basing your opinion off of an old system or a current model that isn't even in the same class as a Macbook.
Thinkpad W520. Core i7, like a Macbook. 16GB of RAM, like a Macbook. Spinning hard drive, worse than a Macbook. Has a desktop video card that is required in order to use video out, but you have to reboot and enable the video card, then it won't sleep until you reboot and disable the card... unlike a Macbook. Because Nvidia won't make Linux drivers for Optimus. No, it's not in the same class as a Macbook, that's half my point. It doesn't do anything a Macbook won't do, and it's less than a year old. It has all the downsides of being a Thinkpad with none of the upsides of... being a Thinkpad. Modern Thinkpads are not as durable or reliable as people make them out to be.
My company is switching everyone from Thinkpads to Macbooks, and this is a company that was built on Thinkpads. That's how awful modern Thinkpads are compared to basically anything else.
I'm a bit curious why a traveling consultant is outfitted with what is marketed as a "workstation in a laptop form factor". Seems like a mismatch of use case to product.
I travel a lot, sometimes for work, sometimes for leisure, so when I chose my personal computer I went with a Thinkpad X230. Fast enough to compile C++ code for my game programming hobby, fast enough to do my excel stuff for work, and the integrated graphics card can drive two external 1920x1200 screens comfortably. Just don't expect to play any graphically intensive games. With the help of a spare battery I kept around I could get 12-14 hours out of it if, for example, I were flying to Asia.
My point being, perhaps your experience had more to do with being given a computer that definitely did not fit your work/life style? Though I'd agree with you that the W520 was not well designed.
I didn't have a choice, this is what all of my coworkers have as well. Some of them found it so hard to work with that they used their own money to buy a Macbook then gave it to the company so they could use it for their job.
My last job, I had a Thinkpad T520, which was just as thick but a bit lighter and smaller footprint. At home I have a T420, again same thickness but slightly smaller footprint yet. I'm no stranger to Thinkpads. I hope I don't ever have to use another.
I'd still disagree on many of the hardware aspects if we're talking about some of their latest X series or slim T series laptops, but you have a point.
I only continued to buy Thinkpads because I knew how to remove all of the Lenovo crapware the moment I got the computer. Especially with the latest privacy issues, Thinkpads are no longer the computers you buy when you just want a solid computer without frills.
The W series and the T520's though... they were always too big to be real laptops and too wimpy to match desktops. It's an awkward place to be.
The W520 is a workstation-class model from 2011. If you don't need the dedicated graphics for something like CAD, it's probably not the right laptop for you.
You might have gotten a W520 less than a year ago, but the W520 is a system from 2011. That's ancient for a laptop.
>That's how awful modern Thinkpads are compared to basically anything else.
Your company choosing to buy Macbooks over Thinkpads is a sign that Thinkpads are worse than every other brand of laptop in existence? Its pretty obvious that you aren't interested in a logical conversation.
