Comments on: Lenovo’s September Surprise: Servers

By: Blue

Blue — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:57:14 +0000

Well its not the quality that took as much of a hit — as the stock and avilablity of Lenovo laptops. The supply chain for Lenovo is just not as consistant on reliable as IBM’s. Lenvos servers will IBM architucture which is great—but will be built useing Lenovos supply chain. —not so good. Better have spares on the self.

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:20:16 +0000

One quick note: Contrary to all the conspiracy theory folks out there, PC Magazine truly does independent testing and the sponsors aren’t hanging out in the labs paying the editors for nice reviews. So, generally speaking, The VAR Guy trusts PC Mag’s reviews.

By: Midnight

Midnight — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:12:18 +0000

OOPS I knew I forgot to mention one thing, PC Magazine came out with their best of 2008 mag just this month, and in that they used consumer ratings of computers, and Lenovo ranked number 2 for reliability and satisfaction for business laptops, only behind Apple. And the satisfaction rating actually went up year to year.

By: Midnight

Midnight — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:08:41 +0000

I wonder if your comments about quality are in specific comparison to the older IBM Thinkpads rather than the industry. I own or help maintain several Thinkpads, including Z61M, T61, T60, and T61P. And to me the build quality hasn’t suffered. These systems replaced T40 (IBM branded and built), T42P, T20 and other systems in the past. I would say that the slight hit that may exist, and I haven’t seen it in all the systems I have worked with, may be due to the improved time to market on new technology. The Thinkpad series were often major laggards in bringing new technology to the market, this afforded the Thinkpads time to make sure things were rock solid but often left folks with little choice but to go to competitors to get that technology early.

Lenovo seems to be drawing a line a little closer to getting new stuff out there to be competitive and still building very solid systems. In fact my T60P (technically work owned) has had zero issues since I received it a year ago, and it is used heavily and daily. Compared to the T40 it replaced, this has been even better at holding up to my daily use than that T40 was which after one year had some minor although annoying issues, which IBM addressed.

By: AnotherLenovoUser

AnotherLenovoUser — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:39:01 +0000

RussH – agreed. I’m in IT and I noticed the same quality hit once Lenovo took over. The IBM ThinkPads were much better and the new Lenovo are not so good.

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:37:41 +0000

RussH: Actually, The VAR Guy has heard good things about ThinkPad quality under Lenovo’s management. However, our resident blogger is mobile today so he doesn’t have any hard facts about product quality to share with you.

By: RussH

RussH — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:02:09 +0000

Is it just me, or is there a general perception that Thinkpad quality went rapidly downhill when it moved from IBM to Lenovo? The reputation for robustness and reliability across the board (not just for the high-end models) seems to have disappeared. For that reason I’d be extremely sceptical about a Lenovo Server supporting my small business. I’m still happily running an IBM Netfinity!