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Just days after Lenovo Group Chief Yang Yuanqing hinted that Lenovo may be pulling out of the PC and Server markets in favor of focusing on datacenters and mobile devices, long-time Thinkpad designer and Retro Thinkpad Project Manager David Hill has announced his resignation from the company. Mr. Hill, who had been in charge of the original ThinkPad design in the early 90's and rose to the rank of Vice President of Design at Lenovo, states:
"I want to broaden my view and create the opportunity to do more in the field of design, not less."
The 25th Anniversary "Retro ThinkPad" project, which was in development for over two years and received over 13,000 responses from long-time ThinkPad fans, is still, for the time being, scheduled for an October 5th announcement. Could internal pressures to minimize costs have resulted in Mr. Hill deciding to take his name off the Retro ThinkPad project which he spearheaded for two and a half years?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday June 30 2017, @06:15PM (3 children)
I recall their biggest claim to fame was their outstanding physical durability. Was that overstated?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday June 30 2017, @06:35PM
I don't think so. I think a lot of people just don't understand the appeal of a business laptop; they're not usually specced higher than high-end consumer laptops, and in fact can be quite a bit more conservative. For instance, you can still find VGA ports on many of them (the HP I have here with me has one, and it's less than 2 years old). If you want cutting-edge and high performance, you buy an Alienware or some other such laptop, not a business laptop. Business laptops are meant to be relatively rugged so they can be carried around everywhere, especially on airplanes, and to be reliable because you don't want your laptop crapping out in the middle of an important presentation. They can be a little behind on I/O technologies because conference room projectors frequently are many years old and still use VGA, and you need to be able to bring your laptop and plug into the conference room projector, even if it's old and crappy and doesn't have HDMI. It needs to survive rough handling by idiot TSA personnel, so it'll usually have some kind of metal chassis, like the magnesium used by Dell Latitudes and I think Thinkpads. And because the corporate environment can be rather conservative, you usually won't see any flashing styling on them, just blacks and grays. They'll also usually have docking ports, so you can easily plug it into your docking station at your desk and use a full keyboard/mouse/(dual)monitor.
Anyone who doesn't really care about durability, typing feel, etc. and cares more about thin and light and cutting-edge tech and maximum performance probably won't be well-served by a business laptop.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Friday June 30 2017, @06:36PM (1 child)
No, not at all. I worked at a college, where we issued each incoming freshman with a Laptop. Starting in 2004 we started issuing ThinkPads. We had been issuing Compaq business class machines for years, but a huge let down by HP prompted a search for a new Vendor. The Thinkpads were simply amazing from a durability standpoint. Durability started to falter a couple years after the Lenovo acquisition -- They went from tanks to simply armoured vehicles. In other words, still pretty damn good. These things held up to 4 years of college students carting them around and doing unspeakable things to them.
My c. 2003 R40 was finally retired after about 10 years of near-constant use. After 10 years, it finally started to wear out (lots of chassis flex all of a sudden) also the Pentium M and 2GB of RAM simply couldn't keep up anymore.
The c. 2010 t400 I replaced it with...didn't fare so well and I went through like 4 heatsinks before I just gave up on it and "downgraded" to a used 2008 X61....which I'm still using as my primary mobile computing device. Its in my backpack everyday, back and forth to work, on the bike, on the bus, wherever. It just continues to work.
I've tried to sell my Mom on one of these for years and always get back "It's too expensive, I can get a $400 laptop from Walmart!". "Yes, and how much will you spend on $400 laptops in the $10 years that the $1500 ThinkPad will last you?" Sigh...
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @06:48PM
How did you replace the battery? Bought the Lenovo battery? Aftermarket batteries are crap - the advertised specs are all fantasy and they probably sat in some warehouse for years before the sale.