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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01 2017, @01:05AM
>The new chasses aren't cheap plastic, they are Carbon Fiber Reinforced, and the X1 still has a metal chassis. Whether they are more or less rugged, I can't say, but you're clearly setting up a strawman by calling them cheap plastic.
They *are* cheap plastic, at least on some models.
https://i.redd.it/cn8pe9ekv8yy.png [i.redd.it]
This is a matrix of the 2017 model build material. It seems the past three or four iterations, Lenovo has been looking for a replacement of the ABS plastic wrapped over Magnesium alloy rollcage that has been a staple of Thinkpad design since the T60.
Since 2016, they have finally moved on from that cheap greyish/brown plastic (*40 and *50 generations) that showed tremendous wear under normal use after about two weeks. But they are still looking for something cheaper with at least some durability, as the image above shows.
The T470 has a better build quality than the much higher spec'd T470p (based on user reviews). By that metric, it's a complete shitshow at Lenovo right now.
ABS Plastic was *not* a bad thing. Those classic machines that we pine over, the T60/1 frankenpads, were ABS plastic over the magnesium rollcage. They did not show much wear after years of use, which is what kept their resale value high. The ability to survive multiple drops and while being used as a primary computer and looking nice, albeit a little bland, made the brand stand out. The toughest of the lot was the rare 4:3 R61, which was thicker plastic than its T61 counterpart, but still made of the same materials. Anecdotes from various sources claim that they look as good as the day they were new, and are still trucking along ten years later.
It is certainly no strawman to say that modern Thinkpads are still using cheap plastic. But they are also using other materials as well.