Is it true that IBM sold its Thinkpad division...

[CrunchDude2]

...to Lenovo because IBM wanted to "get rid" of it because of any reliability issues? Someone recently alleged as much, and I had to strongly disagree. What say you, my fellow Thinkpad lovers?

[ryengineer]

Your arguer's Starting Point. It has more than enough info. he/she wants to know.

[rleo25]

This is an old debated issue. However one of the reasons is that Thinkpads should meet the highest performance and reliability standars because they were sold mainly to billion dollars IBM Customers in the mainframe and services branches, so you had to produce them even when the costs were skyrocketing... in these conditions no any business can survive... It was a logical move to get rid of the entire PC division and let their new owners introduce the changes that should have been made before, only that when you have a sign that says IBM couldn´t do.

[Johan]

... according to a 2006-report: Most Reliable Computers Made by Apple, IBM/Lenovo (report originally released by RESCUECOM Corp. on Oct. 19, 2006) reliability for Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad's were in top compared to e.g. HP/Compaq, Dell etc.

I have no idea, however, of how "biased" the RESCUECOM report might be...? Just FYI!

Best regards,

Johan

[snife]

They are the most reliable, and they have a big edge over Apple due to the fact they are easily servicable, however, that report could be a bit skewed due to the types of customers who buy ThinkPads.

The T60 is a much more reliable product that the T40, so, while Lenovo has been reducing costs, its not at the sacrifice of the build quality, IBM is a hopelessly inefficient company, for everyone actually doing a job, they will have 4 more people managing them, thats why they had trouble maintaining profitability in the PC business.

IBM have discovered they can get companies to pay them for doing practically nothing, they want to be a services company rather than a company with an actual product which is why they sold the PC business, I worked in IBM for 6 years and I really couldn't tell you why they make the money they make, I would predict they will sell the server business before too long as well.