Thinkpads Forum

There are a lot of threads about pricing, desire for lower prices and quality. Then there was the thread today about Lenovo retail in the U.S.

I just reloaded a Dell desktop for a client. The basic install CD did not include basic drivers (like NIC). The NIC was strange (Broadcom) so Windows could not find it. The quick model search didn't relate to the model on the box (later to find the service tag which did work). In short, it was a pain in the butt to re-image.

Dell computers are cheap. There is absolutely nothing else good I can say about them, and would never spend my own personal cash on one. You get what you pay for and if Lenovo turns into Dell to make stuff cheap, then the ThinkPad will be lost. It was always worth it to me to pay the premium for a ThinkPad. YMMV.

... JD Hurst

Yeah, Dells do the restore thing strangely.
There should have been a "driver disc" that has drivers for ~10 different models and you get to guess which drivers to use. That is what happens when you base your hardware choices on whatever components are cheapest this week.
At least HP/Compaq gives you an image that has most of the drivers installed.

And yet the State of Michigan has 7,500 new Dell PC's going into the Department of Human Services. East Lansing has also chosen Dell to provide their equipment (including notebooks). In central Michigan it appears the only organization still buying from IBM is Blue Cross providing equipment for it's sales staff (at least as of a year ago).

I can remember when people said "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", which made it safe even if it wasn't the best thing to do.

Is there an explanation for this that makes sense?

I can't complain about my mileage. My 600E and T42 have both been excellent.
I haven't owned any other laptops.

My coworker's Dell Inspiron didn't inspire me. And something was 'Lost in translation' in his tech support calls if you know what I mean.

dsvochak wrote:In central Michigan it appears the only organization still buying from IBM is Blue Cross providing equipment for it's sales staff (at least as of a year ago).

Is there an explanation for this that makes sense?

Bean counters.

Additionally, governments universally and worldwide frequently do very stupid things. City of Toronto also purchased a bunch of Dells, and publicly looked like the fools they were for doing it.

I push my clients to IBM, and I get *zero* negative feedback once the machines are in service. ... JD Hurst

Every single network I go to, sometimes two or three a day, the majority of the PC's are Dell. Usually the IT guys get what they are given to work with, the only thing they get to splurge on is servers.

To me it really seems to be price and in your face marketing.

To me it really seems to be price and in your face marketing

Is the idea of TCO outdated?

Or are Dells (and I want to limit this to notebooks because today I think all PC's are "cheap computers") so much cheaper to buy that it doesn't matter? If you can buy 2 Dells for what 1 thinkpad costs, IT can do "instant repair" by taking one off the shelf.

This isn't a knock on Dell, I've just been trying to figure out the thinking and I cant't.

There is more to TCO than that. I have an excellent client (all IBM desktops and ThinkPads under my counsel) who had a Dell server. It crashed with a disk drive failure. The machine stopped; Dell wanted 10 days to fix; my IBM partner fixed it next day. The client was out of service for about 10 business hours.

The machine was replaced with an IBM server with 15,000 rpm raid drives. One of the drives failed last week. First, no one (except me) noticed; and second, IBM had a replacement drive on site in 3.5 hours. The client was not out of service - not for one second.

These clients are business people, and they could see that the very modest premium for IBM quality and service was paid back in spades and triplicate by no down time.
... JD Hurst

My company went with Dell too. I have a D600 provided by my company for work and a T41p i bought for home (got my husband a T41p too). The thinkpads are soooooo much nicer. Unfortunately company policy prohibits me using my home computer for work. But I bought myself a usb ultranav keyboard for work so I can use the IBM trackpoint. The dell stick pointer is horrible! I have to use it when I work from home since I generally just work from the kitchen table. I'm not a fan of trackpads.

jdhurst wrote:

There is more to TCO than that.....

The above quote is what I was trying to convey. That example is something IBM/Lenovo should be using in ads.

Went to an Air Force Base today, 9 out of 10 desktops were Dell the 1 out of 10 that weren't were gateway. I also heard that during Thanksgiving, Christmas time, Dell laptops are going to be at WalMart for around $300.

Most people I talk to think Dell is a great box, Dell really can afford to make minimal profit when they have such a huge market share. Personally I think if IBM/Lenovo goes into the big chain stores it will be a disaster for us, the dedicated users who have paid the big bucks for the top of the line.

Actually, they are HP laptops that are going to be at Wal-Mart, and they are going to be $398. Just read the article called Black Friday on CNN.

FWIW, the correct procedure for reloading a Dell is to press Ctrl-F11 on bootup. They don't tell you that one, but I found it out when I saw a 3GB partition on a Dell laptop I had to reload, and figured it was a restore partition, and googled it.

And, I've figured out the hard way that they stopped shipping the driver CDs. You now have to download the drivers yourself.

Anyway, my school will be strongly considering IBM for any possible new laptops.

99%+ of my population in my area is a Dell fanboy.
Why? "SHINY LIGHTS!!!!"
Anyways, had to get it out of my system
I used a couple at the school and some at the mall Dell booth, felt flimsy for some of their prices (2000+) R52 + T43 + T42 = Good quality. It doesn't feel as the hinge is about to fall off if I lifted it right off there
Lattitudes - Littile more decent.

Earlier today I was at Costco Wholesale store and they had an Inspiron 2200 on display. The compiuter's display flexed badly and some of the plastics creaked but the screen itself looked decent and on the keyboard, the keys themselves felt decent but the keyboard itself was too cramped for my complete liking.

The specs were on par with most upper-mainstream notebooks with a Pentium M CPU and 512mb of RAM.

The compter itself actually looked surprisingly professional with an all black case and a minimal number of outside gadgets. All in all, I have to say that despite there being a few things I disliked about the computer that would deter me from buying it, I also have to say that I've seen far worse.

Yeah, the Inspiron 1000/1200/2200 and the Latitude 110L (a rebadged 2200) are a return to professionalism in Dell's design.

Unfortunately, the 1000 is a Celeron system with 1hr battery life (which is why it's been discontinued), the 1200 doesn't even have a Mini-PCI slot, and the 2200/110L still has the cheap build quality, even though it's slightly more upscale.

FWIW, the ThinkPad R50e's direct counterpart is the 110L.

You seem to forget that most of those outfits that buy Dell are governmental agencies and thus severely money strapped. Since it is taxpayer's money paying for the stuff they are obliged by law to accept the best and cheapest offer. IBM has no chance there against Dell. I had a few clients in health care, and they had to go with Dell because they gave the cheapest solution. By EU or US law they have to accept the cheapest bid for a given task environment.

By the way, Lenovo Thinkpads are now officially sold in Wal-Mart Belgium and Germany. Far cheaper than in the Thinkpad stores!!
Well, the models are slightly different in configuration, but 100% Thinkpads and usefull.

I remember that up until about a few years ago, my school had several ThinkPad 380Ds. They've all been phased out of service and replaced by Dell's at this point but since my school almost always goes for the lowest or second lowest bid, that must mean there was a short period of time when a ThinkPad could be had for less than a Dell. Either that or the low bid rule is still new here and not old enough to go back that far.

Hmm... I've compared a ThinkPad R50e 1842-SLU (upgraded to 768MB RAM free) to a Dell Inspiron 2200 with identical specs (including a very much not free upgrade to 768MB RAM), and the R50e was cheaper.

beeblebrox wrote:

Since it is taxpayer's money paying for the stuff they are obliged by law to accept the best and cheapest offer. IBM has no chance there against Dell

"Cheapest offer" is far from the only determining factor in government purchasing. I have a friend who has built a lucrative law practice around litigating whether the "low bid" meets the requirements of the request for proposal (or request for bid or whatever term governments may use). He wins enough to make the issue one worth considering in a lot of cases.

As far as "IBM has no chance..." see http://www.acs.nmu.edu/11.0.php for information on Northern Michigan U's "Teaching, Learning, and Communication (TLC) notebook initiative" program using over 9,000 Thinkpads and iBooks. (iBooks for art and design majors).

In Michigan, at least, something other than buy the low bid is going on.

As much as I dislike Dells, I have to admit that they are stable, and if the price is low enough, I can understand why they are used by many business'.
The Dell desktops I've used, has been easy to open and install parts into.
Functionality is the same as any computer.

The customer service I've talked to, has been very reluctant to admit that anything's defective. A way to get them to admit they are at fault, is to intelligently lie to all the questions they ask.

The Dell Optiplex desktops I have had to muck around with are a clam-shell design and a pain in the butt to open. Vastly less convenient than sliding the side off an IBM tower. Once again, my opinion only. ... JD Hurst

The OptiPlex GXa tower I own and have collecting dust and sitting next to my Athlon XP computer is pretty nice to work with. One button press and the side panel pops right off. From there, I have acess to just about everything and the PCI slots are in a removable cage as is the hard drive. The expansion bay rails are accessed by pressing another button to pop off the front panel and when all's done, the thing reassembles in seconds.

Well, the OptiPlex 170L (a Dimension 3000 with a different BIOS) is a little different. Pull one lever, and the side panel just slides off. Getting it back on is a little bit of a pain, though

Im seeing a T43 in a Office Depot flyer for 1549.99 and a Z60T( which I never heard of)for 1999.99.................I was under the impression that a T43 was top of the line(any line in my mind)why is the Z60T more pricey?Specs compare closely.just curious..............















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Hmm... that is odd...

Does the Z60t have the EVDO card? Does it have the titanium cover?

Anyway, the Z60t is a 14.1" widescreen.

I got my Lenovo Thinkpad flyer in the mail yesterday. There is a Z60t "Special Edition" for $1,999. Titanium cover, 4.1 travel weight (5.94 for the Z60m), Fingerprint reader, and other differences. T43's are $1,499 & $1,779. Also an R50e for $699. Even the desktops aren't that expensive.

I'm starting to think (if quality and service remain roughly the same) that it might be a good thing that Lenovo is now doing the marketing of thinkpads instead of IBM. Every time I think about IBM's marketing of computer products I think of OS/2 and shudder.

There's an interesting article related to this called "Has Dell Derailed? at
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123472,00.asp

dsvochak wrote:Every time I think about IBM's marketing of computer products I think of OS/2 and shudder.

You got that right.

I was a big fan of OS/2 for several years. I had a subscription to OS/2 Professional until the magazine stopped publishing. I was disappointed when OS/2 became just a sideline in the OS wars. I don't use it anymore.

dsvochak wrote:There's an interesting article related to this called "Has Dell Derailed? at
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123472,00.asp

And, I've seen that time and again, the R50e is sharply undercutting the Inspiron 2200.

I'm predicting that an R50e that my school is ordering will undercut Dell's quote on a comparable 2200 by almost $300.

THREE FSCKING HUNDRED DOLLARS!

My school's switching to IBM. Some IBM rep tried to sell them on X41Ts, and failed miserably, instead selling them on an R50e.