Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
view the rest of the comments
Not that I’m advocating for Apple’s inexcusable behaviour, but as someone who’s worked in IT managing fleets of hundreds of Thinkpads (among others like Apple, Dell, Acer, HP), respectfully, they are far less reliable and durable than a MacBook. The only devices I had with higher failure rates than ThinkPads were Acer laptops.
They are certainly more repairable, but so are others like Dell and HP. Lenovo were one of the earlier manufacturers to pull some anti-repair moves such as soldering memory to the mainboard (on the Yoga models).
I think your statement is far more accurate in the days when IBM owned the ThinkPad brand, but unfortunately Lenovo have run it into the ground as far as quality goes.
All that said, I certainly hope we see more projects like Framework so that these big manufacturers can get some sort of reality check.
Lenovo did not run ThinkPad to the ground. User repairability has become a lot more accessible to the average user since, and unlike greedy IBM, Lenovo prices them at various tiers. The only thing that has become less accessible is the battery, which is behind a few screws and a back cover now, to make the laptops thinner and lighter.
I have seen plenty ThinkPads being given to employees in corporate India, and they just work, unlike Dells and HPs, and are not astronomically costly to to buy and repair like MacBooks.
You’re just flat out wrong on this.
There’s a Wikipedia article for each series of thinkpad/idea book or whatever and it’s got a color coded chart you can scroll through to see the progression from more user replaceable to less.
Lenovo still has some lines that are modular, but they’re doing what everyone else is.
Only the X serie ultrabooks and Yogas are not as modular. What else is so non-modular among ThinkPads? Hot swappable battery versus battery behind few screws does not practically count, because they are easy to replace.
The e series and non-yoga L13s after 2019 (no surprise there), the t-series is available with partial soldered ram and a bunch of other stuff after 2013 (O.O) and only has a few configurations without soldered parts after 2020. Even the p series has partial soldered skus and one fully soldered one.
Oh yeah and all that is true for cpus as well. I didn’t feel like deciphering the two incredibly close colors they use on that chart for “socketed” and “soldered” so I’m not making specific claims but there’s a lot of soldered cpus in the thinkpad line now.
There has been a movement industry wide towards soldered components and Lenovo hasn’t completely committed the thinkpad line to it but they’re absolutely dipping their toes in.
Non-soldered CPUs basically have not been a thing since a decade, and only the most niche maker Framework has something resembling that today. That is less on Lenovo and more on how the "slim" trend has gone for laptop industry as a whole.
I have noticed the soldered RAM in the E/L serie, but did not know T has that now. But I think the general essence of a ThinkPad with user repairability and durability is retained even now, with even the base E serie since E480 having MILSPEC certification. Great ThinkPads are simply more expensive, and any ThinkPad you get will be way better than consumer grade laptops, which I think has merit.