"Trust us", says ThinkPad creator

Arimasa Naitoh, the inventor of the ThinkPad notebook and vice president of Development at Lenovo's worldwide notebook division, has moved to quell fears that the sale of IBM's PC division to China-based Lenovo would result in a reduction in quality levels.

The original ThinkPad -- the 700C -- was created by Naitoh's team at IBM and introduced to the market in 1992. Successive ThinkPad releases cemented the brand as a notebook institution, garnering a reputation of quality and durability.

Since the sale of IBM's PC division to Lenovo in May 2005, some have begun to question whether the ThinkPad's quality standards will be maintained.

"[One] user concern is, because Lenovo is a Chinese company, they will [produce] cheap stuff and put the Lenovo logo on top of it," Naitoh (below) said at a press conference this morning in Sydney.

Naitoh utterly refutes this claim, promising that the design and manufacturing process will remain largely unchanged, and that the bulk of ThinkPad design will occur at the Yamato Laboratory in Japan.

"We will continue to develop the ThinkPad as we have been doing, so please don't worry; trust us.

"Lenovo Corporation well understands the importance of keeping research people in other areas of the world, not just in China," he said.

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IBM T Series CrapTops.....I mean laptops Anonymous -- 27/07/06 (in reply to #120139023)

My company purchased around 100 T43 laptops. We have sent 35 back for repairs with 6 months. I have a hard time trusting a 35% fail rate.

My company is switching to Dell becasue they are cheaper, better quality, easier to acquire and have better service.

I was an IBM fan until Lenovo took over.

- JL -

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Agree Anonymous -- 28/07/06 (in reply to #120139024)

Yep, we have a fleet of R40, T41 and T43s. The later, Lenovo-built machines have had approx. 50% return rate, some of the latest T43s have gone back 2 or 3 times.

Funnily enough, Dell is indeed looking a lot better prospect given the price differences and apparent lack of quality since the move to Lenovo.

Possibly coincidence, but I seriously doubt it.

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Trust has to be earned. H -- 28/07/06

I have an old ThinkPad that is 5 years old. It has been used to death, thrown around, and even sat on. And yet, it still works fine. Kudos to IBM for making me such a tough little laptop back in 2000.

However, I suspect Laptop standards in general are falling nowadays.

How else can this be explained: HP was a brand that I also used to trust. I bought an HP laptop from Harvey Norman in November last year. And so far it has suffered 2 complete motherboard failures. That's 2 failures within 8 months. The first time, the entire motherboard was replaced by HP service centre staff in Sydney. 3 months later, the entire unit has failed again. And all this laptop has ever done, is sit at home on a desk, and be used for 2-3 hours per night.

I will never buy HP again.

Not that the failure of an HP laptop has anything to do with IBM. But my confidence in "big brand" laptop manufacturers has lost it's shine for the moment, that's all.

Is the complete removal of the 'IBM' brand name from the market, supposed to restore that shine and fill someone like me with renewed confidence? With my poor experience of HP quality, I wanted to go back to IBM. But the IBM name, it's history and reputation, are gone.

Instead of IBM, we have Lenovo, a chinese company who used to be called "New Technology Developer Incorporated". Prior to their IBM purchace, they were unknown outside China. What reputation do they have to uphold?

IBM computers used to be designed and built in the USA.
Then they were designed in the USA/Japan and built in Japan.
Then they were designed in the USA and built in China.
Under Lenovo, they may very well end up being designed and built in China. Lenovo are Chinese. Doing everything in China, where everything is cheaper, would make good business sense for Lenovo.

But China is still a country reknowned for average design, and even more average manufacturing standards. People may say, "Oh but everything is built in China these days, so what's the difference?".

Yes that may be true. But there is a difference. Can you name one Chinese brand that owns, designs and builds quality products, from beginning to end? Most Chinese manufacturing is either done for big foreign brands, who do all the design work back home, or it is done by cheap chinese junk manufacturers with fly-by-night brand names.

That's because when a product is designed in Japan, or the USA, or Germany etc, it still stands a fighting chance of ending up a good quality product.

Compare this to all-Chinese brands - they're a dime a dozen. There are new brands being invented daily - visit Strathfield car radios and browse all the TVs and DVD players by brands you've never heard of - and may never see again. Traditionally, Chinese brands have just mass produced cheap junk before switching their brand names in order to fool new buyers.

It works a little like this...
A Chinese company starts a new cheap brand called "CyberTech", and begin mass producing cheap DVD players under this name for a while. When people start to notice that replacing 3 $69 CyberTech DVD players over 3 years would cost them more than buying 1 Panasonic DVD player that lasts for 3 years, then you just change your company name to "Xenixus" or something, and start all over again.

If "Lenovo" is going to be any different, then they need to weather the skepticism of people who've been burnt too many times by cheap Chinese products, quit telling us to "trust them", and start putting real runs on the board.

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