Comment Re:What's the difference? (Score 1) 99
And third, we keep going back to IBM/Lenovo because we rarely have issues with them. To borrow a phrase, they just work.
I've owned an HP (more than ten years ago), a T42 Thinkpad from the time that Lenovo was taking over, and a new T520. The HP was OK, if a bit fragile. The T42, as you say, just plain works. Damn near bulletproof, never a problem -- and it's been in heavy use for seven years.
The kindest thing I can say about the T520 is that it's flaky. Cores randomly, sometimes before it's done POSTing. The wireless networking is up and down, up and down -- unless it's just plain down. It's the kind of intermittent behavior that you can't get warranty service for because it never reproduces when the technician tests it.
I bought the T42 because I knew literally hundreds of engineers from semiconductor companies who put hundreds of thousands of miles on theirs every year and they did, indeed, just plain work. And that's just what it did for me until it got too long in the tooth to handle the current workload. But if I could get a halfway modern laptop with the quality of that T42, I'd scrap this Lenovo POS for it in a hartbeat.
I disagree that you can't get warranty service. I've had many warranty calls where I say it's an intermittent issue, and they send me a prepaid warranty box and say "Check the intermittent box on the form and send it in". Even if it passes their pre-tests, they replace the motherboard anyway. One time, we even sent in the wrong laptop which had NOTHING wrong with it, and they STILL replace the motherboard because we checked the "intermittent" box on the form! Try it and see, I've had nothing but good experiences with the Lenovo warranty center.
