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3K views 46 replies 17 participants last post by  NineOneSix 
#1 ·
Had quite a few 'new' Lenovo retail laptops in for repair and i'm shocked at the build quality.

Ive always classed Lenovo as the Bently of the laptop world.

If anyone on here has ever used IBM Lenovo ThinkPads will know that they have solid and impeccable build quality and reliability even better than Apple.

It seems as though they have gone the way of most other manufacturers ie less companies buying the £1300 flagship business laptops and so manage to thow together laptops for under £400 using the cheapest parts possible. These laptops are designed to fail pretty much and so you have to buy a new one after it fails shortly after the 1 year warranty.

All laptops used to have 3 year warranties, now only 1 year, there is a reason for this.

Sorry just sick of seeing people throwing money away!
 
#2 ·
Laptops have serious competition from tablets, there was a recent survey conducted by business insider and over 47% of respondents said they use an iPad as their primary computer.

This has to affect the marketplace.
 
#3 ·
This doesnt really explain the poor quality. Are you saying laptops are being built cheaper to make them as affordable as an iPad?

I know that people are using the ipads in their homes and for light personal use but there are few business uses in comparison.

There is no way that my corporate customers would be able to use ipads instead of a laptop.
The lack of funds available for business's to buy new high end equipment (including ipads) has pushed manufacturers into building cheap retail models to bring in money. The likes of Sony and Lenovo are seriously going to ruin their reputations.
 
#4 ·
We bought a brand new Acer laptop a couple of years back for about £400 and had nothing but trouble with it. For no reason it would lock up and loose the entire contents of its hard drive every few weeks.

Got a Cheapo Asus netbook now and it works great.
 
#8 ·
I'm finally looking at a replacement to my Acer after 7 years with just one hard drive replacement in that time and I have hammered it daily during much of that time... If only it had McLaren branding not Ferrari. Still, at least it wasn't full on garish red. Admittedly I paid more than £400 for the 4005WLMi
 
#9 ·
Its in the past 4 years that they have got really bad.

Ive seen a hard disk in a new Acer crash in 6 hours and ive seen a power socket not even soldered onto the motherboard!
 
#10 ·
had an old ibm (pre lenovo) thinkpad from 2000-2003 and it was bombproof

bought 2 sony vaio laptops in feb 2007. the basic one has been great, absolutely nothing gone wrong with it ever, despite its years and the kids giving it a hammering. the £900 fancy one has been a complete shambles but luckily covered with the pc world £10-a-month ongoing warranty.

it's now time for a new one, so should i get another sony???
 
#12 ·
Never Ever buy a laptop from a shop or any retail/website outlet.

If you want a reliable new laptop with a 3 year warranty visit:

www.dell.co.uk, click the business section and choose a Dell Latitude or Precision. Avoid Inspirons or Studio's.

www.toshiba.co.uk, in the business section choose a Toshiba Tecra or a business Satellite Pro. Avoid Satellites, Equiums and Quomio's.

www.hp.co.uk click the business section and choose HP Compaq, ProBook or EliteBook. Avoid Pavilion or G & CQ Series etc, Presario.

www.lenovo.co.uk click business section and choose a tank of a ThinkPad, avoid ideapads etc

Im no longer recomending Sony either.

If you get one of the above laptops it is designed to be on every day, constantly without fail. Business's are relying on them so they must be up to the job.

The laptops I have avoided are designed to look pretty and to sell easily but are pretty much designed to fail so that you have to go out and buy another after the warranty has expired!
 
G
#13 ·
I had only dealt with the cheap end of Dell from a previous job, then last year work was doing a deal for discount on Dell and I was in the market for a decent desktop replacement laptop that could be used for photography. I managed to get an XPS 15 for under £1000 with blu-ray, core i-7, 2GB Nvidia graphics and importantly for the photos a 1080P RGB backlit screen, which I have to say is the best screen I have come across. It's been rock solid, and is still lightning fast 18 months on. Currently encoding video for my phone from a film from the PVR at 150fps, while typing this.

The other half has bought a cheaper inspirion, but not the rock bottom model so we'll see how that goes.
 
#14 ·
Currently I'm at my desk at home.
I'm typing this on an Acer bought from Tescos. It was the most expensive one they had at the time, 3 years ago, I think. I replaced the hard drive about 6 months ago and it's going far better now than before. It had a 600GB one, now has a 750GB hybrid.
Beside the Acer is a Dell Latitude, supplied by the company I'm working for. It's got a 120GB SSD. Working well so far.
Under the desk is a Samsung netbook, which is hardly ever on now. We bought it for when we were on holiday, but have both got tablets now.
Beside the Samsung is my other laptop. I won't mention the brand, but I use it for photo editing. It's got a 500GB SSD and goes like ****. Now, I hope it will last me for years as it cost over 5x the price of the Acer.
 
#25 ·
Currently I'm at my desk at home.
I'm typing this on an Acer bought from Tescos. It was the most expensive one they had at the time, 3 years ago, I think. I replaced the hard drive about 6 months ago and it's going far better now than before. It had a 600GB one, now has a 750GB hybrid.
Beside the Acer is a Dell Latitude, supplied by the company I'm working for. It's got a 120GB SSD. Working well so far.
Under the desk is a Samsung netbook, which is hardly ever on now. We bought it for when we were on holiday, but have both got tablets now.

Beside the Samsung is my other laptop. I won't mention the brand, but I use it for photo editing. It's got a 500GB SSD and goes like ****. Now, I hope it will last me for years as it cost over 5x the price of the Acer.
512GB SSD!?! Wow

SSD's will make computers so much more reliable as the hard disk is the weakest part of a computer.

Ive been fitting 32GB - 128GB SSD's instead of 160-500GB platter disks and I feel alot less worried about returns. There will always be the odd customer who kills the hard disk by holding down the power button as they cant be bothered to wait for windows to shut down. At least with an SSD the most it will need is a reinstall.

I thought I had my first SSD failure last week but it was a guy who gave the laptop to his mate to put on a dodgy copy of 7 on. He must have been so facinated by the SSD that he removed it and didnt bother screwing the connector back down when refitting it...grrrr

People are going to be very confused soon as TV adverts etc have been 500GB laptop this 750GB laptop that and in a year or so they will be 128GB laptop this, 256GB laptop that.

Im sick of explaining it already! Haha
 
#15 ·
I am currently running on Dell Dimension 3100 which is 6 years old.

It only cost me £260 back then and it still works fine for what I need it for.

It isn't going to be as fast as a more expensive newer machine, but with an upgraded 22" monitor it does the job and has been 100% reliable.
 
#16 ·
I have a samsung which feels solid and has been abused non stop. The amount of times falling asleep watching TV to wake up with the netbook on the floor :lol:
Matt you seem the right guy to ask, Have you had any experience of PC Specialists? they use Clevo bases, branded internals and custom build. I would expect them to be of better quality than those in the shops.
If I was to buy from retail it would be from Asus or Samsung as all the products I have bought have been faultless. If it aint broke..
 
#23 ·
The custom built desktops should be good as you can pick and choose the good parts. The ready made desktops will usually have the cheapest parts that they can get away with.

I only buy desktops parts from companies like www.overclockers.co.uk as they only sell top notch stuff.







I'm in the market for a new lappie/tablet having put my fist through an HP Pavillion :rolleyes:

I notice LM you still recommend Lenovo even after the issues you've raised in the thread
and was wondering which of the Thinkpad variants you would recommend....

I'm considering the tablet alternative but like the keyboard option and have looked at the Asus
Transformer pad ..
As an aside what OS do you recommend to a computer dummy ie Win 7/8, Android ????
My biggest bugbear is a slow OS/PC ...I only browse the web and store pics etc
Cheers :thumbs:
I still recommend Lenovo on the business side. Im trying to get across the massive contrast between Lenovo's that you buy in the shops and Lenovo ThinkPads that are for business.

My thoughts about Asus have already offended people on here :-D

I think Windows 7 is the best allrounder although it is still expensive and uses 1GB ram just to load up. You need alot of Ram to run it basically.
Windows XP is the fastest as it was designed for 256MB ram so sticking it on a laptoo with 2GB is 10x more than it was designed for and it flies!
 
#18 ·
I'm in the market for a new lappie/tablet having put my fist through an HP Pavillion :rolleyes:

I notice LM you still recommend Lenovo even after the issues you've raised in the thread
and was wondering which of the Thinkpad variants you would recommend....

I'm considering the tablet alternative but like the keyboard option and have looked at the Asus
Transformer pad ..
As an aside what OS do you recommend to a computer dummy ie Win 7/8, Android ????
My biggest bugbear is a slow OS/PC ...I only browse the web and store pics etc
Cheers :thumbs:
 
#27 ·
In theory it should take me atleast 30 years to completely kill a SSD till it cant read/write.
sounds too good to resist.

@ Matt
Do you ever buy a seperate SSD for the OS like Ubuntu?
I was thinking a small SSD 20-30GB if they are possible then a bigger SS for file storage.
My desktop needs a revamp, my CPU has stuck on dust and the GPU fan is louder than my cars :lol:

On topic - I have never considered a Lenovo lappy before. Only recently Ive noticed them as they look decent.
 
#28 ·
My old work laptop (Sony Viao) has just been replaced by a Lenovo Thinkpad x220.

The Lenovo has 3GB of RAM and a 300GB hard disk. I'm running XP on it as W7 not certified yet at work!

I never dropped my Sony, but if I did I think it would have smashed to a million pieces. The Thinkpad feels like it might actually endanger the pavement!
 
#31 ·
Zed, a solid state drive has no moving parts, the weak point in a mobile device that uses traditional hard disk drive is that it has spinning platters and a mechanical reading head a bit like a record player.

One thing that got lost to the mists of time is that once switched on you shouldn't move a laptop at all, sudden movement whilst the drive is active can end up with the heads contacting the platters and damaging them and the data that is stored on them magnetically.

Technology did move on with motion sensors being built into laptops that would force the hard drive to park it's heads and lock the spindle the platters are attached to but it's still a weak point.

SSD is basically silicon based storage a bit like you get in a USB memory stick but much larger capacity and has zero moving parts.
 
#33 ·
Maybe I have just been unfortunate/fortunate, but after several problems with more expensive brand laptops, I got fed up and thought I'd just get cheap ones and replace every year.

I purchased my Acer Aspire 5742 laptop well over 2 years ago now. It travels around the world with me, has been dropped, got wet and still hasn't put a foot wrong, apart from the "T" key popping off on the first day and being tempermental since then (it was actually pulled off by an over zelous toddler...). Only time it gets turned off is if travelling.

It really has been the best laptop (from a reliabilty point of view) I have owned - and at just over £300, I can't grumble. Will be replacing it in the New Year probably with same model, and give this one to the kids. I rely totally on it for work so it needs to be reliable.

As I said above, maybe I was just lucky....
 
#34 ·
Depends on how you use it, the amount of people I've seen carrying laptops by a corner of the screen or in one hand by one corner is unreal. Cheap laptops don't have a lot of money spent on rigid construction, so when they are handled poorly the whole chassis flexes along with the PCB and solder joints become stressed causing intermittent problems.

Always carry a laptop using two hands.

Not with one hand and a cup of coffee rested on the opposite corner with your bag in the other hand...
 
#36 ·
Last time I went to a Lenovo roadmap presentation for Thinkpads they were pretty proud of how tough the Lenovo Thinkpads are. They were saying that some of them were almost rated high enough to qualify as military laptops on a rating scale the US government uses, even though they weren't trying for that.

Lenovo used to be the PC division of IBM before it was sold off which concentrated on high end business computers. Now it's owned by the Chinese, it looks like it has been trying to become the world's leading PC supplier. Some recent reports would suggest that they may have done it. They could not do this without trying to get into the worldwide domestic markets and the only way this could be achieved was by selling cheaper products to compete with others, hence the poorer quality products being seen in the home/retail market.

Dell have been doing this for a lot longer. When I used to buy Dells as part of my job and Lenovo was still IBM, it was always made clear to me that some models are destined for the home market and others for the corporate market. Corporate customers often value reliability and consistent internal components for a fixed period of time over short term gains in the initial purchase price. This reduces support costs which the average person is unaware of and makes them cheaper to operate and provides easier and better support.

Some corporate people now use things like iPads, but it depends on their roles. Salesmen or directors of large companies who reviews other people's work and do a bit of email are now starting to use iPads. Accountants or designers would find it difficult though.

Echoing what others have said, my thoughts on laptops are:
1) Do not use Windows Vista
2) Try and have at least 4Gb of memory (although you may not be able to use it all on systems with a 32bit operating system)
3) If possible, use an SSD instead of the hard drive.

My dad had a 4 year old Sony laptop in good nick and I put in a 160 Gb SSD and doubled the memory to 4 Gb and its like having a new one. I've also put one in my desktop and home theatre PCs.
 
#37 ·
Echoing what others have said, my thoughts on laptops are:
1) Do not use Windows Vista
2) Try and have at least 4Gb of memory (although you may not be able to use it all on systems with a 32bit operating system)
3) If possible, use an SSD instead of the hard drive.
What OS can you recommend ?
What difference (to a PC dummy) apart from another 32 'bit' does it make ? Is it graphics ?
I get the drift of an SSD but can you extract stuff off them if the **** hits the fan like you can off a SATA or an IDE HD ?

Thanx in advance :thumbs:
 
#39 ·
Have just had to buy a new laptop, only use it for basic stuff and iPads are far too expensive and seem a bit of a gimmick to me so I went for a budget one. I got a lenovo Z580 ideapad, and one big reason I went for it was that it looked to be built really well, the whole frame around the keyboard and mouse pad is metal rather than plastic and the keys feel great. So is it inside and the way its designed that you have experienced the bad build quality ?
 
#41 ·
32 bit architecture (excluding some enterprise grade server operating systems which can access more due to memory managers) can only access 4Gb worth of memory addresses. If you have a 32 bit PC with 4 GB of memory then some of the available memory addresses are reserved for other hardware such as video. If the other hardware requires 1/2 Gb of memory addresses there are only 3.5 Gb worth of addresses left for the memory so some of the memory remains unused as there aren't enough memory addresses for all the memory.

Updated versions of 32 bit operating systems usually now report that they have 4Gb of memory. Support teams used to get loads of calls with people buying 4Gb XP machines but it reported less.

This is a Vista article which describes differences between 32 & 64 bit 32-bit and 64-bit Windows: frequently asked questions

If a PC with an SSD dies, then as long as its not the SSD that has died, you get the data off it in the same way as you would a normal laptop drive. The SSD connectors are the same as a laptop hard drive.

At work I never leave data on a laptop with no backup unless I could live without it. Anything I need is backed up to or held on a network share.

At home I use central network attached storage with 3 backups on a separate PC and the latest backup is also copied to Cloud storage.

At work I use Windows 7 which is my personal preference for laptops bought in the last few years but have tried Windows 8 on a laptop. Unfortunately if you are buying a new laptop it will usually come with 8 now. I'm not a big fan of Win 8 unless you have one of the latest touch screen laptops designed for it.
 
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