Dinesh Joshi wrote:
Hi guys,
I just came across a slashdot article (
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/17/124244 ) which
said that the user base of IBM Lenovo laptops is falling just because
they are now being manufactured/owned by the Chinese. I just want to
get your opinions. Some say that the quality has indeed deteriorated
while others say its just psychological. Many feel that these people
are just plain biased while some say that the Chinese are less
accountable than their american counter parts.
Personally, I am not biased against the Chinese but Chinese goods tend
to have the "cheap" feel to them and I think that they have definitely
lowered the quality and have cut costs at the same time while trying
to improve their margins.
What say the group?
To some extent the have brought down their quality. There was a time
when people bought thinkpads because you would not need to worry about
anything. If you have important stuff on the laptop and had the money,
then you would always go for a thinkpad. They had some important
features that made them superior and therefore carried a premium. Acer
was the one you bought to get Value for Money provided you are willing
to live with a little bit of problem. Now Lenovo has lowered the price
to compete with Acer. The only way they could do that was to strip off
the advanced features.
Take a look at any of the older thinkpad. They had a heat-sink made of
some fancy metal with fabulous heat conductivity. IBM engineers used to
demonstrate by connecting extenders into a glass of water and show it
boiling in 15 seconds. The lenovo thinkpads use normal copper for
heat-sink. They also earlier used padded hard disks for shockproofing it
to prevent damage in accidental drops. Now that is quietly removed from
all but the top end of their laptops.
What they are doing makes business sense. Most of the consumers and
business buyers want cheaper notebooks and do not want to pay for these
extra features. IBM's pride did not allow them to provide strip down
models.
Anyway, the HP (being an american company) has screwed up quality and
the sub-terranian levels to which they have dropped, I will actually be
willing to pay a premium for a Chinese brand if the alternate is to buy
HP. so it is not whether you are american or chinese, it is quality v/s
price. 5 years of having Florina as the CEO has moved Compaq / HP's
laptops from being the most desired to the most shunned.
Regards
Saswata
--
Regards,
Dinesh A. Joshi
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