Lenovo has been making thinkpads for 20 years. The complaint that their quality is still less than how laptops were manufactured 2 decades ago feels rather dated.
Hijacking top comment to report that: This is true across the industry for (most) OEMs
The Secret is to buy “Enterprise level”
Check out the LATITUDE line en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude
Those are enterprise fleet laptops … the ones they have to support for 5-10 years.
You know which line they don’t discontinue parts for? You know which line has repair manuals and driver updates available? wanna take a wild guess which line is usually more modular and powerful at the expense of being less sleek looking and thin?
And the best part is that you can usually buy them fairly cheap if you find them used.
I prefer Dell Latitude to HP Elitebook, Thinkpads are OK too but they’ve gone down in quality a lot since they got bought by Lenovo
TL;DR = Buy an enterprise level laptop, consumer line laptops are all trash,
edg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
optissima@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Oh my god this post made me feel ancient, I was still thinking that was like 10 years tops. 💀
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Top tip, buy a used enterprise laptop. You can get one hell of a deal when big companies throw their entire lineup out after a few years and flood the market. Some have a few scuffs here and there, but others are mint after sitting plugged to a dock for the last three years in a row.
BigPotato@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The Latitudes are balls in the worst way. Including the new “Pro” models. I’ve had i7 and i9 Latitudes that are slower than my i5 XPS 13, and yeah that thing sucks too but at least it sucks predictably.
fox2263@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I got a couple of latitudes and found they had soldered ram so I couldn’t upgrade them later 😭
EpicFailGuy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Unfortunately soldered ram and non replaceable batteries are becoming more common on the ultralights … Thanks Apple
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
It’s not JUST because they’re copying Apple, it’s because there’s no SO-DIMM LPDDR and LPDDR uses less power (Low Power DDR).
With CAMM2 being an actual standardized thing that is fairly thin (though the modules do take up more area than SO-DIMMs) AND supports LPDDR (in slightly smaller modules than regular DDR CAMM2), we might yet get back our user-replaceable RAM. As for batteries - never have they been truly non-replaceable, but of course quick swaps aren’t a thing for many laptops these days. Almost not a bad thing if you consider how often the battery latch fails on laptops with quickly replaceable batteries.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Tbf I took “build quality for Dell is down” to mean the Latitude lineup because their non-enterprise lineups… eh… I’ve never seen one with any build quality.
LordCrom@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Shiiizzz i got a T32 with dual touchpad and thumbmouse… like 15 years old and still runs like a champ.
Yes , quality has gone down
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
The enterprise ones are shit too.
EpicFailGuy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Replying to my own comment to give yall one more tidbit.
The latitude product nomenclature is still standard
So for example the Latitude 9460 is the very high end laptop that came out at the beginning of this year while the 3540 was the entry level economy latitude that came out in 2023
Ohh@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
My 6430 is chugging along as a nas on its 8 th year+ after being discontinued as daily workhorse. Running 24/7.