How are IBM products/services these days?

[ArkiStan]

I've heard rumors that since it was sold to Lenovo, the level of IBM PCs' quality and services have plummeted. Are these simply rumors, or is it really difficult to receive service for IBM PC hardware these days?

[Jeffbx]

IMHO, IBM PCs have never been all that great. The Thinkpads are still top of the line, tho. I'd buy one of those in a second. Service is still so-so - better than some, not fantastic.

[shocky123]

I'd have to agree that the pc's arent all that great right now.. and also that the Thinkpads are the top of the line, have been for a while, and will continue to be for quite some time. (Now if only they'd use some AMD chips.. then I'd be justified in spending the extra cash to get a Thinkpad)
Service I'd say is probably on par with most places offering Laptops of this sort.
IMHO.. that is,

~Kyle

[cheapchinese]

y amd in think pad? i thought amd creates more heat than pent?

[gear02]

I have an X40 and it's one of the best laptop/computers I've bought in my life. It's very light and powerful. The laptop makeup at my school is very IBM dominant and I think almost everyone loves their IBM.

I haven't dealt with Customer support or warranty issues, but I did end up buying an extended warranty +24/7 service (for fixing hardware issues) for a total of 4 years and it only cost me like $130 or something.

It's really a sweet laptop. For me in the ultraportable laptop segment, the only other laptops I would have considered was the 12" Apple Powerbook or the Dell 700m (but only because I saw it at school and it's completely different than their previous laptops).

[gear02]

Oh and if you're asking about their desktop PCs, I can't comment, but my perception of them aren't great. They look very bulky and just nasty...

Funny how their laptops can be the best and their desktops the worst.

[DarkFury]

Funny how their laptops can be the best and their desktops the worst.
Honestly, I think that they shifted just about all of their focus on building laptops and let their PC divisions rot on the vine...

Look at what happened to their hard drive division, before it got spun off to Hitachi.

IBM Desktops honestly were never much to write home about... too expensive and too "behind the times" for me. It just seemed that they wanted to get out of that business a long time ago (back when they were selling Aptivas and such)

[shocky123]

y amd in think pad? i thought amd creates more heat than pent?

Very rarely is this the case. Pentium's by default tend to run much higher in temp simply because they run at much higher clock speeds.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=4
In fact.. the Athlon64 X2 (3500+ @2.2ghz) blows all the Pentium4's out of the water.

Now, that in mind.. we were talking about notebooks...
So the Pentium-M comes into play. This, no doubt, uses less power than the Pentium4's, ..and the athlon64's, and the Turions - though not by an overwhelming amount. however, if you want performance as well as battery life you'll be paying for it in the checkbook, harshly.
I also see the Turion as pretty much the only way of going x86_64 on a notebook. Though probably not a factor for most people, I use linux... and eventually the new Windows will catch up with 'real' 64bit support.

At any rate, given that the majority of power consumption for ultra-low-power cpu's is used by the motherboard and all of it's attached devices, I guess it really depends on how you setup your computer.. heh..

~Kyle

[brainsmile]

T42 has been solid for a year now

[Itsme]

I can't speak about reliability, but for service most all computer companies use third-party service companies for service, so changes within IBM probably don't effect service.