Slightly off-topic, but why did you not mention that the Amazon product order page link is an affiliate link? I think it would be appropriate since you are making such a strong case of your non-affiliation.

When the bluetooth died for the second time, apple offered to replace my machine with the latest equivalent – the current white plastic macbook. This is essentially a brand new purchase, so I got a new warranty and can buy the extended warranty from the date I got the new machine.

replacing it took some be at home for the pick up, wait a couple days, new machine delivered by a courier.

Whatever my obviously unlucky experience with the hardware, apple’s support is damn good.

It’s not just businessmen, kernel hackers and paratroopers that love the TP line but also Writers. Try knocking out a large body of text on any other laptop after using a TP.

Function Over Form I tell ye. It’s just a machine. A TP needs no gushy startup sound to say “Welcome Master.”

I’m not a fan of their server support in the UK. The service levels we get on our X series servers is abysmal.

We are also going through a Z10 trial. What a pigs ear. They cant get the Z10 to work with their own SVC/XIV storage properly…. and on the contractual/project side, don’t you even begin to think that they can listen to us as the customer!

Must be just us, but IBM have sucked every time we’ve needed them.

BTW. I tried logging in tonight, your site is broken.

also, you have an office?!

They aren’t perfect, but as Cory has pointed out their warranty service is the best I’ve seen.

I use a Thinkpad myself, and it is pretty much bulletproof.

But then … 12 and a half months after purchase its battery, with less than 50 cycles, refused to hold a charge. Guess what – batter only has 12 months warranty. That was expensive (or would have been if I’d bought from IBM/Lenovo – found a cheaper one on eBay).
Not so excellent.

My 1st Thinkpad was before Lenovo, and was affected by a bad batch of system boards. It was early in the learning curve for lead-free solder, which wasn’t as good as the old, toxic kind (they’ve apparently figured it out as of now).
The machine worked fine until I took it in for trouble seeing the 2nd memory slot – which was the sign of the bad sys boards. There ensued a repair nightmare of more defective boards, incompetent outsourced techs and lost time. It would have been only an inconvenience had I a backup computer, but the tpad was my only machine. Eventually I got annoyed enough to start researching how to drag them into small claims court.

A few days after that, the phone rang with a call from IBM. This was IBM, not the outsourced repair shop. *I had not called them with any complaints yet.* Their rep said “we’ve heard you’re having a bad experience with our service”. They then proceeded to send me a new machine, air shipped, which had a faster CPU but one minor feature less than the high-end model I’d bought. They cheerfully took that back (even though they had to sell it as refurb once the box was opened) and sent me the next generation machine, considerably improved over my original unit.

Fast forward. I’d bought the in-home service contract extension; it was now five years after the original purchase. The syst board finally went out, which may have had something to do with lightning striking less than 75 yards away, though the machine was still working for a few weeks after that. They put in a new sys board and a new keyboard simply because _the lettering was worn_ and replaced the external LCD cover which had some of the rubberized finish worn off — no charge, with the comment that “normal wear is covered under your service contract”.

You think you will get service like that anywhere else?

Yes, I could have bought a disposable 2nd hand machine for the price of the service contract, but I’d much rather have security and no down time. I’m now past 6 years on one computer purchase, double the “normal” obsolescence cycle. What I want from my next Thinkpad is design, reliability and ruggedness _not_ a lower initial price.

Me: “Hello. I have a broken monitor that I need replaced.”
Support: “Sir, I’d like to go through these troubleshooting steps with you. Try unplugging -”
Me: “No, seriously, I turned it on, there was a ‘pop’ and smoke poured out of the top. It’s really broken.”

I’m now on my third TP, a W500 which replaced a refurbed T40 that was showing its age. My first Thinkpad, a 600x, which my wife used for email and web browsing finally gave up the ghost after 11 years of use to a hardware fault on the planar. Instead of just handing off the old T40, I got her a new SL500, making a total of 4 TP’s in the house.

It shipped THAT DAY from Kowloon, UPS 2-day.

I had it in about 40 hours from ordering.

Dell have been reasonably good with me. I bought an XPSM1730 around Sep 2007 (I was an early-adopter of this particular model). 13 months later, the battery refused to charge at all. Dell initially diagnosed faulty charging circuit on the motherboard.

Tech showed up at my work and replaced motherboard, pre-warning me that it was probably a faulty battery. It was. I had a new motherboard but not a fixed problem.

After a little arguing/pleading on the phone, I got a new battery for free.

So far, it’s the only warranty claim I’ve had to make. The machine itself is fairly bombproof. As you say though, Lenovo’s are solid machines and were it not for me looking for ultimate performance and a 17″ screen, I would have had a T61p instead of my Dell.

My next laptop will be a high-end Lenovo but my next high-performance laptop will probably be a ridiculously expensive Alienware M17x (or its successor).

When I was using Windows as my primary OS, I owned nothing but ThinkPads for laptops. Your experience was like mine.

One incident in particular made me a ThinkPad fan forever. I was in Israel, and one morning the machine didn’t boot. I called the service center in suburban Tel Aviv, and was told to bring it in. Late the next morning I got a call saying it was ready for pickup. The technician told me the motherboard had died, and had been replace. Then he said something like, “We thought the screen looked a bit flaky so we replaced that, too.” All covered by the extended warranty.

If Apple continues to ratchet up its control-freakish ways, I may join you in the TP/Linux world…

That said, I can’t stand the trackpoint. Thankfully they offer trackpads now.

Interesting that you contrast it with Apple. I’ve had two Macs, and while I love OS X, I think my next laptop is likely to be a TP with Linux now.

I’ve had a number of problems with both my macs, and the service (despite paying extra for Applecare) was less than great. My local Apple auth’d repair centre was not able to give me a new battery until after they had sent off the dud one to Apple. Same thing with the power adapter whose DC cable actually melted. So in each case I had to wait a couple of days without being able to really use the machine, for the sake of a couple of easily replaceable parts.

My first iBook had its mainboard replaced three times before finally dying, all due to an apparent design flaw that screwed up the graphics hardware, which should have just been replaced with a new machine in my opinion.

I don’t know if it’s better at an actual Apple store, but as far as I’m concerned it’s not good enough, and rubbish when compared with your IBM experiences (which costs about the same). That is the sort of service I expect.

So, while I will miss OS X, I’m not sure that it will be worth sticking with them when my MB needs replacing.