Actually the quality has gone down hill. I love the IBM branded t series thinkpads they were tough and could take a beating. The new Lenovo seem to be cheaply made. They remind me of the old R series stuff except I don't think they will stand up as well.

and that price is way to high for what you get - would much rather buy an old IBM Thinkpad T-series than a new Lenovo machine.

Had both and never again will I part with my own money for a Lenovo.

PS - I understand they are built out of the old legend and china walls factory. Not the Old IBM factory.

I agree.

I've had Thinkpads for 10 years or so, mainly bought re-conditioned, and everything after T23's are flimsy. I still have a 10+ year old 380XD running as a firewall.

Granted, bits always fell off eventually, but none have ever let me down by not working onsite until I got a T30 (the first model built in the far east, I believe). T41s and T42s appeared a bit better, but I do not like the T60s at all, especially the widescreen ones, which is why I havn't bought one!

I really don't know what I will get next. Never mind. My current machine (again a T30, because the disk and DVD-Writer could be just swapped over) runs Ubuntu 8.04 quite well enough for the moment, as long as the one remaining working memory socket stays soldered to the MB. Won't be upgrading the Windows partition to Vista, though.

I'm another old-time Thinkpad user and have recommend them to clients for years.

First of all, I doubt there's ever been a Thinkpad built outside Asia, at least for the last 10 years. Several years before Lenovo got involved, the top-of-the-range models were at least partly manufactured in Japan, but IBM was building most of them in China or Singapore long before Lenovo took over.

I'm not such a big fan of T60's either, but I think the T61 is decent. Early versions of the Windows software tools after the Lenovo transition could be a bit shaky as well, but a lot of that has been sorted out in recent versions. (ie System Update, Access Connections)