Lenovo laptops

[Beirut]

I have a chance to get a second-hand Lenovo 0763-C5U with 1GB RAM, XP, and an extra battery for $600Cdn. I've never heard about this brand before, but the reviews, which say it's a ThinkPad knock off made in China, also say it's a very good machine.

Anyone know about these machines?

Thanks.

(* It still has two-years on the warranty.)

[Lemur]

I'm pretty sure Lenovo purchased IBM's laptop division a few years ago, so it isn't a ThinkPad knockoff, it is a ThinkPad.

[Beirut]

So that's a thumbs up from you as far as quality goes? Because I need a new laptop; my IBM 500Mhz ThinkPad with 64 whole megs of RAM ,running Win98 is getting a bit antiquated.

[Lemur]

ThinkPads are supposed to be solidly built, and I haven't heard anything to contradict that lately. Sounds like a good laptop. Although you might get a better deal from an American source, since our dollars are now worth slightly less than the peso.

[Ramses II CP]

Lenovo is a somewhat popular business model in the US. My wife's company has a full battery of them. Generally the video card they come with is, at best, crap or at worst shared, but otherwise it's a solid little machine. Many of them come with a fingerprint logon system that can be a fast, useful addition.

[Whacker]

His Holiness the Great Prosimian is correct. Lenovo is IBM, and IBM still holds a decent sized share in what they sold off, and Lenovo can/still does use the IBM brand(s) and logos.

In terms of hardware, it used to be better 3-4 years back, but then again most other things were in general. I'd say the quality is about 80-90% of what it used to be, which isn't bad. Also you have to remember that 0% of the Stinkpads were built in house, all components were sourced from 3rd parties and assembled by IBM before it was spun off.

On the hardware itself, Thinkpads are not going to be cutting edge at all. It's going to be older, the video cards are going to most always be generic Intel graphics, or extremely low end ATI/Nvidia solutions.

The real strength behind Stinkpads was/(still probably) is the support that you get with it. The drivers are generally slow to be released, but they are almost always going to be very stable, and the known bugs/problems are known about beforehand. Replacing hardware is generally extremely fast and well executed, if you call in a problem and it's determined to be hardware related, you'll get a replacement part ASAP depending on your support plan. This is strongest for large contracts where companies used to buy large inventory and support from IBM/Lenovo, because invariably depending on the size, they'd increase call center capabilities directly along with the contracts, or sometimes even dedicated people to the contract.

For home/personal use, it's going to be ... decent. Nothing terribly special, but it's definitely going to be better than say Dell.

Beirut, my bottom line is that deal is a decent one, you shouldn't be disappointed if you jump on it esp. with the extra battery (provided the batteries aren't already junk and can only hold a 20 minute charge. Just don't expect to be playing any games on it.