Replacing a Thinkpad? 902
An anonymous reader writes "As a very happy Thinkpad T20 user (still working after 7 years), I always planned on replacing it with another Thinkpad T-series. However, Thinkpads are now produced by Lenovo, a Chinese company, and I can't quite bear to buy Chinese while the Burmese military are shooting at monks with the Chinese Government as their biggest backer. Maybe this is silly, as whatever I buy is likely to be made (at least in part) in China... but still, what are my options for something as well built as the Thinkpad T-series?"
Yes, you're being silly (Score:3, Insightful)
by that logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
I call BS (Score:3, Insightful)
If that was your problem, you should never have bought a Thinkpad ever. They were always manufactured by Lenovo which has always been a Chinese comopany, the country which it belongs to has always been the same. Can I call this a sudden attack of morality?
Aside from the obvious hypocrisy mentioned above, I am sure you will get a lot of suggestions from the cult of Mac, but believe me - its hard to find a replacement for Thinkpad. No matter how slick other notebooks may look, in terms of fineness, usability and sheer joy of typing (yes, thats critical factor for me at least), nothing comes near.
Buy it anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
This is cynical of me, but your private little boycott is not going to do the monks any good. If you buy a new Thinkpad now, it'll outlast the problem in Burma. Just buy another one. Lenovo has always produced Thinkpads, it's just that IBM doesn't support them directly anymore. Thinkpads are still the most reliable laptops in the market.
Ian
Maybe a T41, T42 or T43 (Score:4, Insightful)
Panasonic Toughbook (Score:1, Insightful)
Boycot USA products (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:2, Insightful)
Why upgrade? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have an X23 that I refurbished. Maxed out the RAM and put in a new hard-drive. I can't see any reason to replace until it dies.
Eventually I will replace the spinning hard-drive with a flash-drive. I'd love to find a way to replace the CCFL backlight with LED were that possible, to make it even more long-lived.
The American fascination with tossing perfectly adequate technology into a landfill is apalling.
Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
We used to liberate people, now we liberate markets.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Any reason to not get a Mac Book Pro? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're aware? (Score:5, Insightful)
You make people more independent by making them wealthy.
Original Device Manufacturers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also a fan of the T series (Score:5, Insightful)
I carried my little white 2001 iBook in a gym bag back and forth to the office for 4 years, before retiring it for it's final year to home only as a couch computer. It finally gave up the ghost after 5.5 years, and two drops to the linoleum covered floor in my living room -- once from 2 feet, once from three and a half. I wish Apple still used the bullet proof glass for iBook cases. That iBook sure took a beatin' before it belly-uped .
Re:by that logic... (Score:4, Insightful)
Think what you will of America and it's policies. But to even compare it with China is absurd in that regard. American government has, for the majority of the time, been a boon to the world as a whole. Yes, there are conflicts where wonderful leaders like Saddam are overthrown and it makes people unhappy. And no, I'm not justifying Iraq with that sarcastic statement. But I am pointing out that no matter what side of the fence you're on, Iraq was an issue that should have been delt with. It wasn't Atlantis being invaded. American foreign policy is enormous. The most influential country in the world. While it easy to find examples of harm in there, there is more good then harm in the case of American foreign policy. Where as my biggest gripe with China is how the entire world stands by and let's a country like that into open markets so easily considering how disgraceful that country's government is.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not misunderstand me... I find it great that he does that. However, I fear, he's going to have to stick to his current laptop. There is no was to get a computer that isn't manufactured at least partially in China.
Re:by that logic... (Score:1, Insightful)
apple (Score:1, Insightful)
You could try Macbook pro.
Re:by that logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
(found here [computergripes.com])
So, maybe, maybe not, depending on model. But GP is being rather extreme comparing the horrible things the US is doing and the horrible things china is doing. We're not imprisoning dissidents and journalists yet, and the country we're occupying is at least still free to practice their religion, short of the call to drive the infidels out of the holy land. Contrast with tibet.
I'm not saying we're not bad, but we're no China
Re:by that logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point about America... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:by that logic... (Score:1, Insightful)
Iraq is a cluster now. It was before too.
The worst part about the US going into Iraq is the entire world should have gone. Leaders like Saddam who routinely kill their own people en masse should not be allowed. While everyone was busy living in their free little NA or Europe, few seemed to care what was actually happening in Iraq. Until the US went in there.
No, I don't buy the reasons given to us all as to why the US went in. But Saddam was a threat. To the world, to the region, and to his own people. He was a disgrace. The type of leader that the world shouldn't tolerate. So forgive me for not weeping that some shoddy reasoning (and who really knows the true purpose) was used to go in there.
A bigger disgrace is that the world didn't join. Again, not for the reasons listed in a SoTU. But because getting him out was the right (morally) thing to do.
Re:by that logic... (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh Wait, if you protect the USA gouvernment, is because you are an unitedstatian.
So, in your country, you don't have real newspapers ou real news on TV. Try a satellite radio or TV receiver and try to read Canada or UK newspaper, you will learn a lot of things about your so perfect country.
But, usualy, you will see that people who really try to use they freedom of speech or freedom of assembly, and religion are arrested and jailed sometime, without trial.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:5, Insightful)
True, though he can certainly minimize the dollar count going to China. Buying Lenovo would be giving every single dollar of the purchase to a Chinese company (though how they are directly related to the atrocities there... I'd never know), whereas buying, say, Dell, would only be giving manufacturing costs, while R&D remains here.
As a Chinese-Canadian I'm glad there are people who, at the very least, are willing to think along this guy's lines. There are awful, horrifying things going on in that country and it's nice to see some people who aren't so American-centric they can't point out China on a map, much less the atrocities being committed there.
As a side note... From my experience, more Americans know about these atrocities than Chinese. It's depressing, really. It's also depressing the number of new Chinese immigrants who are totally blown away by Canada's democratic government, since they thought (or were taught) that they had democracy all along.
Re:Ummmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Sources, or gtfo.
Re:Ummmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there really someone left in the US who believes that people are unemployed because of production moving overseas? We are at full employment; people aren't starving here, just doing non-manufacturing jobs. It's okay.
Forget the politics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:by that logic... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:by that logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
by your logic, why did USA turn their back when simular genocide was happening in Rwanda?
by your logic, why isn't USA invading Burm, sorry Mun-whetever its called?
I can continue for a long long time you know. It would appear USA selectively decided who is bad and who isn't.
Oh and also, remember that photo of Saddam and Rummy shaking hands back in 1980s-something? How come Saddam was good enough to do business with back then but NOT in 2003?
Hello? hoyeru00@yahoo.com eagerly and breathlessly a-waiting your reply.
Surprise me, PLEASE by saying something, anything intelligent instead of coming up with YET another new reason as to why USA illegally attacked a sovereign country without provocation.
fuck karma, I like the truth better
Re:by that logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst part about the US going into Iraq is the entire world should have gone. Leaders like Saddam who routinely kill their own people en masse should not be allowed. While everyone was busy living in their free little NA or Europe, few seemed to care what was actually happening in Iraq. Until the US went in there.
No, I don't buy the reasons given to us all as to why the US went in. But Saddam was a threat. To the world, to the region, and to his own people. He was a disgrace. The type of leader that the world shouldn't tolerate. So forgive me for not weeping that some shoddy reasoning (and who really knows the true purpose) was used to go in there.
You invaded a fairly stable dictatorship and destroyed almost all of the infrastructure over 15 years, then remove the government and promoted civil war. It was bad under Saddam it's worse under the US. Unlike Japan or Germany there isn't multi billions pouring in to rebuild the infrastructure, we have multi-billion pouring in just to try to maintain order and supply your troops there. There wasn't a good reason to go in and that is why few countries did. Unlike Serbia or Rwanda there was no hope of making the situation better.
You remember whose payroll Saddam was on in the 70's and 80's? Remember who was training and supplying Osama? Saddam is the type of leader The US promotes. It's asinine for you to say much about it. It's a bigger disgrace that your knowledge of history or world politics seems to come directly from fox news. Any an all action by Saddam were indrectly sanctioned by their main backer the US. So if the submitter has a problem with Chinese products because they backed the oppressive myanmar government then he should also boycott US products due to us backing Saddam and various other tyrannical dictators.
Two-pronged response. (Score:2, Insightful)
Then go to http://www.xogiving.org/ [xogiving.org] and order up a couple of XO laptops so the poor kids in Burma have a shot (pardon the expression) at a real future. If you like, you can sign up [xogiving.org] to buy a pair of XO laptops, one for a poor kid in some third-world country and one for your own kid or a neighbor or even for yourself. You'll pay less for those two XOs than Microsoft gets for a retail copy of Windows, and they'll do a lot more good (and, um, work a lot better ...)
Re:by that logic... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fujitsu (Score:1, Insightful)
Where do you want those to end up who pay (US taxpayers) contract killers [nwsource.com] murdering at random (aka 'Blackwater')?
CC.
Where does the Government get their laptops? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyhow, I have to think that somewhere in the US secuirity establishment there must be a company supplying laptop gear designed and built in the U.S. specifically because folks like the CIA might not want to trust hardware built in China.
Or, in other words, if all laptops are built in China, could the Chinese government be dumb enough not to include some super-secret features that they can use when needed?
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:2, Insightful)
And how exactly is it that Lenovo gets the billions of dollars in sales each year out of the U.S. ? Do they go to a bank and ask to deposit the monies into their $CZ account?
And then there are the Lenovo employees who work in the US, that help get that laptop into the customers' hands. Or does Lenovo ship Chinese workers into the US in order to complete the transactions?
"Voting with your wallet" works on a local scale, but not on an international scale. And attacking a successful "chinese company" because you do not agree with the policies of the (oppressive) government of China is racist (though I can see why it might not feel that way). Do you think that people should stop buying from Coke, Microsoft, Apple, GM, Ford, yada-yada-yada because they aren't happy with the occupation in Iraq??
To effect change in China, you need to get your government to push for that change. The reality is that no US government has ever truly set out to do that.
Re:Sorry for the lenght but it needs to be said. (Score:3, Insightful)
That the US backed Iraq due to *the enemy of my enemy* policy is no secret. And I personally do not like that type of policy, even if the enemy was Iran. Do you have any idea what actually went on in Iran and how disgusting of a government that is even to this day?
However, as much as I don't like it I'm not going to pretend a case can't be made for it.
Bottom line is, just because you can copy-n-paste an article from the internet doesn't mean you understand anything about the the article. And it doesn't mean the article is with merit.
I personally find most of the touting of US-Iraq relations prior to GWI to be very simplistic in nature. It's rare to see someone discussing it in detail and in regards to the region and world as a whole over the lsat 40 or 50 years.
Life isn't always so simple that a trite copy-n-paste can make a good point on your behalf.
Sweet Merciful Hay Soos... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:5, Insightful)
One the truly puzzling things about most Chinese that I meet is there bottomless capacity to defend the snake of a government they have - even the ones that have already immigrated away. I find that the upper-middle class tends to be the worst - the ridiculously rich are too educated to fall for the government's lies, while the poorest suffer too much to believe anything the government says. It's the people who fall down the middle that actually believe the things the government teaches them.
I've known many Chinese who admit their government's deficiencies, and admit that officials are almost always corrupt and self-serving. But for some reason they still declare their allegiance to the government, claiming that as a Chinese by blood they cannot possibly turn away from the Chinese government. This puzzles me greatly, since I've long ago refused to consider myself a supporter of anything BUT a Western democracy - if the government is shooting your kind by the hundreds, is corrupt, etc etc, what kind of loyalty do you owe to them? It seems very ego-driven, and amounts to stubborn refusal to admit that perhaps the West has a better sociopolitical system.
In a sick way, it's like Stockholm syndrome... a whole race of people who are culturally conditioned to remain loyal to their government, despite the innumerable atrocities that are committed against them in front of their own eyes.
As another side note... it's depressing the "history" they learn in their schools...
It's not just a Chinese thing. Everybody will carry some portion of the place they grew up with them. It's part of who they are and they are part of that too. So when you attack someones homeland it's partially an attack on them (or so they perceive). Unless the party that is being attacked hurt them directly they will usually try to defend or justify it.
It's not just countries but any affiliation. The foaming at the mouth republicans and democrats who defend their side against all logic. The Reform, NDP, Bloc, Liberal supporters here in Canada who will rationalize everything about their party. It's not the nature of just Chinese people. It's people as a whole will defend what ever they have some investment in. China does horrible things but the odds of you getting caught up in one of those things are small. Just as Canada and the US have done some pretty bad things but by and large most people been a part of that. Forced sterilization, internment camps, gitmo, Arar, Chinese head tax, residential schools, successful native American genocide, etc.. The difference is after the fact we can talk about it while in china talking about it too publically will often get you in toruble.
Thus Chinese aren't unique in lamenting that they don't really have a democracy but will say it isn't that bad. Which for a large majority of Chinese is true. The current Gov is better then any china has ever had. But the bar isn't as high as the West.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:3, Insightful)
- If they're silly morals, then yes.
- If "standing up" means doing something that makes you feel good, hurts people who weren't involved, and has no affect on the people who were involved, then yes.
- If you need to announce on a web site how virtuous you are for your so-called morals, then yes.
- If you don't care when people do bad things, but you pretend to care when the news media tells you to care, then yes.
In other words, it seems like you have "standing up for one's moral convictions" confused with shallow media-influenced groupthink, politics, hand wringing, feel-good symbolism, and public self-congratulation.
This is the modern substitute for morals and values that doesn't require actually believing in anything or making any hard choices -- just follow the crowd and say the words the press tells you to say.
Speaking for corpses, are we? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:2, Insightful)
Worst metric *Ever* (Score:3, Insightful)
So by this metric, if the US simply executed its criminals w/o trial, we would be the BEST country on the planet.
Awesome
Re:by that logic... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, America since the start of the cold war, has been *projecting* power to far reaches of the globe. Pretty much like how Great Britain and the colonial powers used to. However, the British and other European powers (and Japan) were at least forthright in their motives (ie. empire building and that famous burden). The reason why America is viewed with so much suspicion (ie. Iraq) nowadays is because the stated reasons of intervention are often very different from the actual reasons for doing so, or at least so it seems. For many people, America embodies the new imperialism and personally I find it surprising that so many are apparently oblivious to this fact. Maybe it is because people of recent generations living in the developed world isn't really aware of the suffering of the many peoples of the colonial era. For many in the developing world, however, this memory is still fresh in the collective consciousness.
You can argue that the U.S. has no alternative as the U.S.S.R was leveraging its might to maintain her own sphere of influence (a proxy war against free-market liberal nations). There is some truth in that also, but you might be aware that the cold war has ended some years ago. The troubling thing is the nature of international politics hasn't changed much. If developed nations subscribe more to a "do as I do" policy on the international stage, it will make it much harder for rouge nations to have any ammunition to fire back at all. Indeed, it may even win over peoples' hearts in the developing world, making the task of improving the governance of such countries a tad easier.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazing.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:3, Insightful)
See? I can sarcastically mis-characterize and exaggerate your argument too. And no, it doesn't add anything to the discussion because we're just inventing caricatured positions to argue against. It may be easier and more fun to diss imaginary "nutjobs", but it doesn't accomplish anything but turning what could be reasonable, constructive discourse into an episode of the Jerry Springer show.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fujitsu (Score:1, Insightful)
Stick with the Lenovo while the IBM magic is still there... Just got a X61s after having a T21, T30 and T42 and couldn't be more happy. Nothing like a IBM!! How I will miss them in a couple of years.
Re:Yes, you're being silly (Score:2, Insightful)
Furthermore, China has a long history of warring states, turmoil and revolution. In comparison, the stability and progress that they enjoy today is a thing to be treasured. They are grateful to the current government that there has not been another cultural revolution, and that the last 30 years have provided peace and prosperity to many, especially urban Chinese.
In light of all this, your post is basically calling for more open defiance and conflict. Honestly, the people as a whole aren't ready for that. BUT, the increasing criticism of government can only be a good thing. Once the reins have been loosened enough on this form of criticism, then expect social change to happen more rapidly, as people are more aware of problems, more eager to voice their concerns, and put more pressure on their government to fix its inadequacies.