Forced Obsolescence / Obsolescence by Design

There is a blurry line between what is widely regarded as the highest of quality machines known as IBM Thinkpads and Lenovo, which acquired Thinkpad in 2005. Thinkpads were the only machines certified for use on the international space station. NASA is one of the few orgs whose endorsements I trust. Lenovo buying the product line does not turn it to shit overnight. In 2008, Lenovo Thinkpads could be bought with linux officially supported and factory-installed. But then I recall a point at which linux was no longer a factory option.

When did Lenovo turn to shit? 2010? 2015? I ask because my local street market has tons of 2nd-hand laptops and I never know what to think about the Lenovo Thinkpads that are newer than mine. The 2nd hand market also has Lenovo desktop machines.. some normal size and some are tiny (like the size of an optical drive). The general attitude is that anything Lenovo is good quality, which is not necessarily accurate it’s just the sentiment surrounding the machines. I wonder if that public perception is purely an artifact of the Thinkpad line from IBM.

Superfish was purely a software fuckup in 2015, which would not affect people who already know Windows is garbage and replace it with a proper OS anyway. But that’s not to say Lenovo shouldn’t lose competency points.

(edit) looks like things went downhill in the 2012—2014 range. “In 2014, although sales rose 5.6 percent from the previous year, Lenovo lost its position as the top commercial notebook maker.” (wikipedia).