Has Lenovo Taken the Top PC Manufacturer Spot From HP? 99
angry tapir writes "Lenovo has taken the crown from Hewlett-Packard to become the world's top seller of PCs, research firm Gartner said in a study released this week. Lenovo took the top spot during a quarter in which PC shipments dropped overall due to a weak economy and pressure from mobile devices. Of the top four PC vendors, only Lenovo was able to grow its shipments. Its PC sales increased by almost 10 percent to 13.77 million units, giving it 15.7 percent of the market, Gartner said." Not so fast, says analysis firm IDC. They say that HP is still in the lead but Lenovo is very close.
Re:Never trust Gartner on anything... (Score:4, Interesting)
Lenovo is the only half-decent manufacturer left (Score:2, Interesting)
That is in the top 10 'manufacturers'. While everybody has cut corners over the years HP, Dell, and others went too far. With falling prices in the lat 15 years even the poor can afford top quality systems. People are realizing that Dell and now HP are shipping crap. IBM/Lenovo has been going downhill all along although the difference is the company has made sure to release slightly better quality products than the rest. So it is no wonder people are going Lenovo.
Personally I would not buy Lenovo. They ship systems with digital restrictions and I'm not willing to work around those restrictions just so I can run my choice of GNU/Linux distribution. ThinkPenguin's the way to go now these days. They've been working hard to improve the cooperation between free software developers and chipset manufacturers. There current generation of laptops is amazing and they are working on a new USB N adapter that should work better than anything thats come before (not hard to do considering all USB N adapters on GNU/Linux are crap or dependent on non-free software- there is one older G chipset that works well although no longer readily available- ThinkPenguin did stock up on it before the chipsets demise so GNU/Linux users should be able to get them for a while).
Bloatware turds with stupid keys (Score:4, Interesting)
A while back I gave my family a very short list of computers that I would help them with. HP is not on that list. They buy something off the list and they are on their own. Sign number one that a computer company hates their users is when they put that crap Norton Trialware on the computer.
People keep blah blahing about a Post-PC world coming due to tablets and smart phones. I say it all started to die the day that some MBA came up with the business model of selling a computer really cheap and then trying to screw the customer with all he money / time sucking bloatware.
Another good example of where HP went wrong was with their printer drivers. I print maybe once a month. Thus I don't want the driver running full time in the background. It should be about 3 megs of software that takes my document and prints it. I don't need to manage the print jobs, redirect them, manage supplies, or anything else. These should be optional programs that I could install on say a machine that prints all day long. But no they want me to download 200megs of crap that then installs all kinds of document management crap. This just drives me to make sure that I buy an older used printer that has drivers built into the OS.
I always laugh at those pictures of Jumbotron screens where a Norton AV subscription reminder has come up mid game but that is not so much the fault of the Jumbotron people as it is the greed of companies like HP.
But this crap is now creeping into smartphones. Rogers even put McAfee AV on his Android smartphone.
Every single one of my Lenovo Laptops kicked ass (Score:4, Interesting)
All of them. They remain useful until they are completely broken, thrashed, just worn the fuck out dead.
That's why they are doing well. I pay a lot for mine, run them hard, and when they are behind the curve, they get cycled home for various things, until they finally just don't work, and that process is generally painless too.
I like the matte black finish. It's not sexy, but it endures way better than the shiny, "please don't scratch it" finishes on so many machines do. Maybe starting out a little less sexy has it's advantages. Black is damn cool in my book, and there is always that little brightly colored something on the machines, sort of like a great tie on an otherwise boring business suit. Perfect.
The keyboards are a bit noisy, but I like that too. Always have. I can type and type and type until the buttons are all worn, and they just keep going great, no worries.
Heavy little buggers, if you buy the more powerful ones. If I need to clock somebody with my laptop, Lenovo is there! No worries, and I can probably post to Facebook after doing it too.
Linux is well supported across most of the machines. I love that. A Think Pad was the first machine I ran OS X on too. Worked amazingly well, and was faster than the Mac I ended up getting soon after. Gotta admit, the touch pad on the Mac is better tho, but not by much. Some Think Pad touch pads need to be worn in. Once that has happened, they work much better. Weird.
By and large, I leave most of the value added software on the machines. It works well. HP is noisy, Dell just horrible, etc.... I get a competent disc burning kit, defrag tools, etc... Nice package that actually has some real value. On my latest machine they even tossed in the nVidia 3D licenses. Didn't know that, until I connected up to a new TV for some 3D CAD tests. Nice!! That's $14.99 for most of you out there.
Funny thing is I was not a fan early on. One ended up at the house, and I started using it. By the time I got it, the machine was a bit dated, but damn if it wasn't just great to use. When it outlasted some HP thing or other, I was sold. Typically, I get a top machine for work purposes. Need big RAM / CPU, nVidia, etc... Once it's done, it goes home for micro-controller related projects. Long life cycle on these. Worth it.
And... matte finish displays that are typically nice, bright, with fine dot pitches. They've wavered a bit on these on some models as of late. Gotta be a bit picky about that, but so has everybody else. Get the better display they offer, and it's no worry.
The few times I've ordered replacement things under warranty, they shipped 'em, the work wasn't hard. Once the machine ends up at home, I find I can service it much easier than I can the HP machines, which incorporate all manner of fiddly components, glue, buttons that fail, etc... Ugh. Dell sometimes does better, and is in my mind, competitive on this front. Apple? Difficult, but then their stuff works a long time too. Fair game they are playing, but HP is just losing big on this front. Get an HP, and you better hope it works, or service might be very difficult no matter who does it.
I expected some of this to fade when IBM let go to Lenovo. Very pleased to see they've kept the bar high so far. Hoping they continue.