I kind of agree, they are not as awesome as they used to be but I don't know if that is totally Lenovo's fault. Back when ThinkPad's where an IBM product laptops were bit and chunky, then we had ultrabooks and Lenovo had to compete. I believe IBM would have had to compete in the same way just like Dell and HP have had to. The Latitude series isn't as great as it was 5+ years ago. As they get thinner and lighter with less removable components they become less end-user friendly.