You rather have a sub 300$ device than a premium above 1000$ product? I know the Thinkpad brand is being abused with Ideapads and their similarity but to say Chromebooks are better is a lie.

The Thinkpad's are $400 devices (11e is the model), and they are indeed junk. The battery lasts around 3-4 hours which means kids have to find an outlet to work. The charging circuit makes an intermittent high pitched whine that many kids are complaining about (I can't hear it). When my daughter's is plugged in, the time until charged is always "UNKNOWN". Apparently, that's a common problem.

There have been issues with the touchpad as well, although my daughter's has been fine.

So, yes I wish they used Chromebooks. We could at least just buy a new one, log in, and have everything there ready to go.

The 11e is quite simply not a ThinkPad.

One of the biggest problems with Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's laptop division is their constant dilution of the ThinkPad name. Initially, in the first few years after the acquisition, Lenovo introduced a line of budget devices under the 'E' series and these were not marked with the ThinkPad identity because they were of significantly poorer construction and did not come with the same warranty and service options. In the years since, though, they've started slapping the ThinkPad name on these and a number of new low-cost product lines.

In practice, it's only really a ThinkPad if them model number starts with a T, W, or X. Unfortunately Lenovo itself is working hard to eliminate this distinction, positioning ThinkPad as another Dell or HP instead of as a high-end enterprise and luxury product line.

The 11e is indeed a ThinkPad. You might not think it's deserving of the name, but that's where ThinkPad is these days.

I've had a bunch of ThinkPads over the years and two are still in use.

I have a T520 that I now use basically as a terminal. It's a very creaky, heavy, machine that never gave me more than about 3 hours of battery, and the keyboard was terrible. But it sits there and keeps working (I use an external keyboard, monitor, and mouse).

I also have a ThinkPad Yoga 12.5. I really like the keyboard, but again the battery life isn't weak (4 hours). I occasionally think about getting something a little bigger, but the small size is pretty nice for traveling.

I don't think Lenovo has ever had a laptop with good battery life, outside RT Yoga 11 (12 hours?) and Yoga 2 Pro (9 hours).

You buy thinkpad for the great keyboard the red-dot-whatsitsname-thingy. And the fact that it can stop bullets. But not for the battery life.

What thinkpads are garbage?

11e

Which is actually a Chromebook!

No, it isn't. You can get it running Chrome OS, but these ThinkPads run Windows and that's why the battery life is so terrible.

11e and x131e are available as windows and chromebooks. I think the chromebook version has an AMD cpu and a smaller battery

These are definitely not the best laptops Lenovo has designed. Pretty much the bulkiest 11" laptop you can buy with the worst display, the worst keyboard I have ever touched and the crappy battery life and the fan noise are legendary...

But in the end, both were better than anything I had when I grove up. So yeah, basically "kids today..."

That seems off to me. Thinkpads are normally quite amazing machines. What model(s) were assigned?

ThinkPads used to be uniformly excellent, but these days it's a crapshoot. Even the best hardware comes with Lenovo's software installed and my advice to anybody that buys a ThinkPad is to remove as much of the Lenovo bloatware as you can.