As a long time ThinkPad/Lenovo fan, suggesting that Lenovo's repairability is in the same league as the Framework suggests to me you've never actually worked with a Framework. It really is on a whole other level.

Are you joking? Thinkpads for decades have had all the parts replaceable with off the shelf components. Framework is barely caught up with my 2008 thinkpad lol.

Framework's hardware is nice because it takes advantage of CPUs, ports, RAM, screens etc that are more recent than 2008

I know for some old ThinkPads (edit: The IBM branded T60 from 2006) you can get a custom motherboard that works with modern CPUs, but the price for the mobo alone is more than a Framework laptop

Can you custom design parts with pinouts for your 2008 thinkpad?

If not, I'm not sure I believe you know what you are talking about - its nice lenovo (in past) has been so rugged, repairable, but using reverse engineered parts is a very different thing to a set of components that can be extended.

Put it like this - can you put a lenovo part on a framework laptop? No? Why?

Until you can, Framework is in a whole different category....

I also have a 2008 and a 2009 Thinkpad. I've looked at some recent ones and we've lost so much since then.

Have you looked at any more recent thinkpads?

It's hard to talk about Thinkpads as a monolith because there have been so many different devices sold over the decades and their format has changed quite a bit in that time as well. As a thinkpad enjoyer I do appreciate them still but they have become less repairable in recent time. Personally I have done things like completely swap screens, motherboards, etc. to create franken thinkpads in SKUs that never existed and I would still say the Framework is more "repairable" if you define repairable as ease of removing and replace components as well as gaining access to replacement components. Framework's marketplace lists individual components that I can buy today presumably at OEM quality to fix things like hinges or keyboards and that is something Lenovo never really had (or I was not aware of it or was not able to engage with it a la some special preferred repair program).

2008 ThinkPads are machines from a different era. Lenovo doesn't build them the same anymore.

good luck finding cheap parts for your framework laptop. Lenovo however can be repaired for years with off the shelf components and at very low cost.

Some business laptops from Lenovo, Dell, and HP rank among the most repairable laptops. But Framework goes even further by making their parts store and repair guides accessible to everyone:

- https://frame.work/marketplace

- https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop

The prices of the parts are very reasonable, and each part is labeled with a QR code that can be scanned to access repair instructions.

> Some business laptops from Lenovo, Dell, and HP rank among the most repairable laptops

I can confirm HP isn't too shabby. Very easy to take apart, and they even put out maintenance and service manuals, at least for their Pro/Elite Desk/Book lines. They show how to disassemble them, the possible part-numbers (for example the different available keyboards with or without backlight).

I've never had to actually source any parts so don't know how easy it is, especially once they get old.

But, in general, I would personally not recommend the laptops. They're cheap junk with ridiculously bad screens.

The desktops are quite OK, though.

I would not trust a company with no history with providing parts forever. If anything, I'd like them to license the manufacturing of replacement parts so that other companies can make their own if they ever go bankrupt.

Dell Vostro laptops are not as sleek as their consumer models, but they are tanks, and they are a breeze to repair.

I do like what Framework is doing, and my next laptop will likely be from them.

FWIW I just look up 6 parts for the Thinkpad (battery, keyboard, webcam, speakers, audio board), and all the prices were within $5 of the framework equivalent. Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean the prices will still be comparable a decade from now.

One of my Lenovo laptops has firmware to prevent me from upgrading its WiFi card using off the shelf components.

If it's successful one would expect availability to increase.

It was reported recently that they are also doing the same thing with the CPU in some of their machines. As someone who has bought older Xeon CPUs to upgrade older PCs (often giving them years more useful life) that is frustrating.

Is it a Lenovo ThinkPad, or one of their other models?

That one was a yoga 2 pro. An unfortunate choice to stray from the T and X series on my part. Or, they could have chosen not to add software limitations and Superfish or at least made it clear before I bought it.

Some thinkpads have a whitelist for wireless chips in the firmware, that's known - but I am not sure how widespread it is.

> Lenovo however can be repaired for years with off the shelf components and at very low cost.

The Framework uses standard parts for wifi, storage, and display. The "proprietary" bits are the mainboard, the battery, and the keyboard/mouse assembly (in the case of the Framework, mainly because of the custom connector).

This is precisely the same situation as with Lenovo, save that the Framework is far more modular and thus easy to repair.

I'm not sure why you think there's any difference.

I use Linux, but Lenovo's reputation is still burned in my eyes ever since the Superfish incident. I'm very happy we have other names in the Linux laptop game.

(Context: Lenovo installed universal root CAs on their laptops during the 2010s, so they could serve ads. They were tied to firmware IIRC, so, reinstalling Windows would not remove the malware.)

I understand why you have a problem with Lenovo following the incident, but ThinkPads are something else, and they weren't impacted by Superfish.

Non-ThinkPad Lenovos are not great by any mean. They are unremarkable consumer-grade laptops. ThinkPads are a legacy from IBM that Lenovo is smart enough to keep separate from the rest.

Still not acceptable. It would be hard for me to buy a ThinkPad (I have bought many in the past).

Obviously Lenovo has zero integrity and will spy on us or cheat us in some other way if they think they can do it without getting caught.

Sad that nobody else makes laptops with the little nub for pointing the mouse.

I used a TP from the 2013, 2014 era, and I have my current main laptop as a TP from 2017...

The old TP was fantastic. Really out of date hardware, but it did the job. New one is great, in theory (spec-wise), but its a much cheaper build, breaks more, and just generally has far more issues than I remember with the old one. I think I had one in the middle too which was just straight up an awful peice of junk...

When Lenovo got bought out by China, they weren't really that smart - they tried to consumerize their TP and thereby cut costs - the features they brought back to modern TPs are still nice but you just don't get the same attention to detail anymore...IMHO.

> but Lenovo's reputation is still burned in my eyes ever since the Superfish incident.

I guess you don't use any other company either because every other company has committed something bad in the past? (Sony had rootkits in their CDs, Microsoft has been anticompetitive by forcing the hands of OEMs and inserting spyware in their OS, the list can go on...).

What matters is how each company answers to their mistakes. If they double-down, you are right to avoid them. If they recognize them and make amends, it's OK to give them a chance again.

How far does that list go? I indeed don't use Sony software and I avoid Microsoft's. I don't know many other violations of this severity. For example, Dell had pre-installed root CAs (but weren't persistent like Lenovo's), and many other laptop manufacturers haven't preinstalled root CAs (e.g. HP hasn't afaik).

With Framework and System76 and other smaller manufacturers making Linux-first laptops, I'm especially disinclined to ever consider Lenovo again.

That was over 10 years ago, a mistake which the company has shown no signs of repeating.

They might have started it over 10 years ago, but they kept the Superfish malware until 2015, when they offered removal tools.

(For context in the future, this comment was made in 2022, when the Superfish Lenovo security controversy was only 7 years old.)

Owning both Lenovo and Framework myself, Lenovo doesn't hold a candle to Framework.

Call me when you buy a used Framework for 200-300 bucks...

Whats that got to do with anything?

My old lenovo is still too good to throw away for $200, though I'd give it to a relative or friend for free.

It will be years before any Frameworks get that old, and by the time they do 5 or 8 years from now, well their whole sales pitch is that you can just keep repairing it or repurpose it's parts indefinitely. And this thread is talking about repairability not any other value propositions like market availability of old ones.

It may never become a junker you sold for 200 because you used it's parts for something else or you replaced the mainboard and just kept using it.

If there never appear any $200 Frameworks, that would only support the assertion that they are more user repairable.

This question makes no sense to me in this context.

Worth pointing out that while linux has usually worked quite well on thinkpads, official support for linux was very infrequent until recently. Also, support for linux on non-thinkpad lenovos was much more of a crapshoot. For corporate linux support, Dell (edit: and HP!) has always been a better option.

Edit: And apparently even today is very limited. Just checked Lenovo's website, and apparently only two models can be ordered in the US with linux preinstalled: X1 Carbon, and the Yoga. That's it.

Even for framework, the official Linux support isn't much better. They don't ship with Linux and it's only recently all the kinks have been mostly ironed out with the distro they recommend, Ubuntu 21.04. They have been making proactive steps with Linux support, like providing prerelease hardware to maintainers of lots of distros, but they don't officially support any distro.

Some of the recent ThinkPads have soldered RAM.

Unfortunately. The more expensensive ones outside of the x1 carbon line are still upgradable.

Do you understand what “not at all” means?

If they did part of the work, then clearly it is “some” work, and not “none at all”