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Wired [wired.com]
Globe and Mail [globetechnology.com]
I had to read it from three different sources before I believed it. I know they've outsourced manufacture... But for some reason it bothers me to think of IBM abondoning the PC market altogether. When I was a kid, playing on Sinclairs and Apple IIs, and Trash 80s, we all envied the kid who had the REAL computer, an IBM PC.
*sigh* Oh well.
me too. I am the son of an IBM veteran, and my dad always had the latest IBM machines when we were growing up. We had the portable PCjr, the one they advertised with a charlie chaplin look-alike. we upgraded through the AT and the XT... My childhood memories include formatting my grade 3 book reports on a green monochrome screen, bringing them into the IBM office to print them on the "good" dot matrix printer. I had such fun ripping the edges off that paper.
I'm surprised by this. The Thinkpad is an excellent machine. Maybe IBM just wants to retire the brand and concentrate on high-volume storage and military-grade hardware
We didn't HAVE computers growing up.
IBM's great heyday of the 70s + 80s was a corporate culture to which I was but a young observer. Going to the IBM family picnics, wearing IBM t-shirts, going to IBM softball games (they never won, not against teams like Toyota or Electrohome)
It's sad to see what has happened to IBM. The former sites of IBM's massive research facilities are like Michael Moore's depiction of Flint MI.
This is a black day.
Oy - you guys REALLY make me feel old....
We didn't HAVE computers growing up.
I didn't grow up UNTIL I had a computer :)
However, it's threads like this one that do make me feel somewhat aged (since normally I DO NOT feel my age!), because most of you are my daughter's age or probably younger - SHE didn't have a computer growing up either! And not because we couldn't afford it, just that they weren't "common stock" for teens in our area in the mid-80s.... Only one of the kids who sat around my coffee table playing AD&D after school had a machine at home and he WAS a nerd, as were his parents.
I grew into the computer age in 1984 - my daughter graduated from HS in 1985.... and actually didn't get her first computer until she married in 1992 (because she wasn't living at home, and didn't have the money for BOTH a car and a computer!)
Lenovo's chairman Liu Chuanzhi said Lenovo is taking over IBM's desktop PC business, including research and development and manufacturing. The acquisition would make Lenovo the third-largest PC company in the world, he said.
The Globe and Mail [globetechnology.com]
*sigh*
8086. Dos 6. Installed a 3.5" drive and a huge 8.6 megabyte Segate hard drive. Upgraded the motherboard to a 12 Mhz '286, and then ordered a '287 coprocessor. That made the monochrome graphics (2 meg EGA card) just fly on certain programs.
Later upgraded to a 25 MHz '386 with a whopping 8 meg of RAM and a VGA card.
It's all on the junk heap now, worthless and useless. This can't be such a suprise?
Look at how cheap Pentium based PCs have become. How can anyone stay in business these days trying to sell them? It's been such a race to the bottom for so long.
Dell and Apple remain viable. Dell builds the hardware affordably for Windoze users, and Apple engineers both the hardware and the software making one helluva computer!
I have payed close to $100,000 for 1 server and nobody batted an eye but those same people would question paying extra $50 to buy better machines for the desktop
I think when HP bought Compaq the desktop market became that much harder to compete in
I do wonder if its a bad move from some points though due to the ongoing costs of desktop support and the tighter integration available server - desktop support
It is a shame to see though
steve
[Edit: hmm. Doesn't really say that after all. What you get for believing without actually reading the whole thing. There may be hope....]
So here's wishing them a prosperous New Year and a long and prosperous future with quality, low cost PCs for us, a credible competition for Dell, and freeing a lot of so-called PC assemblers in the west (most of whom know very little more than how to hold a screwdriver ARGGGHHH) from pursuing other careers instead of doing component assembly and trying to fob it off to the consumer as a "quality PC". (Even if they are working for minimum wages they are getting more than the job is worth - they really are better employed elsewhere).
So, good luck to Lenovo.
Other thread where I've commented on these "pretend" "engineers" [webmasterworld.com]
