I work in the industry as a sales rep. for a Value Added Reseller in Canada. The ThinkPad brand used to be a must have for C-Level execs and savy tech staff that travelled as part of their jobs. Since the acquisition, I have seen a huge slide in not only the quality of the product but the support is now nothing short of abysmal.

A Lenovo ThinkPad is no longer a premium offering period. I seem to be seeing them merging the IdeaPad and ThinkPad lines in terms of fit, finish and build quality. This can only be based on the incredibly competitive landscape, recently dominated by the push into the North American market by Acer.

As for support, the fact is all support calls are addressed by IBM, and let me tell you, that relationship is not working. Recently, after receiving 2 DOA units, the IBM rep. showed up with no spares on three separate occasions and confessed there were no spares for the T400s in our region and that we would have to wait. We ended up having to ship one of the units back for a complete replacement. Total time to get the replacement was over 6 weeks.

These are not growing pains, this is an active attempt to compete and cut costs where ever possible.

My advice, look elsewhere until they realize the error of their ways and bring the brand back to what is was and they finally cut ties with IBM and retool the support.

Punchy

The guy in the passenger seat of the Porsche was Ottawa Senators Jason Spezza's brother. Just some trivia.

As for the question of the day, you go from hero to zero pretty quickly at those speeds.

The real question is, do we commend their actions and risk the copycats or slap them down to prevent other cowboys from trying the same thing under less circumstances.

Punchy writing from Ottawa

I will echo the comments about the front grill, but hopefully there will be someone in the aftermarket that see the opportunity here and engineers a nice bolt on replacement.

As for the car, I am still planning on upgrading from my '04 GT, but damn do I wish they would have offered AWD, it would make the obvious WRX comparo so much easier to dismiss.

Punch

I am in Germany right celebrating a friends birthday.

Today we stopped by his work and out drives a Scirocco in white.

I can't begin to tell you what a shame it is that we are not going to be able to get behind the wheel of this car.

It is without a doubt, beautiful. Long and sleek and wide. This one is all about stance. A real looker and from the sound of things as it slowly drove by and got up to speed, it just might have the goods to take full advantage of the Autobahn.


Punchy

What exactly is LCD lighting?

The enclosure that looks like it holds the motherboard is decidedly mATX looking as opposed to a full size ATX version.

I wonder if that means, no SLI and perhaps some other trade offs that may hinder it's ability to be dubbed, "The Ultimate Gaming Machine".

Will have to look at some specs.

Punchy

Blackberry Bold

Punchy

Blackberry Bold hands down. I early adopted a lot of gadgets last year, but the Bold is still my toy of choice.

Punchy

Bingo...first three things I install as well. Must haves.

I also recommend CutePDF Writer and Revo Uninstaller.

Has Voodoo not heard of Core i7? Seriously if Dell can give me a mini tower Studio XPS with a i7 920 for $1K Canadian what performance appeal does the Voodoo have left.

Even HP Canada hasn't released a Core i7 configuration yet.

Thanks but I will wait.

Punchy

Does not work with Kaspersky yet.

Tried it last night and it did not see the product installed.

Might save some people some time.

Punchy