Bye Bye Thinkpads!

Well, what I feared here and here has become a reality. IBM has sold its PC unit to the Chinese company Lenovo. This does indeed mark the end of an era. While I can completely understand IBM wanting to get out of the commodity PC business, seeing them dump the Thinkpad is surprising. Unlike the whitebox market, the Thinkpad actually had a margin to it. For a long time now it was the only laptop I would purchase. It was also the only laptop I would recommend. Not sure what I'll do for my next laptop, but I'm seriously thinking it will be a powerbook (and I'm glad I recently grabbed a T42). They took a superior product that had a ton of R&D going into it and sold it to a company that admits to doing no R&D. That should work out well. This one should travel through the blogosphere like lightning and I'd guess IBM could potentially lose some of the geek karma they have been building up. They deserve to. The bottom line strikes again.
–jeremy