A Simple Product Line

Submitted on Jan 23, 2009, 6:22 p.m.

Lucille Pine - Confusion scrabble characters

A little under a year ago I bought a Lenovo  ThinkPad T61p. I love it. It's a great notebook; solid design, easy to update, a great support site. However when I'm occasionally asked for advice on notebooks and whether I would recommend Lenovo  - I sort of say yes but then come unstuck. The reason? It took me several days - and I mean literally several days to work out the various configurations that were available for the ThinkPad T61 range.

I'd like to recommend Lenovo  notebooks - but I can't just point to a model and say "this one". A few minutes ago I came across this post on Crunch Gear  - Apple’s secret sauce: A simple product line . Great post, and I agree that Apple has got it right by having a simple product line. Too many choices and confusion results. Apple learned this lesson the hard way when back in the mid 90s they had more flavours of Power Macs than Baskin Robins  has ice cream - and it was confusing.

I don't think computer manufactures are in the flavour business and a simple product line - small, medium and large, would make it easier for consumers to shop, and even easier for others to recommend.