You are lucky if your already bought the Lenovo Thinkpad recently because people at lenovo are gearing up quick to get rid of the IBM logo on there machines. It is now a well know fact that in past few “Lenovo” and “Think” have earned a huge brand value.

When Lenovo purchased the PC wing of IBM, they sought out a plan where they were allowed to use the IBM brand name so that they do not loose the IBM customer base. But with the brand Lenovo gaining fame fast Lenovo will happily give up the IBM logo off there machines before the expected time. Moreover, overall high recognition of Think brand-name may actually increase the value of Lenovo own brand.

“By making substantial progress on all of our critical priorities over the past few quarters, we’re now a stronger, healthier company. One important sign of this progress is our decision to completely transition our Think products from the IBM brand to the Lenovo brand two years earlier than planned. Concurrently, we’ve recently launched our own ‘Best Engineered PCs’ advertising campaign and global sponsorship of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games to promote our brand worldwide,” said William J. Amelio, Lenovo’s president and chief executive officer.

In fact, all the software for ThinkPad notebooks is currently supplied under Lenovo and Think trademarks, whereas IBM’s brand is nowhere to be found. Modern ThinkPad laptops also carry only Lenovo name on them.

IBM is expected to continue providing services and warranty for Lenovo Think customers.

So will you buy Lenovo now?

[via]

25th October 2006, Oracle announced same enterprise class support for Linux as for its database. They received huge positive response from the Linux community and they promised to keep a close watch on the compatibility issues.

“We think it’s important not to fragment the market,” said Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven. “We will maintain compatibility with Red Hat Linux. Every time Red Hat distributes a new version we will resynchronize with their code. All we add are bug fixes, which are immediately available to Red Hat and the rest of the community. We have years of Linux engineering experience. Several Oracle employees are Linux mainline maintainers.”

IBM at that time also welcomed oracle’s move. “Oracle’s support for Red Hat Linux will encourage broader adoption of Linux in the enterprise,” said Bill Zeitler, Senior Vice President & Group Executive, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “IBM shares Oracle’s goal of making Linux a reliable, highly standard, cost effective platform for mission critical applications backed by world class support.”

But now IBM is not ready to guarantee that its computer programs are compatible with Oracle Corp.’s recently launched version of the Linux operating system, an IBM spokesman said on Friday. This means that if IBM software programs turn out to be incompatible with Oracle Enterprise Linux, then it will be up to Oracle — and not IBM — to resolve the issue, said IBM spokesman Matthew McMahon.

Oracle, which started selling Linux in October, has said its product is identical to one from Red Hat Inc. the No. 1 vendor of the popular open-source operating system, and will seamlessly run software written for the Red Hat system. But users need outside critics to support the move for oracle to win over this field. Once a giant like IBM starts supporting oracle, then there would be no one stopping them.

“What Red Hat is selling to the customer is peace of mind. Oracle cannot do that because it is unable to certify comparability,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research.

With February coming to an end, Oracle is eagerly waiting for outside support to be somewhere around the leaders in the real race. Time will do the judgment.

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Text Source: Reuters