u/appleslice244

I'm the owner of a growing law firm in Australia (currently around 10 staff, likely 15+ over the next few years) and am considering standardising on ThinkPads.

My priorities are:

- Reliability
- Ease of fleet management
- Fast support when something goes wrong
- Minimal downtime for lawyers

I'm currently looking at the T14 and X1 Carbon range with Premier Support.

For those of you running ThinkPads in a business environment:

- How has Premier Support been in practice?
- If a laptop suffers a hardware failure, what has the repair experience actually been like?
- Has anyone received a replacement machine rather than a repair?
- How long are your laptops typically lasting before replacement?
- Would you buy ThinkPads again for a professional services firm?

I'm also curious about best practice. Do you rely on Lenovo support, or do you keep a spare pre-configured ThinkPad on hand so staff can swap immediately if a machine fails?

Located in Australia, so Australian support experiences would be particularly helpful.

We're a growing law firm in Australia (currently around 10 staff, likely 15+ within the next couple of years) and I'm looking to standardise our laptops.

I'm currently leaning towards Lenovo ThinkPads (likely T14s or similar) because they seem to have a strong reputation for reliability.

My biggest concern isn't actually the hardware itself it's support. If a solicitor's laptop dies before a court appearance, mediation, or client meeting, downtime is incredibly expensive.

For those managing business fleets in Australia:

- How has Lenovo Premier Support been in practice?
- If a ThinkPad fails, how quickly are repairs actually completed?
- Has anyone had experience with replacements being provided?
- Would you choose Lenovo again, or would you go Dell Latitude + ProSupport instead?

Also, what's the best way to purchase and manage these?

- Do you buy direct from Lenovo or through a reseller?
- Should I be engaging an IT provider to source and manage the fleet?
- Is there anything you'd do differently if you were setting up a fleet of 10–20 laptops from scratch today?

I'm less interested in benchmarks and more interested in experiences when things go wrong.

Located in Australia if that makes a difference.

TIA

What do workers actually want now?

Genuine question from an employer because I feel like the messaging is all over the place at the moment.

At our firm we offer:

2 WFH days per week
“flex time” (do your 7.6 hours whenever — start at 12pm for all I care)
salaries at about 1/3 of generated revenue
no micromanaging
flexibility for appointments or whatever needed
clear progression
decent office culture
autonomy/trust

Despite the above recruitment still feels hard af.
Not saying this in a “people don’t want to work anymore” way either. I genuinely think expectations have shifted and employers are struggling to work out what actually matters now.

Because from where I sit:
people say they want flexibility, but also mentorship/culture, they want autonomy, but also structure/support
they want high salaries, but lower targets/stress,
they want growth, but not necessarily pressure

So what is the actual priority list now if you’re an employee?

If you could build the ideal workplace, what would it realistically include that most employers are still missing?