I just purchased a new Thinkpad R61i. It has the IBM logo on it but says Lenovo on bootup. Lenovo makes a Lenovo-branded series of notebooks that don't have the "pointer stick" device. I won't buy a notebook that doesn't have the "pointer stick". I then found out that there seem to be 2 lines of Thinkpads. I bought one from Staples and brought it home. It had "lenovo" in the lower right hand corner. It came with Vista--I won't have Vista, at least not yet. I looked at IBM/Lenovo's driver matrix http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...IGR-67856.html
and found out that some types have windows 2000/windows xp drivers available and some don't. The one from Staples didn't have the driver support I wanted so back it went. I found the "type" I wanted online and ordered it. It has "IBM" in the lower right hand corner.I'm happy with it. I think I read where IBM & Lenovo have a 5 year marketing and support agreement. After that, who knows.
HTH
Curt