Though not an absolute requirement, the "Buy American Act" [1] gives preference to equipment that is made in this country and intended for government/military use. This could be a legal/marketing maneuver on Lenovo's part to get a larger share of government technology contracts.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_American_Act

Ah, thank you - that makes perfect sense. I wish they would have covered this in the article.

HP has a large portion of the government contracts market for laptops.

> What does North Carolina have over Mexico?

Safety? Properly functioning law enforcement?

Currently, if you want a custom configured Lenovo PC, you have to wait for it to be shipped from China. This increases the average time it takes to get the computer and introduces the risk of a customs problem holding up your shipment indefinitely.

I didn't think that larger exporting companies had problems with customs in China. Even so, wouldn't it be better to take advantage of your infrastructure and distribution already existing in Mexico?

I know nothing about logistics, but I've ordered a fair amount of hardware from Lenovo and one of my biggest complaints is the erratic shipping times.

Apple consistently ship from China to US in 2 days, presumably Lenovo should be able to do the same.

That's a fair counterpoint. Lenovo takes considerably longer. I don't know why.