Irate would-be Lenovo customers seeing delays on ThinkPad T61

Your idea of the Lenovo buying experience has probably been all but tainted if its latest ThinkPad T61 was, er, would have been your first machine from the company. According to an incredibly long thread over at Notebook Review, more than a few would-be customers are getting progressively angrier as each passing day goes by without any sign of their new laptop. Apparently, a number of manufacturing hiccups are delaying the process, and some users are even reporting ship dates into the first week of September. Moreover, it seems that some loyal users even received consolation emails that tried to explain the delays and apologized by offering up a free accessory and a chance to easily cancel the order. So if you've had a T61 on order since day one and weren't already aware of all this behind the scenes turmoil, do yourself a favor and take a very deep breath before hitting the read link.

[Thanks, Craig]

[Rob @ Jun 13th 2007 10:05AM]

Dear Would Be Lenovo Customers,

Try being a fan of Blizzard Entertainment.


Love,

Rob

[Dan @ Jun 13th 2007 10:08AM]

Why would someone want to wait for those fugly laptops anyways?

But for the record, long delays are nothing new for brand new models -- look what happened with the Dell XPS 700.

[ric @ Sep 6th 2007 5:01AM]

Pretty much because you can use this machine to beat down anyone without a hiccup to its performance.

[Jon @ Jun 13th 2007 10:14AM]

If people are so desperate for a T61, just buy a pre made one that is already sitting in stock in a distribution centre or store somewhere. That is the downside to new technology (and Lenovo's current sale on their US website isn't helping either with the demand/supply issue).

A friend of mine recently bought a new X60 and he saved himself a hell lot of aggravation. But then again us in the UK can only purchase pre made stock... But man, what a lovely laptop. Makes me jealous with my ancient but still beautiful X31.

[Richard @ Jun 13th 2007 10:22AM]

@Dan
Laptops are not Fashion Statements.

Thanks
Everyone Not bent over by Apple

[jon @ Jun 13th 2007 10:27AM]

Umm well the single august order for over a thousand custom laptops is sure to get messy. there were problems enough getting the orders from IBM. and they arent that ugly just a very serious design.

[Jeff @ Jun 13th 2007 10:52AM]

"Why would someone want to wait for those fugly laptops anyways?"

Because nobody makes a better laptop than the Thinkpad. And when I say "nobody", I mean nobody. Well, except maybe IBM, back when they were making Thinkpads. But the point is there is still no better laptop, and there never has been, ever since the first Thinkpad was launched in 1992.

"But for the record, long delays are nothing new for brand new models -- look what happened with the Dell XPS 700."

You're obviously new to the whole Thinkpad thing, so a little education is in order.

Thinkpads are intended for business customers. Doesn't mean others can't use them too, but that's the market. IBM used to make them, and they actually defined a lot of what we take as basic modern laptop form and function these days. The Thinkpad was the first laptop line that really got it right.

One of the things that the Thinkpad got right was shipping new models on time, something important for large corporate customers who have to plan and budget far in advance. That doesn't mean there were never hiccups in production - there were occasional battery problems, power supply problems, but never (to my knowledge) a delayed product launch.

A company that orders 1,000 laptops and schedules the recycling of 1,000 older laptops to coincide, plans and budgets for both things to happen simultaneously, is going to be mighty pissed off to hear about a product delay like this. Avoiding problems like this is *why* businesses buy Thinkpads. This ain't some Dell gaming laptop. These are business laptops.

Lenovo's Thinkpads are still quality laptops, but the way they are running the Thinkpad business has to have some of the old IBM guys shaking their heads. And it's going to cost Lenovo in the long run.

[hammy @ Jun 13th 2007 11:36AM]

Finally we get some coverage! Thanks engadget...
one can read all the Lenovo BS here:

http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=84

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2

[Wisam @ Jun 13th 2007 11:49AM]

They said that the orders for x61 delays should be like 6-8 weeks. That's too long in my opinions. They can bring more staff to do the job faster. It wont hurt and would keep customers coming. I am now reluctant to buy from them until they solve the problem with their production lines.

[Greg @ Jun 13th 2007 12:12PM]

My friend's T61 that I ordered for him just arrived. We only ordered a week and a half ago. Did a "pre-built" model, but upgraded RAM and a couple other things. Came pretty quick.

[Gunnar @ Jun 13th 2007 1:12PM]

Obviously the problem with the delay is not with the pre-built models ready for purchase. These are customized orders that are delayed. I hope to receive my order by the end of this month now that this news is getting more popular and puts more pressure on Lenovo.

Are people still buying "pretty" laptops without substance? I am switching from 3 Powerbooks and 1 MacBook pro to a ThinkPad as this is what business ready notebooks should be. Obviously some people will take inferior notebooks as long as they are good looking. For Windows notebook, I will always take a ThinkPad. For Mac OS, I prefer PowerBook/MacBook Pro or future line that will continue its name.

[Numz @ Jun 13th 2007 5:48PM]

I'm still waiting for mine. It isn't supposed to be here until July 17th. The wait does suck but I've had ThinkPad’s before and they are a lot better then dells. BTW...I'm not buying it for looks...I buy it for use and durability. The fugly comment was just stupid.

[touareg @ Jun 13th 2007 6:29PM]

Ordered a T61 about 1.5 weeks ago, and it arrived yesterday. I got it through the Canadian EPP program (knocked a couple hundred bucks off the MSRP :) I had a vaio for about 2.5 years which recently locks up hard for no good reason...should've know better than to be seduced by the vaio's good looks.

[Lowspeed @ Jun 14th 2007 9:05PM]

touareg, Can you comment on the quality of the screen ? did you get an WXGA+ ?

[touareg @ Jun 13th 2007 11:39PM]

Lowspeed: I've got the WXGA+ 14" widescreen (1440x900), and I'd say it's about average. I used a couple of Dell LCDs on my main desktop, and the T61 screen is comparable for sharpness and brightness. So it's not amazingly great, but it's definitely not shabby.

As a sidenote, Lenovo must be having a heck of a time getting Vista to work on these things...Vista Business on my T61 crashes regularly or otherwise behaves strangely sometimes; I've already had two BSODs! Gonna put a fresh copy of Windows Vista on it, then dual-boot it with Linux :)

[Milos @ Jun 16th 2007 8:55PM]

Is that screen really off-centered and how does it looks live? On pictures, it really looks strange with that off-centered screen.

[Kimberly Bolich @ Jun 18th 2007 12:18PM]

I ordered my T61 on June 7th and it will be here today, the 18th. Based on what I've read, I was expecting a delay. What a pleasant surprise. Hooray!

[matt @ Jun 19th 2007 11:46AM]

I ordered my R61 on 5/11. They originally estimated 6/9. That was an incredible wait as it was, but I was somewhat ok with that given that these were new systems. Now it is 6/19 and their estimated ship date is 8/17. I canceled my order today and will never do business with Lenovo again. Absolutely horrific customer service. Unacceptable delay. Unacceptable lack of communication. I can't even get someone on the phone to cancel the order, so I've sent an email to their customer service address to cancel it. I don't want to sit for an hour on the phone listening to hold music just to tell Lenovo to cancel an order. I am buying a macbook pro.

[matt @ Jun 19th 2007 12:12PM]

I ordered my R61 on 5/11. They originally estimated 6/9. That was an incredible wait as it was, but I was somewhat ok with that given that these were new systems. Now it is 6/19 and their estimated ship date is 8/17. I canceled my order today and will never do business with Lenovo again. Absolutely horrific customer service. Unacceptable delay. Unacceptable lack of communication. I can't even get someone on the phone to cancel the order, so I've sent an email to their customer service address to cancel it. I don't want to sit for an hour on the phone listening to hold music just to tell Lenovo to cancel an order. I am buying a macbook pro.

[Carey @ Jun 28th 2007 9:26AM]

Like many others, as a first-time ThinkPad purchaser I've found myself greatly frustrated by unanticipated shipping delays and piss-poor customer service from Lenovo. Thankfully, at last I received notice yesterday (6/26) that my T61 apparently has shipped. Originally I placed an order for a T60 on 5/23, but on 6/2 decided to cancel and re-order a T-61 after a 15.4" widescreen option was added for the new model. As configured the estimated shipping date for my T-61 was 6/15, which was immediately advanced by another two weeks to 6/28 after the order was submitted. Based on the UPS tracking info rec'd this morning the estimated delivery date was 7/2-but this too has been advanced to 7/3 as-of this afternoon.

In any case I will have been waiting at least 4 1/2 weeks before my laptop finally arrives. Although this will apparently be be considerably less than some others customers have already been waiting, bear in mind that when I placed the order information posted on Lenovo's website indicated the computer could be expected to ship within two weeks.

While researching my purchase and after placing the order I sent 4 e-mail inquiries to Lenovo customer service. Out of those four messages only one reply was received. Like many other customers I also made three or four attempts to contact Lenovo customer service by phone. After hanging up in frustration following three long waits on hold I finally made contact with someoen on the fourth try after waiting for nearly an hour.

I certainly hope it won't be necessary, but I cringe at the thought of possibly having to make contact with Lenovo again should I experience problems with my T-61 after delivery.

Since I chose to configure my computer with XP-Professions vs Vista I'm at least hoping to avoid most of the software compatability issues and teething problems related to Vista that I've read so much about in recent months.

My dad retired from a career as an IBM service service specialist 20 years ago and I can still remember how critically important customer service issues were for him back then.

Unfortunately when purchasing the Thinkpad division Lenovo apparently failed to take on IBM's stellar reputation for outstanding customer service.
B

[Albert Ramos @ Aug 13th 2007 12:08AM]

How about the X61s shipping delays?
I ordered my x61s originally on 6/27 received the laptop on 7/20, but the laptop had a dead pixel. Re-ordered the replacement X61s on 7/25 and now I just checked the status and the ship date is 8/30…this makes no sense. For the past few weeks the ship date was 8/11 and today the ship date was changed to 8/30. I am about ready to cancel the order and go with a Dell.

[Brian S @ Aug 15th 2007 9:51AM]

I have been waiting 7 weeks for my x60s... which is the older model. Still waiting and waiting and waiting and they finally put me on priority... which means now I wait and wait but it is priority waiting. There. see the difference?

[Brian S @ Aug 15th 2007 10:00AM]

I feel your pain. I ordered mine on 6/22 and have had the date changed 4 times. They are laughable. I give them one more week and then I cancel. That will be TWO MONTHS (do you hear that Lenovo... TWO MONTHS FOR ONE FRIGGIN LAPTOP!)... but I digress.

[Marc Levoy @ Aug 22nd 2007 7:26PM]

These comments relate to a T60p, but many may
also apply to the T61.

*** Lenovo Thinkpad T60p annoyances ***

I bought a Thinkpad T60p in May 2007, pre-installed with Windows XP
Professional and SP2. The hardware is excellent, as many online reviews
correctly attest. However, the laptop has many software "issues". In
particular, after using it daily for 3 months, I have compiled the following
list of problems. Some of these are reported elsewhere in various online
Forums, including on this Forum.

1. Sometimes when the display turns off (after a period of inactivity),
it can't be turned on again, e.g. by pressing a key or moving the
mouse. To remedy this, I have to put the laptop into standby, e.g. by
closing the lid, then resume it again. Doing so of course drops my
wireless connections. Setting the display to never turn off in the
ThinkVantage power manager has no effect; the display still turns off.

2. Sometimes when resuming from standby, my Wi-Fi no longer works. The
LED says it's on, but the ThinkVantage wireless connection status
display says it's off, and no WLANs can be found. Sliding the radios
switch off and on does not repair the problem. To remedy this, I must
reboot the laptop. This problem is particularly widely reported.

3. Sometimes the cursor starts freezing every few seconds, making it
nearly impossible to operate any programs. To remedy this, I must
reboot.

4. Sometimes when resuming from standby, one or more of my USB ports no
longer work. Sometimes, none of them work. Typical devices plugged
into these ports are a Logitech optical mouse, a PalmOne Treo 650, an
SD card reader, or a USB key. To remedy this, I must reboot.

5. Last week I received a ThinkVantage error, "Irreparable damage to
the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one."
However, the battery seems to work and charge fine. Their
"lenovobatteryreplacementpackage.exe" says Lenovo won't replace my
battery, but doesn't say it isn't damaged, i.e. their program's results
are ambiguously worded. They are also ungrammatical.

6. If I am connected to the Internet, but not VPN'ed to my corporate
network, all applications hang for about 30 seconds before launching.
On occasion, I have seen these hangs even when not connected. Even the
Windows Task Manager hangs on launch. Sysinternals tools show attempts
to access a non-existent "Z:" drive. Clearing the My Recent Documents
sometimes helps. This problem is also widely reported, and it may be
a problem in Windows XP, not Lenovo.

7. Sometimes I close the lid, but the laptop won't enter standby or
hibernate. This may be related to the 30-second hangs just described,
but the hang is much longer, sometimes 20 minutes or more, and it
sometimes happens when not connected to the Internet. It may correlate
with running OpenGL programs, but not always. In this case (or perhaps
in others), the laptop never enters standby, thereby draining my
battery. To remedy this, I must reboot. After rebooting, the laptop
sometimes finishes entering standby or hibernation as soon as I log in.
Sometimes, I have resumed from hiberation, just to have the laptop
re-enter hiberation spontaneously 20 minutes later, due to a previous,
apparently hung, attempt to enter hiberation.

8. The battery icon sometimes disappears. Logging out and in fixes
this problem.

9. Explorer.exe sometimes crashes. Sometimes it restarts
automatically, but sometimes not. In the latter case, I must
cold-reboot the laptop. This may be a Windows XP problem.


On August 21, I attempted to solve some of these problems by updating my
ThinkVantage software. I did this by invoking ThinkVantage "Update System".
That invocation first updated the Update software and rebooted my laptop
(without warning!). Then, using the new update program, I requested all
critical & recommended upgrades, but not optional upgrades. Upon rebooting, I
discovered that I now had no Presentation Director. After installing the
latest version of Presentation Director from the list of optional upgrades, my
system hung during login.

With the aid of telephone technical support in Atlanta, I restored my system,
then attempted a piece-by-piece update instead of the failed automatic update.
This manual process consisted of un-installing and installing updated versions
of my Power Manager and ACPI Power Manager (v1.16 and v1.43), Hotkey driver,
Atheros Wireless driver, and Access Connections (v4.42). Upon rebooting, the
display of my ThinkVantage menus (upon hitting the blue buttom) were messed up,
I received a variety of error messages I've never seen, like "Unknown ethernet
port detected" (from ThinkVantage Access Connections), I saw no more balloon
messages on connect or disconnect of wireless, and enabling or disabling radios
using the physical switch on the side of the laptop did not bring up a dialogue
box, as it had previously. Moreover, my bluetooth was permanently disabled.

After 6 hours on the phone with technical support, 2 of which was spent in
phone queues after being repeatedly disconnected, I restored my system a second
time, and I abandoned the attempt to upgrade my ThinkVantage software. I will
live with the annoyances enumerated above until I can find a better laptop.

-------------------

In summary, I have owned a succession of Thinkpads for about 7 years. My last
one (before the current T60p) was a T42. This is the first time I have had
significant problems.

I suspect that the cause underlying these problems is poor integration between
the laptop hardware, its drivers, and the ThinkVantage applications. The
failure of both the automatic and manual upgrade procedures also suggests poor
software quality control. The inability of Atlanta's technical support people
to walk me successfully through an upgrade, and the long telephone queue times,
suggest a decreasing emphasis on customer service. Some of these problem may
be related to the handoff of the Thinkpad line from IBM to Lenovo, but this is
conjecture. I do note that the download instructions and release notes for the
ThinkVantage software are written in ungrammatical English.

Unfortunately, these problems make it difficult to use my laptop spontaneously,
e.g. to show demos to people during meetings, and it makes giving talks to
large groups a nervewracking experience. Since this is what I do (I am a
professor of computer science), I will never buy another Lenovo laptop. I will
also recommend to my colleagues and students that they not buy one.

-Marc Levoy
Professor
Computer Science Department
Stanford University

[Khana Ramey @ Jan 16th 2008 9:00AM]

I am having the same issues. I bought a T61 for home use because I have a T60 for work and love it. The machine will freeze after periods of inactivity, and I have to reboot it. If it keeps this up, I will demand a refund.

[andre perron @ Feb 6th 2008 11:57AM]

I have a T60P for work and a T60 for home uses.BTW: My T42 NEVER gave me any grief.
I have a list of problems similar to yours with both T60. Lenovo Support is a joke. They are unable to fix anything, they ordered the wrong parts twice, the tech that showed up at my house had never even worked on one *by his own admissions. And naturally he was unable to fix the laptop, I am a software consultant and my t60P was down for 8 days, last week caused mainly by REALLY poor support from a bunch of Idiot’s in Atlanta. I will NEVER buy a LENOVO anything EVER again.....
Sorry for the rants but IBM should have never sold the ThinkPad line to LENOVO.

[andrew @ Aug 27th 2007 12:00PM]

Hi Marc,

I also have a T60p and am experiencing some of the problems you describe. I believe most of them are due to the IBM bloatware that comes preinstalled on these laptops (especially the wireless manager and power mgmt drivers).

I found a blog post relaying instructions for uninstalling/reinstalling certain drivers in a certain order to alleviate the wireless problems... I also have had luck putting the laptop on standby, switching off the wireless radio, restoring the laptop from standby, and switching the radio back on to restore wireless connectivity. Additionally, turn power saving mode off in the wireless driver properties (and make sure the drivers are up to date). Your screen issue is a new one to me but I bet the standby/resume trick would work for that as well, also have you tried FN+F7?

I have a few colleagues with T60 and T60p laptops -- the happiest of the bunch is my friend who wiped the windows preinstall and IBM bloatware and did a fresh installation of windows, letting windows manage everything (read: NO IBM/lenovo software). His laptop power mgmt, wireless etc. work perfectly.

HTH,
Andrew

[Marc Levoy @ Aug 28th 2007 4:46PM]

Here is a 10th problem, which I had forgotten to include in my August 23 post:

10. For several weeks, explorer.exe would occasionally crash with an
error that says, "To help protect your computer, Windows has closed
this program." Upon rebooting, the laptop came up normally. The
dialog box may have been labeled "Data Execution Prevention", but I'm
not sure. During this same period, during bootup I would sometimes
receive an error message about ThinkVantage Client Security Software.
I dismissed the message, with no obvious ill effect except on my
confidence.

Possible fixes for these problems, with thanks to the users who posted them.
I have not tried these fixes yet; I will try them as each issue resurfaces.

URL: http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
User: andrew
Fixes: o For item #2 (wi-fi), put laptop into standby, switch off wireless,
resume from standby, switch wireless back on. Also, in wireless
driver properties, disable power saving mode.

o For item #1 (unable to resume screen), toggle FN+F7 a few times.
This was also suggested by user psirgany on forum.thinkpads.com.

o For all ThinkVantage issues, wipe disk and re-install Windows without
any ThinkVantage software; the laptop apparently works fine without it.

Users on other Forums suggest disabling or un-installing this software.
I have not seen reports posted of instability from doing so.

URL: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=48313
User: snessiram
Fixes: o For item #9 (explorer crashes), explorer can be restarted from the
task manager. Also, in Explorer->Tools->Folder Options->View,
try "Launch folder windows in a separate process".

In addition, I received several phone calls and emails from Lenovo technical
support in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. They offered to walk me
through the ThinkVantage upgrade procedures again, replace my battery, re-image
my hard drive, or anything else I wished. They were polite and helpful.
However, I declined these offers, due to the time and inconvenience they would
incur. One change I did make, in response to one of their suggestions, was to
disable the Data Execution Prevention bit in the BIOS. This obviously relates
to problem #10, but may underlie others.

-Marc Levoy
Professor
Computer Science Department
Stanford University

[andrew @ Aug 27th 2007 12:11PM]

Oh, and one more thing -- don't order direct from Lenovo! their customer service and delays are absolutely terrible!!! figure out which options you want from their website, and on the final page grab the model number (not T60p or whatever, but the actual product code) and search for it on newegg or CDW. you'll get a better price, and they have most of the lenovos preconfigured and ready to ship.

good luck everyone!!!

[alan.osman @ Sep 4th 2007 5:50PM]

This is my 3rd and final Lenovo/IBM I believe. I was drawn to the t61 because our t43's could not be upgraded to have larger drives.

After waiting for over a month to receive it, and ancipating the larger screen size, quiter and cooler run and larger memory capacity with N-band network speeds, I was saddened to find the following:

1. My n-band does not work. After playing tag between IBM and Linksys, with IBM blaming Linksys and Linksys blaming IBM, I finally purchased a Linksys PCMCIA card and hey presto, N-band worked. So it's a laptop issue. We also have two of these t61's so it cannot be just a faulty card unless they have a bad batch. In any event, I called IBM and they had the audacity to tell me that I had to pay for premium service in order to figure out why my N-band was not working. So this pissed me off.

2. The dual core speed sucks. Let me tell you. I notice no speed difference between mt t43p and t61. They both have the same drive 5400rpm drive speeds and if anything, the t61 has more memory. I noticed horrible jerky playback on videos too when running a DVD on the drive.

3. If you buy 4GB of memory and fall for the "a patch is what you need to make it work on vista" trick, your wasting your money. After downloading the updates, I still couldn't get my 4GB memory to work on Vista 32. Turns out (and I trusted the sales rep) that only Vista 64 supports 4GB of memory.

Right now, I am about to return these guys. Ready to call Amex and dispute my purchase. I'm still waiting for a customer service rep to call me back who when I call is constantly on the phone and has a message that she will call everyone back in the order the calls were received.

I'm done with Lenovo. What a shame.