http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/ Engadget Comments for Irate would-be Lenovo customers seeing delays on ThinkPad T61 http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
Try being a fan of Blizzard Entertainment.


Love,

Rob]]>Jun 13th 2007 10:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
But for the record, long delays are nothing new for brand new models -- look what happened with the Dell XPS 700.]]>Jun 13th 2007 10:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Sep 6th 2007 5:01AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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.]]>Jun 13th 2007 10:14AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Laptops are not Fashion Statements.

Thanks
Everyone Not bent over by Apple
]]>Jun 13th 2007 10:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 13th 2007 10:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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.]]>Jun 13th 2007 10:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/one can read all the Lenovo BS here:

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

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2]]>Jun 13th 2007 11:36AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 13th 2007 11:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 13th 2007 12:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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.]]>Jun 13th 2007 1:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 13th 2007 5:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 13th 2007 6:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 14th 2007 9:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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 :)]]>Jun 13th 2007 11:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 16th 2007 8:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 18th 2007 12:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 19th 2007 12:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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 ]]>Jun 28th 2007 9:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jun 19th 2007 11:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/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.

]]>Aug 13th 2007 12:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Aug 15th 2007 9:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Aug 15th 2007 10:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/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
]]>Aug 22nd 2007 7:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/Jan 16th 2008 9:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/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.
]]>Feb 6th 2008 11:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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]]>Aug 27th 2007 12:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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
]]>Aug 28th 2007 4:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
good luck everyone!!!]]>Aug 27th 2007 12:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/irate-would-be-lenovo-customers-seeing-delays-on-thinkpad-t61/
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.]]>Sep 4th 2007 5:50PM