The new Lenovo X220 tablet

Conundrum… I love using a tablet at work and I'm a software engineer which means I need a tablet with serious processing power for Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008R2, etc.  I also like to dabble in the occasional video editing which is extremely CPU intensive when it comes time to render the output video.  To date, I haven't found anything sufficiently powerful in the tablet form other than Lenovo's X series.   As a result, I've put in an order for the Lenovo X220 Tablet which features the new Sandy Bridge i7-2620M.  I'm excited to see how this performs and hopefully the build quality will be sufficient that I won't need to use Lenovo's support (the premise of this entire website).  Has anyone else run into the same issue?  Can't find the performance/form factor they need outside of Lenovo?

 One additional note, continuing the host this website costs me money.  As a result, If you're a regular contributor and would like to see this site stick around, please consider using this Amazon link any time you make a purchase at Amazon.  

 Thanks!

 Dan 

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Martin’s W500 battery woes

hi again,
my W500 battery started to die about 1 year old. going from
40% load into emergency shut down (after about 40 minutes on battery).

lenovo says "sorry … 2 days out of warranty".

my dealer proves lenovo wrong … "sorry lenovo, 5 days inside warranty".

soooo, lenovo asks me to send in the bad battery for replacement.

lenovo,
helloooooo, do you know why i bought a laptop computer and not a
desktop? because, i want to work AWAY from a power cord. so how do i
send in my battery?

well, expecting something like this, i always buy my new laptops with 2 batteries.

it's been around 3 weeks now that i am waiting for my new battery … hahahaha :-)

lenovo, you are such a bunch of sad sad losers!
martin

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Martin’s SMS Misery

hello again :-)

here is another wonderful story about the engineer suckers at lenovo.

in
august 2009 i bought a $3500 lenovo W500 with windows vista that came
with the windows 7 upgrade options (both versions ultimate 64bit). after
upgrading to 7 in spring of 2010 i discovered that my computer could no
longer send SMS text messages.

this feature has silently been
disabled (along with some 48 additional features). so what worked well
on vista no longer existed on 7.

for about half a year lenovo has
been unable to deliver a new version of access connections (the
software tool you use to connect and also send SMS messages). there were
a lot of promises, but all of them empty.

today i got a very valuable hint from another plagued lenovo user: there is a sony tool which enables the SMS feature again.

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/VAIO/WIN7UPGRADE/WWAN_Connection%20manager_R5_Generic_ENU_1.x_32bit_64bit_E_1.0_1.0.0.1_ENU.zip

SONY to the rescue!!!

my next laptop will be a sony anyway …

cheerio,
martin

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Jon’s T61P Horror Story

I bought a tricked-out T61p in April 2008 for $2100. In March 2009 the motherboard died. In August 2010 that motherboard died. Replacement cost estimated at $750 because out of warranty. 

Apparently the replacement motherboard has only a 30-day warranty or until the end of your service contract, whichever comes first.

Called support who, as others have said, is useless without a warranty. Wanted $550 to talk to me…yes, $550. "Can I speak with a Supervisor?" There is no escalation, you may not speak to anyone.

Two motherboards in a just over 2 years. The Chinese quality shines through.

New laptop? Dell Precision M6500. Screw Lenovo.

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A particularly bad day for Lenovo’s Support

Today is a particularly bad day to get support from Lenovo – any site within their support site displays:

 

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Martin’s W500 troubles continue.. the video driver

here is another experience about the unbelievable lenovo service
attitude=ineptitude.

in october 2009, i purchased two high-end
W500s (at about 3.000 euro a piece) with vista ultimate 64bit. i
purchased the laptops "ready for windows 7" and they came complete with
the windows 7 ultimate 64 bit upgrade option.

right from the
beginning, the video driver occasionally crashed. the screen froze for a
few seconds, then the driver restarted and a bubble said something like
"the amd driver has crashed and was restarted".

since the
problem occurred rare enough to bother me, i was willing to live with it
and had good hopes that windows 7 would heal everything.

well,
guess what. the problem is much more severe and frequent now under
windows 7.

internet explorer is totally unusable. it crashes
about twice a minute. i am using firefox now which works fine.

anyway,
the problem is a big nuisance and i want to be rid of it. asking too
much from a 3000 euro computer?

the lenovo windows 7 pc-doctor
self test finds errors with the video memory, the non-local video memory
test fails.

and now comes the funny part. guess what lenovo
wants me to do to "help"?

they require me to make a fresh install
of windows vista in order to find the problem!!

is lenovo now
completely nuts???

cheerio,
martin

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Martin’s W500 troubles

hi there,
lenovo truly sucks … and when i googled the two words,
your site came up :-)

i would like to share my recent W500
experience. lenovo has decided that win7 no longer supports SMS text
message functionality and that's it. they won't give you a different
software either.

so now, everytime i want to sign up for a
roaming package with my mobile provider i have to shut down, take out
the simcard, put it into a cell phone (of course, taking out the cell
phone's simcard prior to that), etc etc

lenovo simply shrugs and
says "that's what you get".

lenovo once. lenovo never ever again.

cheerio,
martin

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Thinkpad x201 Tablet no longer for sale on lenovo.com

Lenovo has removed their Thinkpad x201 tablet from their site and posted the following message:

This product is no
longer available for purchase on lenovo.com.
You may still buy this product from a Lenovo
retailer or reseller.
 

So much for making the fastest ultraportable tablet…

 

 

 

 

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Lenovo Outlet

While looking for a replacement power adapter at Lenovo's outlet store, I came across the following: 


Nice work!  While I fully expect that the store is hosted / managed by a 3rd party vendor that Lenovo has chosen, publicly available debug info of this nature isn't a good idea.

 

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Rob’s Lenovo UK Sales Experience

Just to confirm that this is not a US-only experience. On November 14th 2009, I spent most of the day speccing a new laptop and finally settled for a ThinkPad. Over two days I created a customized machine and then purchased it, or so I thought.
The online status of my order went straight to 'Released', and stayed that way for the next four weeks! I sent emails to everyone I could, phoned everyone I could, and never got a response. I hung on their customer service line for ages before being cut off (you only get the option to leave a message so that someone can call you back, and they never do).

After four weeks I cancelled the order and was given a direct email address to complain to. Nobody replied or acknowledged any of my complaints even though sent to various addresses, including the US.

On the day I cancelled, I finally got a Sales Assistant who told me that my order could not be completed because they had no monitor screens! I'm not sure I believe her, but even if she was telling the truth, how contemptible not to inform me.

I'd never buy (or try to!) Lenovo again and I wouldn't advise anyone else to. I'm going back to Dell.
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