Konrad e-mailed me his Lenovo experience, it appears in its entirety below:

I just came across this site and I just wanted to express my frustration with Lenovo as well. I have a T61 thinkpad and I can't believe how it's given me so much problems. What initially started as a random shutdown when running graphics intensive programs. When I first called Lenovo support they had the audacity to tell me, "hmm I've never heard of anyone having this problem before." The funny thing is when I took a look on the Lenovo forums page they have an 800 posts long thread detailing the exact problem

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=T_Series_Thinkpads&message.id=35071

Subsequently after I sent it to a depot to be fixed, the problem has grown into a hard drive crash and subsequent replacement, an unresolved first issue - as the random shut downs werestill occurring. And now the service depot doesn't want to fix it anymore calling it a 'billable issue.

I had a Dell Inspiron laptop prior to this for 2 1/2 years without any problems except for a battery getting old... so for my Lenovo laptop to last me 9 months... I don't know... just so frustrated.

Konrad

 Thanks Konrad!  What was your ultimate solution?  Did you stick with Lenovo or did you get another Dell?