[ltp] More war stories about Lenovo build quality

[Richard Neill]

>     1. Fingerprint reader overheats excessively and then fails to
>            function. Thinkfinger has some serious bugs related to
>            this, which exposes my typed password in cleartext if I'm
>            not careful.

Ugh!

> 
>     2. The CPU regularly runs at 157F or higher, with nothing at
>            all loaded or running. Because of this, I have to set the
>            fan on full-speed at startup through APCI, which sounds
>            like a jet engine in meetings and in the office.

Is the CPU actually doing anything? Check `top`.  If not, you have a 
hardware issue - either a loose fan/heatsink, or a very very 
dust-clogged fan. If so, then kill the process.

That said, 70 C isn't that bad for a CPU - it's too hot for your knee, 
but won't hurt the chip. So if you work on a desk, you can probably let 
it stay there.

> 
>     3. At some random interval, the keyboard decides to "forget"
>            how to use ctrl/alt/shift keys, and thus I can't function at
>            all in X. I can't open new applications, because typing in
>            them crashes the app. I can't use keyboard shortcuts, I
>            can't function in existing shells. The only way to fix that
>            is to go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard, change it to
>            something else (without typing anything, or I'll crash the
>            Keyboard applet), then change it back again. It happens a
>            few times a day, every day. VERRRRY frustrating. I don't
>            know if this is hardware-driven or some bug in Ubuntu.

That's nasty. Try a different distro, with a liveCD - either an older 
Ubuntu, or Knoppix. Anything interesting in /var/log/Xorg.0.log ?


> 
>     4. X is wildly unstable. I can reproducably get GNOME + X to
>            completely crash back to a shell, recycling gdm, by simply
>            trying to run anything in Wine. Sometimes if I just leave
>            the machine idle with X running and walk away, I'll come
>            back and be at a gdm login prompt, because at some point X
>            dumped and recycled gdm again. This may be due to the
>            unstable, proprietary NVidia drivers or something else. It
>            was a huge mistake selecting NVidia as my graphics chipset
>            for a laptop in Linux.

Not as bad as ATI though!  I just stick to the VESA driver on my T60p - 
it doesn't seem to affect performance too badly. I can't do the 
dual-screen thing, but I do get full 1600x1200 resolution on the 
internal monitor, and application performance is fine. (No 3d 
screensaver though).

On the upside, at least this is a repeatable crash. You might be able to 
  narrow down the cause.  (Also, won't be too long before the renouveau 
people finish, I hope!)

> 
>     5. Wireless is only enabled via shell scripts. NetworkManager
>            in Ubuntu does absolutely nothing, except take up
>            resources. In Gutsy on my T42p, wpa_supplicant would start
>            at boot time, read its config, and wireless would be
>            enabled without logging in. With Hardy + NetworkManager, I
>            have to physically log into the machine, open a shell, run
>            a script to start wireless (basically modprobe, iwconfig,
>            ifconfig commands), and then it starts.
> 
>            That isn't a Lenovo issue, of course. It's an Ubuntu issue.
>            With each new Ubuntu release, more features are removed in
>            favor of replacing them with broken applications which
>            serve no logical purpose. Gutsy had no need for
>            Network Manager and networking worked flawlessly there.
> 

Hardy hasn't been released yet. That sounds like a good case to file a 
bug report. Incidentally, Mandriva is seriously re-gaining ground vs Ubuntu.

> I'm about to give up 14+ years of working with and developing on Linux 
> because it seems that with each new year, it gets more and more 
> unstable, more and more things cease functioning, and I spend more time 
> fighting the configuration of my own environment than using it to 
> increase my productivity.


I do sympathise. But try Vista for a week, and you'll want to run back 
to Linux ;-)


> 
> I'm probably going to just cut bait and buy a Mac soon. At least I can 
> still run all of my FLOSS packages there, and not ever have to worry 
> about the hardware or functioning drivers/support.
> 

I think Lenovo are in a big mess right now, and I hope they emerge from 
it. However, the Macs have their own problems, and I know quite a lot of 
people who have had mac-hardware issues.


Best wishes,

Richard