[ltp] More war stories about Lenovo build quality

Donald P Kong linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:14:58 +0800


On Sun, 2008-03-30 at 12:01 +0200,
linux-thinkpad-request@linux-thinkpad.org wrote:
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:41:03 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "David A. Desrosiers" <desrod@gnu-designs.com>
> To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
> Subject: [ltp] More war stories about Lenovo build quality
> Reply-To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
> 
> 
> I've had my shiny new Thinkpads (T61p/X61s) for 2-3 weeks now, and 
> they're already going back to the depot for repair/replacement. I'm 
> shocked and dismayed at the horrible build quality of these units.
> 

i have a 4 month old X61 bought in Canada but used in Malaysia. my only
gripe is "Worldwide Warranty *" doesn't apply to Malaysia. guess i
should have read what the * actually stood for.

also, i am using Debian Lenny now. 2.6.24 kernel just moved in last 2
days and is much better than 2.6.22

> <rant state="begin">
> 
> The issues with the X61s so far are:
> 
>  	1. Loose/floppy screen and hinge. I can pick up the laptop
>             gently from the base, and the LCD will slowly lean back and
>             flop over. If the LCD is anything but perfectly 90-degrees,
>             it will either slowly close itself, or slowly lean
>             backwards until it is horizontal with the table surface.
> 

here, it's just nice. stays where it should and no extra force needed to
pry it open.

>  	2. Fingerprint reader overheats and stops working (and because
>             of that issue, I can no longer log into the machine _at
>             all_, because it deleted the stored fingerprint data, which
>             confuses the ThinkVantage Access Connections app, and forbids
>             me from re-enrolling my fingerprints. I literally log in
>             with a password, and it immediately logs me back out, even in
>             Safe Mode). GRRR! Now I can't use it to work at all.
> 

the area around the fingerprint area does get warmer than any other
place on the palmrest. i use "iwconfig wlan0 txpower " to reduce the
radio power and it helps to reduce the temperature so i believe the heat
is more from the wireless NIC. i believe thinkfinger only initialises
the usb reader when needed (from looking in dmesg).

>  	3. The LCD currently has 3 bad pixels, up from 1 bad pixel a
>             few days ago. When it was new, there were zero bad pixels.
> 

touch wood, no noticeable bad pixels yet

>  	4. The battery life with the new battery (FRU/42T5247) using
>             "Maximum Battery" strategy in WinXP is 45 minutes, tops.
> 

standard 8 cell with this laptop gives 6 hours according to gnome power
manager. i haven't really timed it till it blacks out. the remaining
time shown seems to be consistent as time passes so i believe it will
give the 6 hours and a little more if i rmmod the un-needed modules like
firewire, ethernet and pcmcia

>  	5. The external wireless switch is loose, and tipping the
>             laptop will engage/disengage the switch all the time. While
>             on the train, the switch vibrates itself to the Off position
>             dropping my VPN connection constantly. I've had to tape it in
>             place to keep it from moving.
> 

the switch doesn't have a good feel. some improvement needed but it not
as bad as yours.


> I can't believe for laptops that are barely a month old, I've already 
> run into this many problems with it.
> 

or maybe it's just your batch is bad??

> The T61p has its own share of issues, many of which are due to moving 
> to the latest Ubuntu on the machine. I require the latest 
> bleeding-edge distro, so I can test my FLOSS code against it, before 
> distribution packagers go shipping broken packages that contain my 
> code to thousands of users.
> 
> The major outstanding issues with that are:
> 
>  	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.

i used Gutsy before moving to Debian. no heat problems. not aware of the
cleartext password issues.

>  	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.
> 

mine runs around 44 C and ambient room temps are about 30 C

>  	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.
> 

never had keyboard issues with Debian or Ubuntu.

>  	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.
> 

my X61 is using intel graphics so no issues here after some workarounds
for video etc. openGL doesn't work very well with GoogleEarth though.

>  	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
>             NetworkManager and networking worked flawlessly there.
> 

as another post mentioned, i fixed this issue with network-manager by
downgrading to "stable" version of network-manager. it can also be fixed
by installing custom debs which fix some issues with glib-2

> 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'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.
> 
> </rant state="end">
> 

overall, i am happy with Debian Lenny on this laptop. fixed the
brightness control buttons, external VGA switching and
wireless/bluetooth Fn buttons by modifying scripts in /etc/acpi and
suspend/hibernate works well too.

-- 

-------%%@

Donald P Kong
+6019-887-7337
+6016-809-7227

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