[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
http://nanasbarat.dyndns.org
http://www.foss-solutions.com
http://www.kuchingosc.org