[ltp] Re: lenovo support for linux

[Karel Podvolecky]

Florian Manschwetus napsal(a):
> Am 04.08.2009 17:13, schrieb Shannon McMackin:
>> Florian Manschwetus wrote:
>>> Today I've had a call from Peter Reinhart (Lenovo Germany)
>>> He told me that lenovo gives absolutely NO support for linux related
>>> trouble with T60 or any other model which wasn't sold with linux
>>> preloaded. Furthermore the won't give any support for any thinkpad
>>> model used with a different OS than those available as preinstalled.
>>>
>>> Furthermore he told me that my specific t60 is still not replaced in
>>> complete, after 3 or 4 mainboard replacements, because the mainboard
>>> was replaced every time for a different reason. Now the current
>>> smaller problems will be repaired, than I could pick it up.
>>> Additionally my 3 year warranty was timed out during the time it was
>>> in repair center, waiting for a decision from lenovo, he told me that
>>> he will ask someone for some warranty extension, maybe there is a
>>> small chance.
>>>
>>> Nice outcome after four month and a lot of additional work on my side.
>>> And every time we have had progress it was based on my initiative.
>>> Yeah really that is for what I have paid 2000 euro (student promotion,
>>> no idea what the real price would have been for this one).
>>>
>>> So guys, no we are on our own, lenovo won't give us any help for
>>> problems aren't reproducible with the PRELOADED windows, yes the
>>> preloaded one this was pointed out from Peter Reinhart.
>>>
>>> One really disappointed customer,
>>> Florian
>>>
>>> p.s. currently I see now real chance to get back a trustworthy
>>> platform for further work on the sys-kernel/thinkpad-sources stuff,
>>> sorry, but until my TP runs fine again, I can't really test the patch
>>> composition, so I won't set something online.
>>>
>> Does that really surprise you?
>>
>> I don't expect any hardware vendor to offer support on an OS they didn't
>> ship pre-loaded on the machine. It's a cost factor. You may not like it,
>> but that's how it is. You can learn to mask your OS based on what you
>> say to them on the phone. This is what I've done, but all my problems
>> have been mechanical on the ThinkPads I've used.
>>
>> I work for IBM and I can't even open a ticket on a problem with my
>> ThinkPad unless it's a clear-cut hardware problem. Everything with Linux
>> is a community-based support effort just like it is out in the real
>> world. Companies can't afford to hire the skills or train their
>> employees in a support center on the variety of Linux distros out there.
>>
>> I don't know what kind of issues led to the replacement of your planar
>> every time, but it must have been drastic. Unfortunately, if it was a
>> systemic issue that wasn't easy to diagnose with Lenovo, then that's why
>> your experience was poor.
> The bad point is the fact that my T60 is one of the early ones, based
> on the CoreDuo not on the Core2Duo. It currently looks to me, that
> there are some elemental issues with the CoreDuo chipsets, just maybe
> some developer at ati or where ever even missed some special
> difference between theses two CPU generations, which are often
> mistakenly put in same bucket, despite the huge differences between them.
>
> Florian

Hi Florian,
  I have an early one too (2007-F4G), but I made some significant
upgrade (1+2 GB RAM, new HDD, new CPU t7200 from ebay) and it os working
well. From beginning I had many heat troubles. One was solved by CPU
replace (-15 degrees in max temperature). Fan noise problems were not
solved at all even after more than 4 replaces of fan. It seems that
there is something really bad in HW design of this series.
  But now it is stable and out of warranty too. I hope it will work
another 3 years before a will be fored to replace it with an 4-core
beast :). But I don't know what it will be...

Karel
>>
>> I don't like it, you don't like it and nobody likes it. It's just the
>> way it is. ThinkPads are one of the best laptops out there and if you
>> want to use Linux, you're doing a lot of self-support...
>>
>
>