July 2007

I know I’m in the minority here, but I’m beginning to despise ThinkPads. I’ve had such amazing trouble with these things and while IBM/Lenovo has attempted to repair them, they just keep failing in new ways. I’m not even being that hard on them, really. Every problem just feels like a manufacturing defect.

My latest problem is that my ThinkPad no longer detects that I have an extra stick of RAM in here. I upgraded from 1GB to 2GB and thinks were fine for a while until it started giving me bootup errors and failed the POST. I figured the RAM had gone bad and shelled out for another stick, which the laptop only recognizes a fraction of the time. It will take me 5 power cycles to get it to see the RAM, and that’s if I’m lucky.

Furthermore, memtest86 fails at times when probing for RAM.

Now I know I probably need the motherboard replaced, but last time I had to do that, Lenovo charged me $700 and gave me one that barely turned out. They then charged me a little bit more to get the laptop replaced altogether (which was needed since they also warped my plastic and caused other damages). They never refunded any of the money, despite their negligence.

It wasn’t that long ago that I had to send this in for a fan replacement. And after that I had to get two keyboard replacements (the first one they sent had a busted key).

Let’s see, with this problem, I’ll now have:

• 3 faulty motherboards
• 2 dead fans
• 2 broken keyboards
• 1 cracked case
• 1 damaged LCD
• 1 dead drive

I want to send this in and get it fixed, but I’m scared to death that they’re going to screw this up like last time I needed a motherboard replacement.

You listening Lenovo? Anyone want to help reaffirm my faith in your company?