First Experience with Lenovo Warranty Service...

After hearing some of the stories on here about getting warranty repair done, I decided to take the plunge and took warranty claims out on my X200(inverter issues) and my T400(misaligned Thinklight).

I'm from the US and got connected to the Atlanta, GA service center almost immediately. I wasn't put on hold at all, and the gentleman that answered was very clear, concise, friendly, and by the rules. This is miles ahead of the support I was expecting, and I admittedly set my bar kinda high. I now have boxes on the way to get both my systems' issues fixed, and hopefully will be able to get this resolved without any fuss or hassle on my part.

The only bad part is that these are my only working computers at the moment, and will likely have to do all my Internet use on my iTouch(blech). If I'm lucky I can get my T21 re-OSed and somehow connected to the Net at my house, at least. Looks like my old standby workhorse might be brought out of retirement one last time.

 

Or, you could just run the T21 off a Linux LiveCD or flash drive for internet access. It won't save any settings changes once you shut down (so, don't shut down.) It's fairly easy to put the LiveCD (Ubuntu and others) on a flash drive and boot from that. Your original hard drive OS on the T21 won't be touched. Linux works great on older ThinkPads (as well as new ones). If the T21 won't boot from a USB port, just download the free LiveCD and burn it to a blank CD and boot from that.

 

Kind of like every bad cop action movie I've ever seen, no?

 

Interesting. However, as the T21 is pretty ancient hardware(800Mhz P3, one USB 1.1 port, etc) and it has a problem with always ejecting the optical drive I might have some problems. I'm definitely going to see what I can do with it, though. Worst case scenario is that I grab an extra PATA drive I have hanging around and throw a distro on it, though. I do definitely like your idea as it would give me the chance to do some playing around with Linux, though.

 

Haha... that's exactly what I thought. That box has seen and survived just about everything I've ever thrown at it, from getting flung off a desk by a rambunctious cat, being used as a rudimentary MP3 player in an old car of mine, an angry ex(don't ask), and taking a spill on a gravel driveway on a trip to Louisiana years ago. It's definitely got the action hero pedigree, I think.

 

Do your T21 now wear a moustache?

You said it always ejects the optical drive - that's just because it can't play by your rules!

 

If you're unfamiliar with Linux, either Linux Mint or Ubuntu are good distros to start with. The latest versions of these are very easy to use, even for newcomers to Linux. Firefox is built in, as is lots of other software. And for Internet use Linux is great because it's practically impervious to malware (99.9% of all malware is written to attack Windows computers). If I feel like doing some reckless web-surfing, I always use Linux for that to avoid infections. This allows me to use Windows without any anti-virus software taking up CPU cycles and memory. (I loathe Norton Internet Security -- what a resource hog it is.)

 

Interesting... which of those distros would you recommend to run on older hardware such as this? I'm pretty sure I need something pretty stripped-down... my T21 wouldn't even run the original Half-Life fluently, and only has an 8MB video card on it. It did run Win2K without a hitch but struggled a bit with WinXP.

 

I can see it now, the T21's sitting on the fishing boat, about to set off on the long put off trip

The police cruiser pulls up. The T21's former boss gets out and says "We got a tough case. No one else can handle it".

The T21 replies "but, I'm retired."

The captain replies "There's kids involved".

"Dammit"

 

That's gold right there.

"Crap, not another week of bad coffee and stakeouts, again..."

 

Most of the major distros will run just fine on older hardware, Linux is famous for keeping the old dogs alive and barking. It won't cost you anything to try any of them.... but I think Ubuntu would be a good starting point. That one is known for having good driver support and that's one reason it's the most popular.
There are hundreds of distros -- check the link below to browse a few:

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

Scroll down to see a list ranking on the right of the most popular distros. Avoid OpenSuse and Fedora for now. Puppy Linux is very small and lightweight, that might be a good starting point. It's designed to be run as a live-cd or from a flash drive. You can install it to a hard drive but it's a somewhat confusing process (at least it was for me). I haven't used it in a while but I can tell you it's very fast. It's loads itself entirely into RAM. No drive accesses except to save files.

If you get Ubuntu, you want the "Desktop" edition. Not netbook or server. Desktop covers laptops too. Netbook edition is design for netbooks (with the 1024x600 resolution).

 

Okay... quick update on my warranty repairs:

Boxes were overnighted to me, and I sent out my machines yesterday. My X200 is already on its way back to me, and my T400 is still being repaired. Is this typical?

 

I would suggest Ubuntu on a USB stick as well. Works very well and boots quickly even on a fairly old ThinkPad.

I use that combo when I occassionaly sell second hand ThinkPads without OS. This allows the prospect buyer to check vital signs of hardware components and relieves me of having to image or install Windows and different drivers depending on ThinkPad model.

 

Okay... all kidding and talk about my T21 aside, here's what happened:

Both my T400 and X200 were repaired the same day I sent them in.

X200: Sent in to replace the LCD inverter as it was buzzing. I pulled it out of the box and fired it up. The LCD buzz was still there. I did notice, however, that the techs had replaced the motherboard for some strange reason. Don't ask me why.

T400: Sent in to see if they could realign the ThinkLight, as it was utterly useless as it was. It came back and I initially couldn't see where they even touched it(except to load WinXP(?) on the blank drive I had provided). However, after close examination I can see that they replaced the keyboard. The keyboard is now 100% better than it used to be and is just about completely solid. However, the Thinklight issue wasn't improved as far as I can tell. However, I am completely pleased at how nice the keyboard is.
Strange, no?

 

The strange thing with Depot repair, is that sometimes you ask them to repair a problem, they would send it back not touching anything. While other times they would go off at a tangent and replace every piece of hardware in the laptop, when you did not even ask them to do it.

The T400 thinklight is pretty bad, the opening for which the light shines through is not one of the best design i have seen (probably one of the worst).