Is my T61P bad?

Hello all,
After months of searching for a new laptop (my first ever) I chose the 15'' T61P. I've had it for about three weeks now and I have to say I am really unhappy, but never having owned a laptop before I don't really have an experiential frame of reference to determine if I have spent 1 1/2 grand on a dud machine, so I could use some advice.
Firstly, the boot up time is appalling. My T61p has a 2.4ghz penryn with 2ghz ram running vista home edition. It takes forever to boot, much slower than my desktop which has a 1.2 ghz P3 tualatin and not even a gig of ram!!!! Admittedly my desktop is running xp, but there are a number of system apps that launch at boot and slow it down, yet it's still up and running much faster than my supposedly quicksilver-like T61.
Problem 2 is that when I have plugged a flash drive (including a brand new corsair voyager) into two of my three usb ports it causes 'my computer' to fail, rendering the os desktop inoperable and I have to power down. Inserting a flash drive even managed to provide me with the bluescreen of death. I am not pleased about this.
Lastly, like a fool I only purchased 4 years of warranty, but not Lenovo customer assistance so they wouldn't respond to my livechat help request. Fair enough. I wonder if the machine itself is faulty or if it's vista causing the trouble? The annoying thing is, Lenovo kindly don't provide recovery discs so I can't reformat and reinstall the OS sans a lot of the rubbish that's preinstalled at the factory because I don't have a disc with the vista version that I paid for.
I apologize for the long email but this has been a very costly and unrewarding experience so far and I would be very grateful if anyone has any helpful advice or suggestions.
Cheers

 

You just got a lemon. Shoot Lenovo a call and see if they'll send you a replacement.

 

ChiRed,
I feel bad for you. It is good you have a long warranty, but don't get in touch with Lenovo yet. First thing is first. Look at the clean Vista 32/64 bit install guide written by forum member "Stallen". In this guide I think the first thing it tells you to do is to make recovery discs from your OS recovery partition. Lenovo does not include the discs, but you can make your own and keep these safely. Next, once you are done with the clean install and the OS has all the bloatware removed, start checking your hardware to make sure nothing is broken. Check you ram with memtest, then check your harddrive with checkdisk. There are also other utilities that can check various hardware.

From what you have said so far, all might not be lost just yet. Keep some patience and do the things mentioned above. The clean install might make a night and day difference for you.

 

I would ask for a refund...

 

It might just be a bloatware issue. I think the clean install is the first thing that should be looked into unless he already know for sure that this is a hardware issue.

 

I think its vista more than the laptop. Try clean installing it and see what happens.

 

You can create a backup of your OS via the ThinkVantage utility and then try doing a fresh install. Borrow a friends Vista disk if you don't have one. It's legal as long as you have the key, which you obviously do on the COA on the bottom of your T61p.

 

I'll try and burn a copy of the thinkvantage utility and do a fresh install. Hope this works!
Thank you all so much for your help

 

Make sure to do a clean install and not a restore.

Also try running the computer a while without loading ANY of the thinkvantage software. I have had more issues with that stuff!!!
Lenovo drivers are necessary, but do not load anything else unless you absolutely cannot live without it, Windows can handle most of the stuff thinkvantage does.

I now have a stable computer after avoiding Lenovo software.

 

My friend, from your words I need say slow boot and usb prob are all related to vista. Try a lean install, that will work for you.
Good luck.