thinkpad back from repair
On Tuesday my Thinkpad was taken for service to fix the problem described in this post.
The problems I described were overheating, wear on the keyboard (from a minimum of 8 hours a day 7 days a week use) and a missing rubber foot on the base. The statement of work includes a replaced system-board, keyboard, CPU fan, and "cover(s)" (not that I can see any difference in that regard). No new rubber foot. Also they upgraded the BIOS.
It's interesting to note that in the list of "diagnostics performed" they listed "HDD" - of course I removed the hard drive before giving it to them.
Anyway 2 days turn-around is pretty good service and I'll ask them to post me a new rubber foot so I can stick it on myself.
Update:
The IBM support team were quite helpful about this and now have a set of misc small parts being couriered to me - it may arrive tomorrow or Monday.
It's a minor annoyance that they didn't fix everything when they had it, but shipping me a set of small parts is great service. With a bit of luck I'll get some other parts that will be useful to me at some future time too. ;) My Thinkpad leaves warranty in a few months and I'll be on my own for all future repairs.
For the first time I am actually considering paying for extra warranty support. I think that I'm one of the more expensive IBM customers in terms of warranty support. I typically go through one keyboard and one system-board per Thinkpad that I own. I guess that IBM make the most money from managers who have laptops always sitting on their desk. People like me who take their laptops everywhere, use them extensively, and wear things out (doing what laptops are designed to do) would be less profitable.
3 comments:
"Covers" there often means the little screw covers around the edge of the screen and the base, to make everything look sleek. They replace those every time they have to take the screws off.
I actually TRIED to get my Thinkpad's X40 guarantee extended. I spent almost two working days on the phone with IBM/Lenovo in the UK.
In the end a month later (after my warranty was expired) I get an email about the right order codes, though none of their public online retailers seemed to "stock" such order codes.
Nightmare.
I have one HD replacement for my X40 and judging by the noises this replacement makes, it will require another one sooner or later.
The other issues are of course is battery. I should have got this replaced. Though I had SUCH A NIGHTMARE experience getting my HD replaced in Brazil, I thought I wouldn't go through the hassle for the battery.
Now my 1+ year old battery lasts about 30 minutes, if I am lucky.
Last time I checked the Thinkpad battery warranty was 1 year or 300 charges whichever comes first.
My experience is that is when the battery is probably going to start dying.
It's an issue of battery technology, batteries just don't last that long if fully charged and discharged. Maybe if they only took the batteriesto 90% charged and discharged them to 10% (as is apparently done with Prius batteries) then they would last longger.
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