Lenovo Quality and support

Guys, I almost never heard of lenovo brand before, but I would like to know how is the build quality of the product? Is it well built in term of material and hardware?

lastly, how good are ther support?

Thanks
Bryan

 

Which country do you reside in? and which specific Lenovo product are you interested in? Thinkpad classic or Ideapad?

 

In the UK, looking at the Thinkpad. Im looking something that can go a little gaming and photoshop. could you recommend me one?

 

So you are looking for a current model? what sort of screen size factors are you after?

T410 should fit your bill.

It has a magnesium rollcage in the screen and the bottom of the laptop chassis.

Build quality is extremely good, warranty support on most occasions are okay, as the warranty phone support is done through IBM service.

 

The build quality of Lenovo ThinkPad are usually very strong and robust, primarily they're business machines so the materials used are designed to withstand bumps and knocks that will typically knock out the wind of consumer grade laptops that you normally see on computer stores such as PC World and Comet in the UK (ironically they don't sell Thinkpads there). Thinkpads have a good reputation for reliability since its inception from 1992 when IBM was at the helm, Lenovo only just carried on the series from 2005 but the traits are still there.

Customer support wise Lenovo has been one of the better PC brands for customer support and satisfaction from recent reports. It's good to know that if something do go wrong that at least you know that someone is there too support you unlike some companies (I heard Acer support in the UK is pretty much none existant).

 

The Thinkpad (T61p) is the second laptop I have owned, and it is much better than my first (a consumer grade Toshiba laptop). The fan is very quiet, something I totally cannot say about my prior Toshiba. It also runs at a pretty cool temperature, which did not happen with my old Toshiba as well. I've even dropped this thing on the sidewalk once (although in a sleeve) and there have been no problems at all with its function.

As far as support goes, it has been good from my experience. I couldn't get the recovery DVD burning software to work and they sent me a set via 2nd day air no charge. On-site repair technicians can be an adventure though, but I guess that depends on who they get to do the work. I've had one tech crack the front casing before when replacing a fan, but a different person came by to fix it.

 

Quality and Support are degrading [slowly but surely], but they still are above ones for mainstream series. You can look at the HP Pro laptops if you want, they are similar to thinkpads, but don't expect the support to be better or worst than Lenovo.

 

Bear in mind that the video options in the current ThinkPad range is really geared toward business users and not toward gamers. You may end up pretty disappointed with the 3D performance.

 

You can go for a W510 which has a pretty solid configuration at least compared to the W500 which had a weak FireGL equivalent to the HD 3650, not very strong even for that time.

 

Got any evidence to back that up, other than your own observations? While you may have had a bad experience or you may have heard seen about some, that does necessarily make a trend.

 

Well, there is this, which was a bit troubling to read: http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-survey-asus-and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/

This is one of the reasons I decided to extend my warranty. That said, this is one survey from a potentially biased source and should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

The phone support is the same, the depot support in Melbourne isn't up to scratch from my personal experience, since moving from Flextronics to Bytecraft.