Service needed after 1year - poll

Just to get a sense of this:
How many of you did to have your Lenovo serviced afer 1 year of usage?

I know in theory laptops usually break within the first year but really I'd be interested in what the empirical experience is. How many of you regreted not having bought a 2-year or even 3-year warranty?

 

I sent my T40 to IBM during the 3rd year after GPU failed (common problem on the T4x). I was very glad that 3 year warranties were standard issue on ThinkPads at that time (the T40 still works fine 4 years after being fixed and is in the service of a friend).

The limited service I've required on my x200 Tablet has been in the form of them sending me parts rather than sending the machine in. However, I'm still glad I opted for the 3 year warranty. Just one note "consumable devices" (e.g. batteries, tablet stylus, etc.) are only covered for 1 year regardless of the warranty term.

 

After a year and three months of daily usage, my T500 is still going strong. Aside from the rubbed-off corners on the lid and the slightly shiny keys on the keyboard (despite my weekly cleaning), it could be brand new. Never had to send it in to Lenovo support, and never had to even give them a call.

 

Placing my laptop near the windows was a bad idea and definitely caused my fan to become lowder over time. Other than that, nothing.

 

Interesting..thanks for all the replies. I am really curious if we can get at least a sample of 20-30 votes to shed some light on this. Probably it won't be too representative given all the various models still this is something I've not seen come up in a poll format on this forum yet.

 

In my experience if something's faulty it shows up fairly soon, but if something breaks after the first year, it will be very expensive to replace. Other variables come into play like how long you plan to keep your notebook. If its three four years if you average out the cost of the warranty, it's like $30 bucks a year. Or perhaps if you feel your particularly accident prone, the additional warraty may be advisable. Some Credit Cards extend the warranty an additional year at no charge. You might want to look into it. That'd give you two years of warranty and by the third year you want a new one anyway.

 

I've had my T400 since September of 08 and it has been rock solid. Only called support to get a new keyboard (to replace the swiss cheese one). I also had to replace my Keyboard bezel this past December due to a hairline crack above the escape key, not too big of a deal though. I did this out of my own pocket since I was out of warranty but it was only 20 dollars new on ebay.

My T42 is still kicking strong, no service requests or replacement parts ordered. My brother in law is currently using it for school.

My parents own a T60, and besides the battery recall they haven't had any issues and no support calls.

 

Which model Thinkpad are you referring to?

So far the T60/T61/T400 have been aces for me (where I work). We've had some issues (like a user breaking the LCD screen), and a few of the first T400's we got in had flakey HD's, but other than that they've been rock solid.

The flakey HD's were resolved with a firmware update for the most part (only had two out of 20 T400's that needed to have the drives outright replaced).

Going back in time, we had some issues with the T4x series. The main thing that would go wonky after a year was the onboard sound. That was usually because we'd have a dumb user who would walk around with the thing on and carrying it by the left palm rest. It'd flex the systemboard and eventually break the solder connections on the sound chip.

Had a few flakey T30's too (that infamous bad DIMM socket problem).

Otherwise, I've been very impressed with IBM/Lenovo.

 

My x200 had to have the motherboard replaced after just over a year. My wired ethernet stopped functioning. I use it actively on the go each day and dock and undock repeatedly.

I have a 3 year warranty.

 

usually by third year i would need to get the fan changed out, since it is running all day.

 

Knock on wood, I've had my T61 for over two years now, and she's been absolutely flawless. Still runs like new. My X301 (even though I only use it once in awhile) has been excellent as well, and that machine is about 3-4 months old.

 

Cool we got the ball going here.
Zaz,in regards to the credit card where would you look it up ? that's an interesting idea.
Lo ong- you replace the fan after 3 years. Do you just buy a new one or get one from Lenovo as part of the warranty deal? I wonder how would you explain to them that your fan is running all the time and needs replacement?

 

Read your credit card rewards or coverage protection fine print.

 

I have an AE card, which automatically does the one year extension. I think some other cards have offer it as well. Maybe you want to call your CC company and ask about it. Please note that AE doesn't offer the extension on refurbed items. Anything purchased from the outlet will not get the extension, but it's really slim pickings at the outlet right now.

 

I've had my T500 for over a year and it's been working flawlessly. Put it side by side with a brand new T500 and I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. As for my X61 Tablet, I've had it for about nine months and it's also running like a champ. Granted, I haven't had either for very long, but so far so good!

 

i started this site also because I've had recently quite the disappointing experience with 400s. When I got it I noticed that the unit was producing a high-pitched noise coming through the speakers (one could hear it e.g. when browsing the web). I send the unit for repair, 1 week after I had it, and they replaced the speakers. The noise was still there - I realized it was related to my CPU - if it was on full performance it would be more audible, if I configured my unit to minimal perormance it would disappear. Eventually i talked to Lenovo and made them take the whole unit back from me. I hope that my new 410s won't have the same problem.

 

CPU whine has been an issue with intel chips for a while now. Though apparently the implementation of how the motherboards are designed affects this as well. I doubt you will find a unit that is completely absolved of this issue. Put the unit on adaptive next time so that it ramps up the frequency when it needs to.

 

Jaredy,
yeah I've also read about this on a few forums, including this one. there was even a term developed for this: piezo electronic noise..or something to that effect. The problem with my 400s was that the CPU whine was getting progressively worse - at least that's how it felt. Strangely enough though some people say that their computers (by that I mean 400s) are completely silent - now either they don't pay attention to the sounds and I am an obssesive freak or my unit had it more pronounced. I really hope that 410s will do better in this respect. But by the response from Lenovo, I guess they are aware of it and if customers complain, they don't fight them: basically it didn't take much effort to tell the representatives that I want a full refund for my unit..it was 21 days after it arrived (I didn't have time to deal with the problem earlier) - I spoke to a technician in Atlanta and a sales representative somewhere else at the same time..the sales guy just listened for 3 minutes to our conversation..the technician in Atlanta was making me try to play with sound controls...etc. after 1 minutes I lost my patience and told he that the problem is related to CPU usage (if you turn on Automatic Power management in BIOS you reduce the CPU noise by quite a bit; the same applies when you play with performance settings once the whole OS is up)...she didn't say much after this, and the sales representatives took it from there...he said no problem: you'll get full refund.

Btw. I am really not sure what's worse: calling support centers in India (which I had plenty of experience before)..or talking to people in Atlanta...in fact I had very mixed experiences with call centers in India - great and bad.

 

I had my T410 for over a week and I had 3 keyboards replaced and sent in for a speaker replacement. I sent it back for a full refund. I guess it was bad luck