Should I buy a lenovo?

I'm going to be buying a laptop in the range of $1,800 in the next month and really like the T61 design. However, I have read a lot of bad stuff about the service from these people. I was wondering if this is the exception to the rule? I would hate to be in the position of just putting down all that money and having to wait on the phone endlessly with a bunch of morons when all I would want is my laptop to work. Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

I think that any computer company service will put you on hold for a while. I had a dell and there service was the worse. I called Lenovo once and they were pretty good

 

As gamemint has already pointed out, by choosing a mainstream company (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) you run the risk that when you call for service, you will experience bad service. My advice to you is to just buy whichever notebook suits you best and when you call in for service, be courteous and things should be OK. If not, just ask for the supervisor.

Personally, I've had nothing but great service from Lenovo. But then again, I've had great service with all the computer companies I've associated with.

 

lucky you lol

 

It's not just luck. As he said, it's in the way you approach these company. You always talk to a human being, not a company in the end. Some people have problems and bad experiences with customer service... and sometimes they are partially responsible for their bad fortune...

There are standard, official ways to discuss with a company and if you go in logical order in your steps to get your issue resolved, it should be fine.

As it has been said, buy based on the specifications of the machine you need, regardless of the brand. Then, once you have a few candidate brands and models narrowed down, then you can filter based on your preferred company... but IMO, this is pretty much a wild guess as all known brand are offering more or less the same thing. I.e., you cannot tell if company X or Y is better as it is always based on personal opinions from people on forums etc. Even if you had a bad or good experience with a given company, this is way too small of a sample to conclude / generalize.

I find it sad to see forum posts in the style « I will never buy from company X again » as these tarnish a company reputation and are again, only a SINGLE person’s opinion / experience over hundreds of thousands customers of that same company.

Just don’t get overwhelmed / scared away with such forum posts. I LOVE my ThinkPad and if I get issues with it, I'll do what it takes to get the problem solved. I'm not going to waste my time posting thousands of posts on here, I will talk with the comapny itself and take action that counts.

 

Yes you should.

 

Should you?

Because I, or anyone else here thinks you should, doesn't mean it would be the best for you.

If you are going to abuse it by using it, taking it everywhere with you, and need reliability, and like the design to top it off, Yes I think it's okay.

I used to be a thinkpad fanatic, having purchased 4 in the last few years, but I am through with them. I think their price premium goes into the reliability of the chasis, nice keyboard, nice mouse buttons. But one thing I cannot get over is the utter horrid quality you get in their LCD's. They are disturbingly, for me, unclear, have terrible viewing angles, and washed out colors. That, and their one recent order mess up, which put me on over 14 hours of phone time with their ball handling me to different departments, led me to say I'm Through.

 

I did a lot of research (and I mean a lot, like, I have a problem), and hemmed and hawwed, was about to purchase an M1530 - that day, that hour, all set, until I read a comparison on the T61, and I changed my order to a completely different company. By the way, I had excellent service with Dell, and only had to get ugly one time because it was a post-warranty (by 6 days) exploding brick. And, the current machine I have has lasted me faithfully without a single upgrade 6 and a half years. Just recently I completely reformatted the drive.

For me, my important element with my new machine was price - I needed to keep it below $1,200.00. So I configured machines up the wazu (because I am spoiled and I want the best of everything or second best, i.e., upgraded screen, processor) and found that the Thinkpad, though not as pretty, had the greatest bang for my buck and, based on many reports here, was durable and well made. I agree 100% with marcbe, configure what you like, then see. This is what I did with HP (a pretty good deal there), Dell, and Lenovo.

Best of luck - it's a tough decision!

 

Thanks for all the feedback. I was mostly getting cold feet from horror stories that I've read around the net - here included. I know I'll end up getting a T61 because I like them so much.

 

I'm definitely going to need to look at this before I buy. I had a thinkpad from 95 or so and the LCD was sucky, but I attributed that to it being so old. Hopefully they are better.

 

It appears that you are suspicious of companies, and you want quality to be as good as possible. If you have the technical savvy why not build a whitebook? Retailers sell Compal whitebooks over the internet. That way, you can give the notebook the tender love and care it deserves, and if something goes wrong, its all your fault

However it is cheaper and it sounds like you have the money to burn but maybe not the time. But configured to orders always take a long time to arrive anyways...

 

I agree the screen on my T61 4:3 screen looks dimmer than on my old Thoshiba, but it is not that bad IMO. The screen resolution and color quality is better than the Thoshiba. I would not say these screens are "horrid" They are not necessarily the most recent technology wise but are good and strong. It’s like my SONY home theatre amp. It doesn’t provide the loudest output, but this is purposely made to keep harmonic distortion low... Often, higher-end quality components (I’m not implying SONY is high-end here ) are more conservative in raw performance to provide more stable performance. They are made to be rough and heavy duty. I think the new rumoured Thinkpads will see a major refresh in screen performance. If you are not in a hurry and are concerned about screen max brightness, I would wait for the new models this summer before making a decision. The current price aren’t as good either so it can pay to wait.

The problem with the ThinkPad line I feel is that they were initially made for a totally different crowd (the business man market). Now that they lowered their price to a consumer level, they face a new reality dealing with customers that are way pickier (teenagers who want to play games instead of doing spread sheet all day, etc). That is also a bit why we may see more problems with Lenovo customer support these past days. They have to readapt to this new type of customers and will have to change their thinking a bit. DELL on the other hand is attacking the hard core gamer market right from the start so they offer warranties and support in a totally different way... They were prepared for this and knowing what they were getting into. So DELL will exchange your laptop for a few dead pixels four times if you complain, without asking questions. Lenovo are not used to that. That is really how it feels when you contact their support. They expect business men people which are much less demanding but are serious in their demand and need to do mission critical jobs. If you contact them in an immature teenager tone, I bet you will face hard times getting good support.

 

Dealing with a different customer base is part of the problem Lenovo has, but not the only one. Lenovo has excellent products but its business process seems immature still.

The screens are not top-tier but they are definitely acceptable. You get used to it

 

Here is something to help you with your screen questions as well:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=232615

and very well said marcbe. a point for you.

 

Wow, you guys are amazing. I certainly didn't expect this kind of quality feedback when I posted this morning. I thank each and every one of you. The pictures were great and the history lesson was very descriptive and fun to read.

I'm mostly just buying this laptop so that I can write software in different areas of the house: my lazboy, sprawled out on the floor, or wherever. I'll also play some EverQuest from time to time on it. I'm colorblind, so the colors don't have to be perfect. Just as long as the picture is crisp and clear I'll be happy.

I stumbled on this site today using Google. It's a pleasure to meet all of you.

 

I love Ibm/Lenovo's.They reek of quality and exude an overall style all their own. Once you own one,it will be hard to use any other on a daily basis.

 

I'm still an "early Lenovo / ThinkPad" adopter, but really, these laptops are just great. They are really a different kind of laptop. They feel more "professional minded" if I can say it that way. My Thosiba was ok, but it was really a consumer laptop. Most consumer laptops are more aimed at strong multimedia performances. The ThinkPad aim is different. They are built for professional and feel strong and reliable. I would not recommend ThinkPads for someone who wants to do lots of multimedia (video watching or gamming). It will do it, but it's not its real intent. As a proof, you will not find any S-Video / DVI or whatever multimedia output plug on these. The ThinkPad also have a weaker speaker sub-system built-in. So you clearly see when you have one in hands that it's made to do serious work. If you plan on coding, this is a great machine. Put a T9x00 CPU inside and you'll be amazed how smooth and fast it can be.

Don't get me wrong here, when I say it's not a multimedia machine, I'm not referring to video editing etc. I encode DVDs on this laptop and it is very fast. Same for doing heavy photoshopping or even 3D CAD work. With an NVidia card, these things are real performers. With NVidia aboard, you can also do fairly decent gaming in-between your work sessions. Overall, the ThinkPads are very polyvalent machines.

Oh and I should add, if things keep going that smooth, my next laptop will be a ThinkPad for sure. I'm sold.