The Delay Game and My Plans for a w510

Ok, first time direct Thinkpad purchaser here. I have 'owned' 2 in the past, through employers, but have now pulled the trigger on one for myself. I used the excuse of building credit to justify spending $2k on a 'toy' when I already have a working computer. Anyways, I'm coming from a p4 laptop (Alienware, obituary here: Hardware/Boatanchor - by me, about me ), so I opted for the 820QM, figuring they'd be comparable... haha.

I do a lot of dev work, mostly android kernel and general wifi drivers, so it was actually a justified purchase (over getting a netbook).

Anyways, I got the free touchscreen, color sensor, fingerprint reader, etc, etc. All the add-ons, with the base HDD and ram. I have sitting here 16GB of Corsair 1333 DDR3 and a 128GB SSD, as well as a Unltrabay HDD adapter. My basic plan is to immediately shrink windows 7 to 100GiB, take the other 220GiB split it 120/100 formatted EXT4 and vFAT. Move that to the Ultrabay, install the SSD in it's place, and boot into my happy linux install. Gonna do an 4GB ramdisk, for my scratch space. I plan on making the ultrabay permanent and using a USB or esata CDROM. Everything is peachy so far... I think, anyone have any pointers on other things I should consider tweaking?

onto the delay game...

So I ordered it a week or so ago, with an initial listing of the 29th for shipping, the next day it was bumped to the 30th, and now it lists 2/9. I ended up waiting almost 3 months for my Alienware to ship, and am curious... does Lenovo do a kick- job in fulfillment, or am I likely to be waiting until the next presidency for this boy?

Still haven't figured out a name for her. My current systems are Bigiron (server), doorstop(mythbox), and boatanchor (laptop). Was thinking of trying to stick with the inanimate object approach, maybe swissknife... still got a ways to go on the most important topic.

 

This time last year was a 2-3 month wait for the FHD screens as I recall, but I haven't seen many complaints lately.

 

I figured that there'd be something like that. I actually 'leveraged' my finances a little to make sure I got the order in very early in the tax season, hoping to beat the rebate rush. Is there any way to find out what the actual wait is?

 

I can tell you that I am waiting on a W510 and there is a delay with the non-touch FHD screen availability. I thought it was the 920XM portion of my order, but was told yesterday by a person at Lenovo (not just customer service) that they are having supply problems with the non-touch FHD screens - hence why they were giving the Multi-touch screens away the last few weeks at no up-charge.

 

Want to play the cross reference game? I'll provide my config, you subtract off everything we don't have in common, then re-post it. With enough prospective orders, we might be able to deduce the supply issue!

Code:

1 	4318CTO 	THINKPAD W510 
1 	60Y6083 	SBB INQUADCORPERFPROC I7 820QM
1 	45M3090 	VBB GENUWIN7PROFES.64
1 	45M4918 	SBB G.WIN.7PROF64US ENGLISH 	
1 	45M4597 	SBB 15.6FHDDPY95%GMWLDBLT+MTTS
1 	60Y6084 	SBB NVFX880M.1GBDDR3W/INAMTCH 
1 	75Y0175 	VBB COLORSENSOR
1 	45M4572 	VBB 4GBPC3-10600DDR3 1333SODMM
1 	45M4839 	SBB KEYBOARDUS ENGLISH
1 	75Y0171 	VBB ULNAVTRPOITOUPADFINGREADER
1 	45M4631 	SBB CAMERA(2.0 MP)
1 	45M4617 	SBB 320GB H.DISKDRIVE7200RPM 
1 	45M4608 	SBB MULT.RECORD.OPTDRIVE12.7MM
1 	75Y0174 	VBB EXPCARSL+5IN1CARREAD
1 	45M4816 	SBB 9CELLLI-ION BATTERY
1 	45M4636 	SBB CNTPKNRHAMWTLNCR+135WACAD. 
1 	45M3043 	SBB BLUETOOTH W/ANTENNA 
1 	45M4805 	SBB IN.CENTADV.-N+WIMAX 6250
1 	45M4809 	SBB IN.MOB.BROAD.(3G)-QUALCOM
1 	44C7986 	SBB SIM CRD ATNT: USA
1 	45M4676 	SBB LANGUAGEPACK US ENGLISH

 

That is interesting that you have the Multi-touch screen. I was told by IBM and Lenovo that my issue for still not receiving my new W510 was the FHD screen supply issue. They even put in a rush request to no avail.

 

Well, my delay is 'only' 10 days over the initial estimate right now.... perhaps it's some other component holding mine up, or the FHD displays came in, and they're putting the queued up orders in front of mine (s, mine should be top priority, haha).

 

Well, still '11 days' until it ships, no new delays. Anyone have any experiences with when delays are updated? Do they usually list their best knowledge, or is this going to be like my Alienware experience where I just get a generic extension period based on hand waving and dark incantations?

 

Well, got shipping notification today, should have tracking info tomorrow. I'm guessing the poorly laid out order status page that shows a date is actually the forecasted delivery date.