ThinkPads are so Tough? Anyone have this happen?

Wow that is crazy, what type of plastics are they using now? Doesnt look like the type used on T500 or even a T510. I never seen a crack develop like that on a Thinkpad.

 

I once had a nasty crack in the plastic lid of a Dell Inspiron (c. 2002 model IIRC) just above the hinge and outside the warranty. My fix was to drill small holes (1/16") each side of the crack, bend bits of paperclip into U shapes to go into the holes each side of the crack, mix up some epoxy resin and put into the crack and the holes, push in the bent paper clips and then smother the area with more epoxy. Not very beautiful (but I painted it black so it didn't show so much) but very effective. If it's just hairline cracks then I would first try superglue but under a load-bearing situation the steel-reinforced epoxy works very well.

John

 

My wife's W510 got a very similar crack. Unfortunately, it seems like either Lenovo is using cheap plastic or it's a design flaw.

 

Interesting. This is my 6th T-series, and I don't recall seeing such a crack before. The foremost reason I plonk down the extra couple hundred bucks for a T-series is to get better quality build and plastics. I just had a look, comparing the top bezel on a T42 and my new T520 that cracked - can't tell any difference under magnification, but perhaps that's a worthless test.

 

My W510 had the touchpad replaced by onsite support under warranty, and the guy that did it over tightened a screw. A few days later I notices the development of a stress crack in the palm rest. Could it be that something similar happened here?

Side Note: Also, my wife drops her laptop from the bedside to the floor about twice a week (3 ft drop). Were it anything but a ThinkPad I fear we would have been shopping by now. "It just slipped she says..." SMH! I'm not sure what sorts of torture it sees when it's out of my field of view and ear shot!

 

Never had cracks on my T61 which was purchased back in fall of 2007, once at sea during hurricane season a wave hit the ship and my Thinkpad flew 20 feet into the air and landed on the steel floor(surprisingly no damage). Ended up ordering a spare T61(off-lease) from NewEgg as the T6x are the closest to a poor-mans Panasonic Toughbook without breaking the wallet... they're great for usage atop mountains & at sea

I can say I've noticed once Lenovo shifted to 16:9 screens, demo T420/T420s/T520 units I've seen at authorized dealers suffer varying degrees of flex/creaking at the wrist/fingerprint scanner area and you can get a bit of a screen ripple effect from light tapping on the edge sides of the screen(on the T420s). Maybe there is a possibility suppliers for Lenovo are allowing QA to slip.
As far as anyone who considers jumping ship to Dell or HP, Dell is hit & miss with good series of Latitudes and HP support/self-repair service is a royal pain in the rear. My dad had his HDD fail in a HP, instructions fold out in the service part box wasn't for his model so I had to go online for the repair manual on my notebook.

Look at the bright side of Thinkpads they're easier to self-service, the worst notebook I've had was two Aluminum PowerBook G4s... 100 screws and a near tear-apart effort to reach the bloody HDD/ODD *Howard Dean scream*

 

Sometimes you get lucky.

 

@rkj__

I had the exact same thing happening on my X200T (after about a year oh heavy usage however). I glued it back with superglue so no big deal. But yeah kind of disappointing.

 

same thing happened to my X200T, I just ripped the plastic off and threw it away because it was in the way.