Too little, too late
Eventually I got a call from their customer relations manager Greg Brewer who told me that their engineering team determined it was a problem with the wireless card in the laptop. This much, even I knew - Heck, I was the one who told them about it in the first place; they didn't even know what to test before I told them to test out the wireless and sound card option. Hence they would send out a wireless card replacement for my laptop. Once he even asked if I could replace the card myself (which I would on another day, but not after going through this) - I declined and the customer relation personnel then made sounds about how my warranty did not cover on-site service and would I mind sending the laptop back to them or take it to a service center - I declined on both. He then proceeded to tell me they would do an on-site repair even though my warranty did not cover it.
I was in half a mind to tell him that it was their freaking laptop that was broken, and they had sold me lemon - warranty or no warranty. I asked for a replacement model again on the phone, but he sounded pretty confident that wireless card replacement would do the trick. And then if it didn't they would consider replacing the laptop with a better equipped model of the same type, that works. Basically in simple terms I was told that they could not care less, and the wireless card replacement was all I could get.
Post-Card Replacement
When the service engineer finally came in this Tuesday (19/12/2006), it didn't take him two minutes to admit there was a problem with the laptop. He heard one song, and the problem was as apparent. He quickly replaced the Broadcom wireless chip with a Intel pro wireless card, which at that time seemed to take care of the problem. Indeed, there was no sound problems when the wireless was connected and all was well. Or so I thought.
In the evening when I was surfing the web, suddenly out of nowhere I got a page not found error. My initial assumptions ranged from website being down to my DHCP server being screwed up. To verify if I was connected to my router at all, I typed in 'ipconfig' on my laptop, only to be given an error that said: "A device connected to the system does not seem to be functioning".
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Bliffle
Too bad. So ends a great line of products, the Thinkpads. I've been using them exclusively for 10 years with great success, now I have to find a new vendor.
What you're witnessing is the destruction of US business due to systematically bad executive decision making. They make those decisions because it maximizes payout from their bonus plans, not because it's best for the company and other stakeholders, like employees and shareholders and customers.
Take a look at two decisions: the HP purchase of Compaq and the Lenova purchase of Thinkpad. Why did HP pay 80 cents on the dollar for a bum product line like Compaq while IBM only got 17 cents on the dollar for a great product line like Thinkpad? Because that's the way that the executive bonus plans maxed out for HP and IBM executives. They screwed their own companies (and stakeholders) for themselves.
In most big US corps now executives and their Boards spend 50% of their working days negotiating executive perks and bonus plans. Imagine how long you'd last if you spent half your day arguing for a larger salary.
US corps are consuming themselves and will soon be entirely looted from within.
2 - Bliffle
I'm thinking of getting a T60 as my last Thinkpad before they start producing pure cheap junk. I hope that's not the re-brand of the laptop you suffered with.
3 - Daniel
Lenovo Is Great. I am using it now.
4 - David Churbuck
Here's Lenovo's side of the tale:
5 - Max
Purchased 28 Lenovo Thinkpads for a training classroom. 14 of the 28 have experienced 1803 errors when no daughter board had been added. All have been returned for repair, some multiple times, for replacement of the motherboard.
Lenovo is pure junk right out of the box.
6 - Rick
I too bought a Lenovo N100 3000 Celeron laptop from Office Depot and had the exact same problem. My laptop also had a dead pixel (unfortunately), I understand that it's not covered under Lenovo's replacement policy for LCDs, so I called Office Depot's customer service and apparently I was directed to someone in India, who promised that they would replace the laptop for me but then I never heard back from them again ever. I called OD's Customer Service again and again and ever time I was just told that someone would call me back. I guess I wasn't acting rude enough. I also called Lenovo's customer service for other questions, but ever time I called they're experiencing high volume of calls and I had to leave a voicemail at the end, which they never returned my call. No more buying laptops from Office Depot for me, and definitely no more Lenovo's after reading your post and having this crappy laptop in my hands.
7 - kenn
i bought a lenovo 3000 n100 dku on black friday 2006 (for my nephew) and bought a lenovo 3000 n100 dlu on january 22 2007 (for my self). basically i like these laptops much, albeit they do have some little problems.
i like them because these two computers are very fast and very cheap. for example, the dlu cost me $750 but a corresponding toshiba will cost me $1400.
the lenovo company seems nicer than the sony and toshiba. for example, the $750 dlu uses 2x512 mega bytes high quality 667 MHZ memory. in constrast a corresponding (the same type of CPU) toshiba uses 2x1024 mega bytes outdated 533 MHZ memory. It is very obvious, the toshiba is trying selling out all their outdated memory in stock. the $750 dlu uses 5400-rpm hard disk. in contrast, the toshiba uses 4200-rpm hard disk.
but so far the problem i encountered with dku and dlu are: a terrible software was bought and pre-loaded into computers, "client security". it is a stupid software, coz it has an outrageous bug: some of the lines of password entry box are missing. i don't understand how this could happen.
so, i believe toshiba and sony are very threwd, cunning, and careful. lenovo is stupid and careless, but generous. i like these two lenovo computers because i think some little refinement does not deserve $1400-$750=$650. but i will complain to company for their stupidity. i think in the future the lenovo will be much better.
8 - Howard Dratch
Here I am in the USofA, that place of things, and I wanted a new laptop to replace my aging Mac iBook G3. The "exorbitant price" of the MacBook Pro put me off, the down-sized screen of the MacBook (I am here partly to remove growing cataracts and declining vision) ended it.
Off I went to buy a Lenovo, Sony or even the warned-against HP to save money. All with Vista. After a week of playing with all the PCs on Vista I hated the trackpads, the screens of some were fine but none compared to the MacBook Pro in matte and Vista seemed primitive next to my old OSX Panther, which is dated.
Finally, last night I bit the great big bullet and bought the Pro with a 15" screen, 2.17 intel duo and OSX 10.4.8. I am pleasured with it out of the box, happily up to 3AM and back at Blogcritics. The opposite experience. Everything (so far) works perfectly (except my now empty wallet).
When the Lenovo is done with you or you it, take a bite of the Apple.
9 - Rajesh
I think Lenovo 3000 N100 is the worst laptop i have bought. It's battery life is not even 3 hours. My old toshiba Satellite with centrino works 7-8 hours without recharge. There are no Home and End button on the keyboard.
There customer service is worst, I lost my password, for which they are charging me $175.
can any one believe it, but that's what it is.
This dual core machine take more time to boot than single core Toshiba.
The worst part with IBM/Lenovo they come with built in restore utility, which takes 10GB of your 80GB hard disk space. Is that worth it. Generally you have Restore CD or DVD which you can put in and restore whenever you want.
There warranty is of no use. Whatever happen to your laptop, they will charge you. I didn't like this machine at all.
Just thought this review will be helpful to other buyers.
10 - Aku
When Chinese companies expand overseas, they often, despite their best intentions, replicate Chinese business patterns. Having lived in China, I could tell you this would be awesome service by their standards (and I am not trying to justify their actions BTW). Perhaps you get a hint of this on the Lenovo blogger comments:
"Sometimes the best initial action is a refund offered in tandem with a new system, no questions asked. But until you have the freedom to make that offer, you can’t."
As noted in the article, this is standard operating procedure with Dell, Samsung, and Toshiba.
Many, if not most, Chinese companies make their money by reducing their cost structure to the Nth degree. For example, a western company might have a truck take product on a short haul around a site, a Chinese company might load it on the back of one of its workers and sends him for a 10 minute walk to the place.
The lack of the ability to make the right kind of service choice for Americans shows Lenovo as a whole still does not understand the American consumer enough, and its culture has not adapted to the requirements of the American market.
11 - Carrie
I wish I had read all of these comments before I bought my LENOVO N3100. I bought it last October from Office Max as it was offered with 2 rebates. This was to reduce the cost listed of $900 by $150 and another $100. There my troubles began. the LENOVO web site would not let me register the rebate, as it said my computer was already registered and no rebates were available. Customer service would not answer the phone, as they merely played a recording to go to the web site. Long story short, after three months they sent one of the rebates. However, in the meantime I have come to HATE the laptop. The sound has been weak and poor from the beginning, but I chalked that up to a cheap computer. Now, it doesn't work at all. Additionally, it did not come with installation disks to repair or reinstall any components that came installed on the computer but said to make copies. When I began to make installation copies I was directed to copy to a CD/DVD. After inserting the 8th disk with no information or indication of where I was in the process, I gave up. Now I can't get help from the website or customer service. My advice to anyone thinking of buying a LENOVO product - DON'T!!!!!!!
12 - Bliffle
The Thinkpad Bulletin Board where owners could confer with each other about tech problems is gone.
If you buy a Thinkpad and have a problem you will have to solve it yourself.
I will soon have to open my T40 and solder in a new power socket. Luckily, I know how to do that. Do you? Will you be able to do the same when the socket becomes useless, as they all do on a thinkpad?
13 - 96rt10
okay, here's my story: Got the machine(3000N100 0768-E7U 2.0ghz T7200/2gbRam/120GBHD/15.4ws), and while everything did work on it, about half my programs did not run on Vista - unusable.
I formatted it and put xp on it - it was very fast! Called tech support because the sound driver didn't work - they said since it shipped with Vista they wouldn't be able to support any other OS on it - even though a month ago you could buy the same hardware with XP installed on it. That makes perfect sense to me.
Installed Ubuntu Linux on it and half the devices wouldn't autodetect - figured I'd wait till "Feisty Fawn" is officially released in April. It was worth a shot, didn't have much to lose at the time.
So now I'm depserate - I've got to get SOMETHING that runs on this machine. I checked out the ONLY disc that was shipped with the system and it was not a restore disc, but a disc that would only sell you an "upgrade" to a more expensive version of Vista.
...which brings me to another point I'd like to highlight - Lenovo loads the "restore" software on the hard drive(because we wouldn't want all that HD space), but they are happy to give you a disc that they make money on. I'm not one to serially cry "corporate greed" but come on.
SO, I called tech support, had them DHL Overnight me the restore CDs, restored the machine to factory spec, then had to argue with Microsoft's phone activation ppl for about 20min bc they think my OS is pirated. They(MS) told me that ANY time the hardware was changed I would have to call them again. I said "don't worry, I'll have linux on this machine in a couple of months and you won't have to worry about me again". The lady I was talking to laughed out loud!
As of right now my sound won't work still. I can honestly say I've wasted about 25 hours total on this machine - troubleshooting/formatting/installing/configuring. Don't even get me started on vista - that thing is a train-wreck in itself. Until I can figure out how to get everything working, I've got two old XP systems that I VNC into to get certain things done.
Maybe once I get everything working, it won't screw up and I can say that I like the system, but until then, this thing is a nightmare to me. Just say NO to Lenovo. I also like that anagram "LENOVO = NO LOVE"
14 - dennis
you can find the sound driver for n100 on their support website. is that what you looking for? May I ask what background you are from?
15 - pagster
I have to say - that my dad bought this computer (3000 N100) because of the Office Depot sale. This computer is seriously the worst investment I've encountered. Several of my friends - all computer engineers and computer science majors - said that something inside was wrong. We stopped all the processes, removed any junk - but this computer still failed to perform.
I've tried contacting support but they seem to always be busy (heh, wonder why?). My problems are as follows:
1) My wireless is really bad. I've sat in a classroom where my friends on either side of me where using their internet while my 3000 N100 said there was no signal anywhere near me.
2) Something is wrong with the computer in general - all sensitive tests (video editing, games, etc.) all report 100% choke (read: this is bad) even when nothing goes on. In games, I have the minimal resolution (read: people start to look like black boxes), no details, and yet - I can't walk around without the computer slowing down.
3) My DVD-R drive is defective. It cannot read DVDs, and whenever it's active (read: spinning), the sound card disables and everything comes out like "th-th-i-i-i-i-is-is-is-is."
4) When burning DVDs or CDs, my read/write speed never exceeds 1x. What's the point of a 16x drive that can't go beyond 1x?
5) The soft keys are poorly engineered. Besides the inconvenience of the "home" and "end" keys being soft keys (read: this means you need to press [function] and [home] instead of just [home], like on a normal keyboard).
Also, the volume controls are within the laptop (compared to the Dell, whose laptops allow you to change the volume while the laptop is closed). More annoying is how you can't hold down the volume keys to continually change the loudness. This means, if you're at volume 20 and you want to get to volume 5, you have to press Volume down 15 times instead of holding it down, like any normal product would do.
6) The screen itself can't lay flat with the keyboard... I guess this was designed this way, but yeah. It's something unexpected and to me, useless.
7) It comes with a bunch of bundled software that clogs up your computer experience.
Yeah - so I really wish I read these comments before my dad bought this. If I could get a refund, I would pay for the airmail shipping to them and then buy something that works the way it advertises.
16 - Dan
Lenovo can still make a great BUSINESS laptop. Don't buy their 3000's as they are made to go after the cheap spending consumer. IF you and a good laptop go with something like the T60 or X40 because they are still made for business users and have all the features that IBM used.
Really the story here is... you get what you paid for. you bought a laptop at Office Depot on sale and expected the best... There is a reason why only the 3000 is sold in stores and not their business line.
17 - Owner of Lenovo 3000 N100
I own a Lenovo 3000 N100, and updated the OS to Vista (from XP). Anyways, I couldn't get the sound card working, so I went searching on google, and clicked on your blog. I read the whole thing, and am proud of everyone like you who posts their feelings about a company AND proves that they tried to resolve their problems with the company (as compared to just complaining and whining). Keep up the good work. My 10 minutes reading this blog was well spent.
18 - kathy
Until now, I have not had as many problems with my 3000/n100 from Office Depot as the rest of you. I guess they are getting a lot of returns as I only got my rebate after the 60 day warranty period. Today, just days short of its 3 month anniversary, the "enter" key does not work at all. at first I could go down a line by hitting the down arrow, but now that doesn't work either any ideas of how to solve this problem?
19 - Noble
I've heard very good things about the Lenovo ThinkPad series. Unfortunately, being a poor starving student, I went with a Lenovo 3000 Series C200, which has the exact same problem. *sigh* This is why I build my own desktops.
20 - David
every dollar makes its cost, i get a lenovo very cheap, though it is not as good as others,and never compare it with ther expensive notebook like sony or fujjitsu, price is different. if I chose the cheap one, I never hope it run as fast as the expensive. Thinkpad is wonderful, if you have enough budget.
21 - Another owner of Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop
I have owned a Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop for 3 mos & have yet to use it for any project of significance. Why? Lenovo made me re-image my hard drive once already to correct errors in the shut down process. Now programs are locking up to the point where only a "hard" shut down will allow me close down. Happens VERY often & when only a few documents are open at a time. I fear that I will need another re-imaging.
The support service in the evenings is not very helpful. I have difficulty following their directions because I am on VISTA, & they are on XP. I have spent at least 10 hrs with the support team for a variety issues. Lenovo blames VISTA for everything & tells me to call Microsoft. Microsoft in turn tells me Lenovo is responsible for all OEM programs & directs me to call Lenovo. Lenovo support laughed when I told them what Microsoft said, stating "We know nothing about VISTA."
I have tried to return the laptop to Office Depot & to Lenovo with no luck. I feel stuck & frustrated.
22 - Frenche
i just bought the 3000 n100 for 700$ thanks guys you made me happy! :(
23 - bliffle
$700 ?!
For that money you can get an excellent Thinkpad T42 or even T60 on eBay and capture the last of the great Thinkpads before they turn into crapola.
Oh yeah: put Ubuntu 7.04 on it for a Real Thrill! Stick that old Win system on a small partition to await the day you finally execute it, as you surely will.
24 - Raj
I purchased the lenovo 3000 N100. I have been having lots of problems with my wireless card (Intel wireless 3945abg) since Jan 2007. It worked fine for just 1 week after that it stopped working. I have called up the lenovo tech support twice earlier but they dont accept it has a problem. I also recommended this notebook to couple of my two friends. Suprisingly all of them have the same problems. I tried all options to fix this(installed all latest drivers & even formated my system twice to the factory state), I really got pissed off & gave up. Finally got a PCMCIA wireless card & hooked it up in my notebook. It worked immediately.Even my other 2 friends got the external wireless card & using it now.
The problems in my notebook are:
1. Wireless does not detect any wireless network either with access connection tool or win xp.
2. the wireless radio changes to 'Off' status by itself after few mins.
3. If we slide the wireless switch to 'On' the wireless light indicator glows for few mins & then its off. Only the bluetooth light is always on.
I'm really disappointed with this notebook. I would not recommend this to anyone.
Has anyone faced the above problems with ur notebook? Let me know if you know the solutions.
25 - Nathan Lee
I got royally screwed when I had this great idea to buy a Lenovo laptop for my wife. Best Buy had a great deal and I thought I was getting her a quality product. NOT SO! First it only came with Vista, no restore disk, no operating manual and no users guide. I paid extra for a restore disk, extra to get all of the "junk" software off the small hard drive and extra for the users guide. I got the computer home and it seemed slow but I was tired and just loaded MS Office. I then boxed the system and Fed Exed it to my wife. When she got the computer she spent 5 minutes with it and took it back to a Best Buy in St. Louis and said give my money back this is CRAP. Best Buy gave her back the money and she bought herself a new Gateway. LENOVO should be spelled LEMON.