The Connected Circuit

After I graduated I decided to treat myself a bit and splurge on a new computer. My search ended with me purchasing the Lenovo Thinkpad T61p. From day one, it has been rife with problems. One of the main reasons I bought this machine was I wanted something really powerful in a portably package which I could easily carry around. The T61p fit the bill largely on its powerful video card, semi-non-spine crushing-portability and terrific keyboard. On paper this machine was beautiful and fit my needs perfectly, it has a high-res screen (for programming), powerful enough to multi-task and an amazing keyboard. But you can put anything on paper, it is just in the execution. The T61p started to exhibit real problems when I ran intensive programs, and in my case they were 3D video games. Into my very first session of one of my favorite games, Team Fortress 2, my computer suddenly shutdown. With a shocked look on my face, I decided to do the logical thing, turn it back on. Which it didn’t at first, I had to unplug the machine, then reinsert the AC adapter, then push the power button to get it back on. Thinking that it was a freak one-time problem, I restarted Steam and went into another gaming session. Low and behold, it shut down on me again. At this point and time I was pretty much filled with an intense amount of anger. After about a month I placed the order, I received a defective laptop in direct relation to one of the reasons why I chose this machine. I decided maybe I should do a clean install with a student version of XP (note: it is a full version, my alma mater is an MSDNAA partner) on my machine. Installed TF2 on there again, but nope, still broke.

After cooling down for a bit, I decided that it was alright I’d just send my thinkpad in for repair, how long could it be for them to get it back to me a week. Nope it took nearly a month and guess what, it is still broken, it is actually worse off. After being escalated to their “top tier” support, I received a machine with a bent heatsink and still shuts off. I called again today to send it in for repair knowing full well that I won’t get this thing back for probably another month or so. I subsequently described my problems (shoddy repair job that it seems monkeys have done, possible video card issues, and an under-qualified individual putting this thing together) with it and the possible root causes. Not to sound full of myself, but I’ve done quite a bit of computer repair in my life (during my freshman year, I used to repair fellow students computers just to make some extra cash), so I’m no inept in figuring out why something is not working properly. The worst part of all is that I get hung up on twice while asking for XP recovery discs that should be mine. I’ve never sounded so angry on the phone with another individual in my life when I asked to speak with a supervisor and then he said I would have to pay $45 plus shipping and handling. Now their reasoning behind it is that Microsoft doesn’t let them ship CDs with their machines anymore. And they told me that I should have made recovery discs for my Thinkpad, but my question is why do I need to? Why does anyone need to? I specifically spent the extra money to purchase a machine with XP and chose Lenovo for that particular reason. If I knew that they were going to screw me over and charge me more money for something that was clearly mine, I would have just not purchased a machine from them. I stepped back and thought who does this hurt most? Honestly I could just go on any bittorent search engine and find hundreds of illegal XP CDs, but I wanted to do it legit and am trying to support fellow software developers after finding out how difficult it was to produce quality software. But alas it was torn from me and my only reasonable way to reinstall XP on my machine is to dig through the many different forums and install drivers that may or may not work. So yeah, I’m pissed right now and had to let it out.

By the way, James Curtis, if you ever read this. You are an incompetent under qualified moron.

--written by Peter To--