T60p FireGL Waiters...

Message

clarksonknights · #1 Post by **clarksonknights** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:54 pm

Well, it seems as if the ATI FireGL v5200 cards are currently delaying us who ordered our T60's with them. So basically, how does everyone feel about the wait? It's been hard on me... order date 2/9/06 with a est. ship date of 4/11/06. Is it even worth getting the FireGL card? I will be doing work with AutoCAD so I know my best bet is with the FireGL but the wait is really starting to get to me.

pundit · #2 Post by **pundit** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:09 pm

1. Initially, that April ship-date seemed liked the end of the world. After a while of not having a laptop, I've sort of gotten used to it. It doesn't seem like a big deal any more.

2. It is true that the FireGL is probably your best bet for AutoCAD, but I am not convinced of the difference between FireGL and the X1n00 series, apart from "certification of drivers"; the meaning of which is unclear to me.

Mandrake · #3 Post by **Mandrake** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:28 am

clarksonknights wrote:Well, it seems as if the ATI FireGL v5200 cards are currently delaying us who ordered our T60's with them. So basically, how does everyone feel about the wait? It's been hard on me... order date 2/9/06 with a est. ship date of 4/11/06. Is it even worth getting the FireGL card? I will be doing work with AutoCAD so I know my best bet is with the FireGL but the wait is really starting to get to me.

Gives us time to see if anything else gets released that is comparable but cheaper. Maybe even a few extra options we would prefer.

obediah · #4 Post by **obediah** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:53 am

my ship date hasn't slipped from 3/17 - yet.

The waiting is much less painful now that I have a new screen for my T42p.

Any 3D stuff I do is gaming under windows or simulations in linux, so I'd probably be happier with a top end nVidia gamer card, but I'm too much of a thinkpad fanboy to not give the machine a shot.

emachine · #5 Post by **emachine** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:13 pm

It's given me time to stalk that new LG S1 a little bit. I'm 90% certain I'll keep the thinkpad, it'll just put my mind at ease to see final specs & a hands-on review of the S1 before I'm totally financially committed to the thinkpad.

The T60p is kinda overkill for my needs, but wth :p I got a good deal on it.

Doltan · #6 Post by **Doltan** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:06 am

clarksonknights wrote:Well, it seems as if the ATI FireGL v5200 cards are currently delaying us who ordered our T60's with them. So basically, how does everyone feel about the wait? It's been hard on me... order date 2/9/06 with a est. ship date of 4/11/06. Is it even worth getting the FireGL card? I will be doing work with AutoCAD so I know my best bet is with the FireGL but the wait is really starting to get to me.

I think that a FireGL V5200 is an overkill for AutoCAD. But if you can afford to wait for it,

abisys · #7 Post by **abisys** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:16 am

my 200793U with v5200 shipped yesterday. Waiting for it's arrival.
The good news is no more wait time...

jobes · #8 Post by **jobes** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:51 am

Are the T60p's gone from the site? I cant seem to find them.

jeremivw · #9 Post by **jeremivw** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:27 pm

abisys wrote:my 200793U with v5200 shipped yesterday. Waiting for it's arrival.
The good news is no more wait time...

Wow! When did you order? My ship date just got pushed back to 4/5.

jobes wrote:Are the T60p's gone from the site? I cant seem to find them.

I can't see them either...and that worries me for several reasons, but I see that T43p on sale for $1999! I'm seriously considering that...

clarksonknights · #10 Post by **clarksonknights** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:33 pm

They probably can't keep up with the demand and have to currently stop orders, but hey, that's just my best guess. It does kinda scare me too though.

abisys · #11 Post by **abisys** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:33 pm

Ordered my 200793U on 2/26/06.
Est. Ship date: 3/31/06
Today i got email says 'Shipped on 3/14/06'

r1ych · #12 Post by **r1ych** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:09 pm

I got my 200793U this morning and my first impressions are very positive! Build quality is superb. Will be backing up and personalising my new baby this evening

jeremivw · #13 Post by **jeremivw** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:06 pm

OK. We've all speculated that it's the FireGL delaying shipping, but here a couple of guys that have their new T60p....

The ONLY thing that mine has over these 93U's is the WWAN card. So I'm going to start a new rumor and say that (if mine is, in fact, delayed) it's the Verizon Sierra cards delaying the shipping!

Abisys, you ordered only two days before I did...so I hope that means mine is going to ship in the next few days, too! Did you happen to notice your ship date slipping BEFORE you got the email?

abisys · #14 Post by **abisys** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:12 pm

[quote="jeremivw"]
Abisys, you ordered only two days before I did...so I hope that means mine is going to ship in the next few days, too! Did you happen to notice your ship date slipping BEFORE you got the email?[/quote]

No. Even yesterday night it was 3/31/06

jeremivw · #15 Post by **jeremivw** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:19 pm

abisys wrote:
jeremivw wrote: Abisys, you ordered only two days before I did...so I hope that means mine is going to ship in the next few days, too! Did you happen to notice your ship date slipping BEFORE you got the email?
No. Even yesterday night it was 3/31/06

OK. That suxs. I think I just missed a window or something...just talked with my rep and he stated that they've just sent out the first of the T60p's but won't be able to keep up with production. He did say, however, that because my order was placed back in Feb., I was on the "priority" list (whatever that means). Hopefully I'll still have it by the end of the month.

BTW: I found your response to my (same) question in the other thread. Thanks for the responsiveness and I do apologize for making you repeat yourself...

pundit · #16 Post by **pundit** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:22 pm

jeremivw wrote:OK. That suxs. I think I just missed a window or something...just talked with my rep and he stated that they've just sent out the first of the T60p's but won't be able to keep up with production. He did say, however, that because my order was placed back in Feb., I was on the "priority" list (whatever that means). Hopefully I'll still have it by the end of the month.

BTW: I found your response to my (same) question in the other thread. Thanks for the responsiveness and I do apologize for making you repeat yourself...

*Sigh*

I too ordered (the same spec'd machine) just a couple of days after abisys (and in February). Here's to hoping I'm on this "priority" list you mention.

Mandrake · #17 Post by **Mandrake** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:41 pm

This shows up on my order...

"I agree to the delay"

Due to the overwhelming demand for our very innovative products we have been unable to ship all or part of your Lenovo order. You are a valued customer and we are working to ship your order as soon as possible. However, if we do not hear from you within the next 5 days, federal regulations require us to automatically cancel your order for which you will receive a full refund.

If you would like to keep your order open, please click the “I agree to the delay” button. If you agree to this order extension, you may still cancel your order at any time up until the time of shipment and receive a full and prompt refund by contacting your representative toll free at
1-866-42-THINK.

Must be common because after clicking the button my ship date went from 4-03 to 4-05. Big whoop.

donking! · #18 Post by **donking!** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:52 pm

That sucks that you have to agree to a delay.

I have to say, this whole process of shipping and ordering and waiting and delays is really lame. It's also so inconsistent. People orders are not shipping in anything closely resembling the order in which people made them.

Lenovo really needs to get it's act together. It shouldn't announce new products until it's closer to being reading to ship them. And it certainly also shouldn't take orders until it's much closer to having it's production going.

Apple has been way way more organized with the MacBook.

It just doesn't make sense to me. It's like Lenovo is going out of it's way to antagonize actual paying customers. People who are calling up and ready to make a deal and Lenovo's just messing with them. That may not be Lenovo's intention, but it's definitely the effect.

pundit · #19 Post by **pundit** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 4:28 pm

donking! wrote:Apple has been way way more organized with the MacBook.

Not really. I spent the previous month doing the exact same thing with Apple instead, as I was drooling over my MacBook Pro.

At least here I get to hear the voice of a person when I call up. There I tried a few times, and at each instance hung up after 20 minutes or so of automated advertising spiel.

Not that this excuses the handling of the ThinkPad; just that it's equally bad everywhere, and I wasn't expecting any better. It must have something to do with a very similar component set across most machines, and every company making large demands of the manufacturers at the same time.

pundit · #20 Post by **pundit** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 4:47 pm

Mandrake wrote:This shows up on my order...

"I agree to the delay"

Due to the overwhelming demand for our very innovative products we have been unable to ship all or part of your Lenovo order. You are a valued customer and we are working to ship your order as soon as possible. However, if we do not hear from you within the next 5 days, federal regulations require us to automatically cancel your order for which you will receive a full refund.

If you would like to keep your order open, please click the “I agree to the delay” button. If you agree to this order extension, you may still cancel your order at any time up until the time of shipment and receive a full and prompt refund by contacting your representative toll free at
1-866-42-THINK.

Must be common because after clicking the button my ship date went from 4-03 to 4-05. Big whoop.

Mine had already moved to 4/14 a while ago. Anyway, I hurriedly (worriedly?) found this link and kept clicking it (never clicked on anything so fast in my life!), and it didn't work. I called up, worried the [censored] thing would automatically cancel my order "because I didn't respond". The person I spoke to hadn't heard of the thing, and was quite emphatic in stating that the "website/system can't cancel your order without us doing something". And he said the 4--7 week window is still to be expected, since my order contains "brand new technology". Maybe I should have pushed and had him spill the beans on which particular piece of "brand new technology" was causing the bottleneck!

Anyway, this time frame was in line with the 4/10, 4/14 date they gave me initially, so I'm not particularly perturbed. I ordered on 2/28.

All that drool wasted over the MacBook pro delayed this!

ScotchDiver · #21 Post by **ScotchDiver** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 4:55 pm

The "I agree to this delay" link is now at the bottom of my status page as well, but when I click on it an error page is shown. I called my rep. and he said that this is a bug and that they are trying to get it removed. No orders will be auto-cancelled so you shouldn't worry about it. He also said that the T60p's are simply backlogged due to demand. There were no specific parts shortages that he was aware of, just a lot of orders queued up.

It suprises me that Lenovo hasn't made shipping the T60p's more of a priority. I would expect that, since the margins have _got_ to be higher on the top of the line models, they'd make sure they went out as fast as possible. It's just simple cash flow management.

Also, I got an email the other day, which appears to say that both my dock and laptop had shipped (Qty Ordered and Qty Shipped were 1 for each item). It appears that this too is a bug, because only the dock shipped. The "confirmed" Estimated Ship Date on the laptop is still 3/31.

ScotchDiver

donking! · #22 Post by **donking!** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 4:58 pm

pundit wrote:Not really. I spent the previous month doing the exact same thing with Apple instead, as I was drooling over my MacBook Pro.

At least here I get to hear the voice of a person when I call up. There I tried a few times, and at each instance hung up after 20 minutes or so of automated advertising spiel.

Not that this excuses the handling of the ThinkPad; just that it's equally bad everywhere, and I wasn't expecting any better.

Yeah, it's nice that Lenovo answers the phone pretty quickly.

But Apple did start shipping the MacBooks much much sooner after it announced them. They were announced about the same time as the T60 in January and started shipping mid February.

The only delay was a week beyond the projected MacBook ship date, because Apple decided to upgrade the processors in all the models (without a change in price). That's compared to Lenovo, who's shipping dates slide back and forth and then people are asked to agree to an indefinite delay because of some unexplained production problem.

Every manufactuer has these kind of things with a new product. But Lenovo is way worse than Apple in this instance. What happend to the famous customer service? one might want to ask.

pundit · #23 Post by **pundit** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:06 pm

ScotchDiver wrote:It suprises me that Lenovo hasn't made shipping the T60p's more of a priority. I would expect that, since the margins have _got_ to be higher on the top of the line models, they'd make sure they went out as fast as possible. It's just simple cash flow management.

I was tempted to think along those lines, and then I realised how much I'm really paying for it (with my poor student pricing)---and I am not even sure they can even turn a profit on my sale. So I shut up and didn't give them any ideas, you know, to avoid having leeches like me bumped to the wee end of the queue!

pundit · #24 Post by **pundit** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:14 pm

donking! wrote:But Apple did start shipping the MacBooks much much sooner after it announced them. They were announced about the same time as the T60 in January and started shipping mid February.

The only delay was a week beyond the projected MacBook ship date, because Apple decided to upgrade the processors in all the models (without a change in price). That's compared to Lenovo, who's shipping dates slide back and forth and then people are asked to agree to an indefinite delay because of some unexplained production problem.

In a sense, true. But I'm quite convinced the processor upgrade was because of the delay and not the other way around (either that, or the 1.66 Ghz or whatever promised initially was a phatom processor). Some of those Mac "fans" got pretty heated; Apple probably did it just to prevent getting burnt down or something

. This board is the epitome of calm in comparison.

And my vantage point is the T60p, which reached the academic pricing page remarkably quick, mid February, after announcement, so a projected end March--early April wait seems in line with Apple's early January through mid February wait.

Not that I'm justifying anything. Just reasoning stuff out so I don't become some rabid maniac.

donking! · #25 Post by **donking!** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:56 am

pundit wrote:And my vantage point is the T60p, which reached the academic pricing page remarkably quick, mid February, after announcement, so a projected end March--early April wait seems in line with Apple's early January through mid February wait.

It doesn't quite seem to me like a parallel comparison. I mean, Apple announced the MacBook for the first time ever in mid January and started shipping mid February. Lenovo announced the T60 for the first time ever in early January and didn't start shipping until March (and only in the most haphazard of manners.)

So that's two months (at least) to one month. I don't see how it's relevant when the T60 or MacBook came availabe to actually order by various means, academic or otherwise? To me the question is when did the world know of it's existence, when did they first start taking orders (by whatever means), and when did units actually start to ship to people?

I think it's fine to announce a product way ahead of time. I just think it's lame (toying with people) to start taking orders really long before a product is ready to ship.

And I guess I have trouble seeing why we should let Lenovo off the hook when they're being lame. There are so many stories in these forums now of people ordering their T60s a long time ago and not getting them yet, versus people ordering them a couple days or weeks ago and getting earlier ship dates. It seems totally disorganized on Lenovo's part and not a good way to treat customers.

Mandrake · #26 Post by **Mandrake** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:08 am

I clicked the "I agree to the delay" button again today and now my date went from 4-05 to 4-06. The button seems to give me an up to date status on the ETA. Then again maybe I should stop clicking it so my date doesn't keep moving back.

pundit · #27 Post by **pundit** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:46 am

donking! wrote:...
And I guess I have trouble seeing why we should let Lenovo off the hook when they're being lame. There are so many stories in these forums now of people ordering their T60s a long time ago and not getting them yet, versus people ordering them a couple days or weeks ago and getting earlier ship dates. It seems totally disorganized on Lenovo's part and not a good way to treat customers.

Agreed, it's not an appropriate parallel, and it is lame. I think it is just that I've exhausted my quota of the "eagerly-checking, getting disappointed each time I stare at the status page, venting-in-fora" thing. I've gone through so much of that, I've probably just cracked.

Now I'm numb, and remarkably patient, hence cutting them slack. Or something like that.

And on a related note, yesterday was the day my MBP would have shipped given no other Appleisms crept up. I wept silently in a corner for a while.

Sottozero · #28 Post by **Sottozero** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:10 am

Color me shocked.

I ordered on 3/3 and I just learned my T60p (2007-92U) shipped today. Wow.

When I get it, I'll be evaluating it to see if I should keep it. It's either the T60p or the MacBook Pro for my daily do-everything machine. I no longer see a need for a desktop computer.

Mandrake · #29 Post by **Mandrake** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:49 am

Clicked the button again today and again it gets pushed back a day.

Must stop pushing button...

rocketman · #30 Post by **rocketman** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:08 am

Mandrake wrote:Clicked the button again today and again it gets pushed back a day.
Must stop pushing button...

That's not unusual, the same thing happened with my T43p, every day I checked the status it would be pushed back one day but it wound up shipping on the original date anyway.

T60p FireGL Waiters...

T60p FireGL Waiters...

Re: T60p FireGL Waiters...

Re: T60p FireGL Waiters...

my 200793U shipped

Who is online