My frustration story on T60

[Snap]

So the older T42 had instructions to remove the plastic layer from the thermal pad but the T60 did not. I think removing the protective covering from the adhesive thermal pad should be a given by now. When adding oil to your car do some people actually need instructions on the container to remove the cap from the bottle before pouring? Well, I suppose some mechanics would, but most of us know better and so should a Lenovo senior technician.

It's typical that Lenovo chose to blame the instructions instead of taking responsibility for their negligence. This makes me wonder how many other T60/T60ps are running hot and loud because Lenovo never removed their thermal pad’s plastic covering as well. Surely someone within Lenovo can acknowledge that there shouldn't be a plastic layer between thermal grease or a thermal pad and the GPU.

[XIII]

This thing should be a common sense rather than an instruction. As I mentioned, plastic is a THERMAL INSULATOR. Lenovo really need to retrain their paper- and inexperienced technicians.

[nandaiyo]

In about 20 days, i'll buy an extra fan assembly, and mod it with extra copper (using arctic silver adhessive) and put on a small cooling pad in the correct thickness.

Please keep us posted with your modification. I would very much like to do the same thing in my T60 and have been looking around for a small copper plate to bridge the gap. Where have you found something that might work?

Thanks.

[GomJabbar]

I would very much like to do the same thing in my T60 and have been looking around for a small copper plate to bridge the gap. Where have you found something that might work?

Brass shim stock is available in a variety of thicknesses. Brass should be nearly as good a heat conductor as copper and I believe it is more corrosion resistant. You can check your local hardware store. FYI, Grainger carries shim stock. They have stores around the US, and you can order online at http://www.grainger.com

[XIII]

But it has to be pure copper. Aluminum is also good heat conductor but not as good as copper.
Brass is not a good heat conductor because it is alloy of copper and zinc. The lattice structure is very messed up and random, hence not good conductor.

[GomJabbar]

A little check online verifies that brass is not nearly as good a conductor as copper. Nevertheless, I would suspect it is still much better than the rubber thermal pads that are used.

If you want to stick with copper, get a large diameter copper wire and pound it flat with a hammer. Copper is very malleable.

[Tholek]

dickey, if you haven't already, you should be taping these calls (I think it's legal, but double check). There's been many a taped support call on the internet, even filmed and uploaded to YouTube, and they can sometimes get results. Not just for you either. If you have taped all the calls so far, and it does turn out that this is a mistake (how could it not be?) that may be enough for substantial compensation.

Worth a shot....

[dickeywang]

Hi, guys!

Just got another call from that Lenovo guy. They have confirmed with their engineering department that the plastic layer should have been removed before they install the heatsink. As a compensation, they will send me an internal DVD burner (My T60 originally came with a CDRW/DVD).

I'm glad that things worked out in this way. I would like to thank all your guys for your informations and great suggestions.

[pianowizard]

As a compensation, they will send me an internal DVD burner (My T60 originally came with a CDRW/DVD).

Wonderful! Are you going to sell the CDRW/DVD combo drive?

[carbon_unit]

I just got my T60 back from the Depot yesterday. We'll see how well they did on it. I'll see if it gets hot and if it does I will pull the fan and look for the insulator sheet.

[Harryc]

IMHO the moral of this story is two-fold. First, always question the quality of work done by the repair depot and don't give up if you think that you are right. Second is that if you own a T60, check for this plastic the next time you pop open the covers. Finally, I am wondering how pervasive this problem is. It seems to me that if the repair depot documentation did not mention this plastic sheet, there might be a good possibility that engineering did not get the word to remove it to the manufacturing line either. If that's the case, a product recall is in order. Most consumers would not be expected to have the technical expertise to pull the fan and remove the sheet.

[rmendoza]

IMHO the moral of this story is two-fold. First, always question the quality of work done by the repair depot and don't give up if you think that you are right. Second is that if you own a T60, check for this plastic the next time you pop open the covers. Finally, I am wondering how pervasive this problem is. It seems to me that if the repair depot documentation did not mention this plastic sheet, there might be a good possibility that engineering did not get the word to remove it to the manufacturing line either. If that's the case, a product recall is in order. Most consumers would not be expected to have the technical expertise to pull the fan and remove the sheet.

Two things. First, you cannot say to ALWAYS question the quality of the work, since the evidence overall would suggest that only a handful of customers get shoddy service.

On the other hand, I agree with you that if the literature does not have this key step for the technician to remove the plastic layer off the GPU, it is likely that there are more TPs that had the GPU replaced and whose problem might have been made worse by the offending piece of plastic.

That being said, if the literature does not show this step, it's possible that it's not IBM/Lenovo's fault, as I know from personal experience that technical writing is spotty AT BEST; we have all bought the bookcase or any other piece of furniture/equipment, whose instructions were written by either computer translation program, or a very badly trained technician, and were unable to decipher what the manual actually called for.

As a matter of fact, I have been toying with the idea of starting a language company for a long time; I teach language and literature, and more often than not, I see commercials either translated from or into English that are so badly mangled, that I figure there is a serious need for a commercial language company, at least in my area. But when I look at the national companies, they don't fare any better: just yesterday, my wife and I (we are both university teachers) were laughing at the Verizon mobile phone manual, which had some truly ridiculous mistakes in the Spanish translation.

In any event, I hope the OP had everything repaired to his/her satisfaction.

[mattbiernat]

Downclock GPU and memory severely so it won't generate so much heat. I paid for a v5200, now i want the v5200 performance.

how do you do this?

[o1001010]

I hate Dell (too heavy)

Dell has some business models comparable in weight to the T-series Thinkpads. We usually see the heavy and bulky Inspiron models because most people don't care about quality. I just played with a 14.1" WS Latitude D620 last week and the quality is amazing. It's just over 5 lbs, the same as the 14.1" WS T61.

I would be on the phone about this asking for some sort of compensation.

Excellent suggestion.

this is the most idiotic post of the week,
i just got a new job and my temp pc is one of these d620, a loaner.
the keyboard is a piece of crap, feel just like any best buy toshiba
the screen is so bad i have to sit right in front of it
the trackpoint wanna be is such a joke its almost unusable.

on top of that, we have the silver and black two tone that every fing computer trying to use which is so ugly it makes me want to throw it.

[acasto]

Why is it idiotic? Are you saying the weights he mentions are wrong? Or are you saying that someone expressing a positive opinion on the quality of something like a Latitude is idiotic in that opinion?

I guess I'm idiotic as well. I was really impressed with the build quality of my brother's D810 Latitude. A bit heavy and lcd not as stiff as my T60p (seems good against pressure on the back though), but overall it's a very nice machine.

[JaneL]

this is the most idiotic post of the week,

Watch it.