Thinkpads Forum

This is my last thinkpad. For the second time Lenovo has released an update that munged my machine. It's inexcusable. Head's up on the latest update for Intel's wireless driver.

Sorry, I don´t really understand what you are referring to, I understand you are experiencing some problem, but if you don´t tell us about it, we won´t be able to help you out Generally, Lenovo software (sometimes incl. drivers) is known to have some flaws... but this doesn´t necessarily make a specific peace of hardware worse.

Marin

Yeah...are you not able to restore from one of your backups(assuming you have one)?

A driver causing a complete hardware/os crash is pretty rare unless you are constantly fiddling with your machine.

Erm, these sorts of things happen to all manufacturers. O_o Certainly the build quality of the thinkpad is more than enough to make up for the fudged driver?

I have not an a bona-fide IBM or Lenovo hardware driver crash my machine (600, 240, 240x, X22, A22e, T23, T30, T41 and T61p stretching over a decade). .... JDH

EggsBenny wrote:Head's up on the latest update for Intel's wireless driver.

I have it working just fine on several recent ThinkPad configurations......

Cheers,

Bill B.

For the record, my machines have never been infected by a computer virus. I run Norton, Spybot and Adaware religiously. Never experienced a BSOD on any IBM ThinkPad I've owned. I don't fiddle and I don't run extraneous apps. I have never installed a game app on any machine I've owned be it IBM or otherwise. I have never file swapped. I don't IM. Never. And I don't surf...well...you know what. But I've had 2 System Update drivers completely take down my machine. I know who's to blame.

For those of you who run into trouble with the latest Wi-Fi driver for an X60, Atlanta tech support suggests the following:


Uninstall

Power Manager, Wireless Lan driver and Access Connections in that order. Reboot. Then,

Install

Power Manager, Hot Key Utility, Wireless Lan driver and Access Connections in that order. Reboot. Hope for the best.

Didn't work for me. Had to do a system rollback to last known good configuration. Start>all Progs>Accessories>System Tools>System restore. All is well.

Cheers.

Try your luck with the likes of HP, Dell, etc. and write back to this forum after a few months. I'm interested to see what your opinion of Lenovo ThinkPads will be after your newfound experience.

Cheers and good luck

EggsBenny wrote: ....
Uninstall
Power Manager, Wireless Lan driver and Access Connections in that order. Reboot. Then,
Install
Power Manager, Hot Key Utility, Wireless Lan driver and Access Connections in that order. Reboot. Hope for the best.
Didn't work for me. Had to do a system rollback to last known good configuration. Start>all Progs>Accessories>System Tools>System restore. All is well.
Cheers.

They kept you busy(off the phone) for a day!?

You are right. That's inacceptable.
I'd buy a Thinkpad for for a smooth working experience, not for administration adventure games!

As a comparison:
I personally dont like Apple Macs, but I'm observing tow Macs in operation, and they "just work".

It's not lenovo's fault at all, I don't see why you'd stop buying thinkpads because a windows driver went screwy. Have fun with other brands.

Oh also, it has been my experience that if you know what you are doing, the Mac vs. PC war just comes down to personal preference and/or software availability. Macs have given me just as much trouble as windows and I personally find the OS shell to be dumbed-down as to the point of making it more complicated. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy.

@OldManClayton
Sorry I beg to differ: It *is* Lenovo's fault,
if the Lenovo System Update is disabling a Lenovo System (as reported twice already).

Lenovo would have had the duty to check more carefully what their System Update does
to all kind of Lenovo Systems! This is not the first report of failure in this context.

That's what I hinted at in my last post in this thread: e.g. with Apple the System Update
did never screw a Mac, from what I have seen. My brother switched from PC to Mac and
said he would never go back because he never had any of those spurious troubles, he had
with Windows based PCs.
Even the Kubuntu OS Update did work smoothly since Dapper Drake on my T42p. An this is
a free OSS system, with which one would expect troubles.

This also to refute your argument "Erm, these sorts of things happen to all manufacturers".
It's more about how much quality these companies *really* care do deliver to the customers.

It seems like something that's not such a big deal. Computers are prone to error, and aren't going to run perfectly all the time. I can say I've never had trouble with any of my thinkpads and their drivers, however, other major manufacturers have given me trouble.

If you want to blame Lenovo, that's fine. We don't care. We're not making you buy thinkpads.

lophiomys wrote:e.g. with Apple the System Update did never screw a Mac

It can and does. I've had to to sort out a few issue for Apple users cause by just that.

lophiomys wrote:This also to refute your argument "Erm, these sorts of things happen to all manufacturers"

I can see you are in deep denial!

@Lophiomys - One way to help prevent this issue is to use SU to see what updates are available, and then manually download and install what you need. I do that on my T61. I know it takes longer, but I also know nothing is being installed that I don't want, and everything I need or want is being installed. The result for me is a highly reliable machine.

So right now, SU tells me I need to install:
TV Productivity Center - No, I don't use it
Client Security - No, I don't use it
Intel Matrix Manager - I should probably do this
Intel Video DVD - I should probably do this
WinDVD - I should probably do this
System Migration - No, I don't use it
Message Center - No, I don't use it
More Client Security - No, I don't use it
Toolbox - Maybe sometime
Multiimedia offerings - Maybe sometime
Rescue and Recovery - No, I don't use it

And, you see, I am otherwise entirely up-to-date with respect to audio, video, hard drive, CPU, NIC's, mouse, ultra-nav, hotkey, key customizer, Access Connection, Easy-eject, Presentation Director, APS, Power management and so on.

.... JDH

bill bolton wrote: ...
I can see you are in deep denial!

Yes I deny to accept poor quality of service for Thinkpads.
Yes I deny to accept the argument that no other company would do better and that customers simply would have to accept this poor performance.

lophiomys wrote:Yes I deny to accept......

It appears to me that your denial is in fact about accepting the essential nature of the entire personal computer business!

bill bolton wrote:It appears to me that your denial is in fact about accepting the essential nature of the entire personal computer business!

I beg to differ, I don´t think there is really such thing as essential nature of the entire PC business (well, maybe, in some regions, but that´s more local busness status-quo than anything else). It changes so much that it´s really not possible to identify anything like this anymore (maybe there was such a thing years ago, but then again ThinkPad was of IBM...). If I have to be realistic, I don´t see nothing bad if we, as ThinkPad customers, happen to exert some influence on Lenovo. Just because the big companies like to set the rules as they think that they are big, smart and strong doesn´t mean that we can´t do as well. It´s not about market rebel, but maybe Lenovo doesn´t hear its customers even though Lenovo tries to listen to them... A good example were the keyboards in T400/T500, Lenovo heard its customers and offered keyboard replace for those who felt affected. Certainly, it´s not possible to introduce some radical changes as Lenovo has to listen to and hear their suppliers and all other on the whole chain as well, but it could start with some small changes that can and should be done. This is not the type of change like introducing new models, but rather changes of principle nature.

Only my 0.02$

Marin

You guys realize that it was just a funky driver, right? Of course we want Lenovo to listen to us... but abandoning a good line of products because one update was a little messy? O_o Sounds wimpy to me. Nobody was disputing that Lenovo should cater to its customers, but this specific case was about something that happens all the time to all manufacturers at one point or another.

OldManClayton wrote:You guys realize that it was just a funky driver, right? Of course we want Lenovo to listen to us... but abandoning a good line of products because one update was a little messy? O_o Sounds wimpy to me. Nobody was disputing that Lenovo should cater to its customers, but this specific case was about something that happens all the time to all manufacturers at one point or another.

I couldn´t agree more! My point was only that maybe, and just maybe, not enough feedback from the customers comes to Lenovo. From a trivial Intel driver issue the thread developed into an interesting discussion

We should have an annual write-your-computer-manufacturer day. If I heard correctly, there was recently a few changes in power at Lenovo. Maybe some good could come of it and customer service (and also quality assurance) will step up a bit.

If anything - customer service will decline slightly to increase profit margins (which have been low this last quarter, to put it mildly).

I think that we will continue to see a general downward trend in the overall quality of laptops and their components regardless of manufacturer. New products need to be pumped out even more quickly so keep up with demand, so quality control is cut to a minimum across everything from hardware to software.

But there's another problem with this...
The demand for electronics has plummeted in recent months and sales have been terrible across the board. No single manufacturer or retailer is reporting anything financially positive. So now every electronics firm has to adapt or die. The largest RAM manufacturer in Germany declared bankrupcy not long ago - and they are only one of the casualties.

Where do we go from here?
Since the model has been "Planned obsolescence" for so long, and consumer greed (fueled by marketing and easy credit) has encouraged this trend, it will be very difficult for the electronics industry as a whole to adapt. Many will perish, so to speak, but positive things may yet come of it. I forsee increasing modularity and universality in parts to be the next big steps in the electronics game. This is especially exciting when you consider that laptops in their current form are virtually non-upgradable (aside from RAM and Hard Drive) and that this change could mean you can hold on to a beloved form for longer while still keeping "recent" and (more importantly) more productive. It is unlikely that this "fixed hardware computing" idea will stick around too much longer, and this means the demise of companies such as Apple (considering the path they've treaded with things like non user-replaceable batteries, etc.)

The good news: you don't have to care what happens to those companies, and if you don't like them you are still free to decide to not make that poor choice of purchase.


... now can we stop quibbling about one measly driver issue?

A great man once said "A good Wifi card does not a Computer make."

I'll be interested to see what comes of this as well... Although I doubt Apple's going anywhere for a while. Their somewhat ridiculous business plan is ignored by the masses who worship them simply because they love being chic with their shiny apple device in their pocket.

But, I seem to love Lenovo for non-existant reasons, so I'll shut up now.

Apple has one thing: great marketing.

This will, however, not save people money in a time when everyone is tightening their grip on their wallet, and if times get worse so will Apple's profits. Apple has turned into a large, slow-moving corporation (so much for "the little computer company that could") and unless they diversify their offerings and allow for easy upgradeability (or easy battery swap) they will earn the label of underpowered, expensive, pretentious crap that no longer works after a year. I'm interested to see what apple users will have to say about the lack of user-removable/replaceable battery in the next year or so. I do not see Apple dramatically modifying its business plan, so it will begin to fade - though not for some time yet. The iPhone will likely be the last casualty, although the iPod has already begun to fade into memory (who ever thought that could happen - considering how ubiquitous they were)

The trend has been and continues to be: functional convergence (into laptops and cell phones - and eventually the laptop will likely be swallowed into the cell phone), upgradeability, miniaturization, and ergonomic design. The company that offers the four aforementioned will succeed assuming that it is reasonably priced (even if it is higher than its competitors who should be lagging behind).

I could see it going both ways. People could start to realize the stupidity of some of Apple's policies, or they could continue to love them and whatever they deem is cool, adopting it even if it's the most hideous thing on earth. Either way, I think Apple's following will at least get a bit smaller, especially with Windows 7 coming out and the non user-removable batteries. I'm certainly fed up with Apple's "drop a model and support for it once the next one comes out" philosophy, and I'm surprised it hasn't been stopped by the consumers.

Of course, I guess a lot of Apple customers can afford the new model every year, unlike some of us. (Also another thing that could dent their market share. Even wealthier people may not be able to buy as many gadgets these days)

But, we digress.

@OldManClayton
From what I read in the newspapers about consumer market analysis Apple Mac/OS X is eating
noticable from Microssofts cake, picking up momentum, even more than Linux.
That really surprised me.

The big long term draw back of the Apple plattform is that many of your data is locked inside
prorietary binary Apple formats, especially compared to OSS data formats offered by Linux.

From what I observe end-customers, including a few professionals, they don't care if they have to send
it in to change a battery, they just want it to "just work" all the time or simply "do their job".
And here I see the big advanage by Apple's combined HW&SW package. It integrates well and is
significantly more "hassle free" than PCs running Windows. This is my point of criticism, connecting
with the OP: IMO Lenovo Thinkpad offering is falling noticably behind the Mac package in this respect.

Hmm, well I must be crazy, because I find my Thinkpad X61 + Office setup much more hassle-free than my brother's macbook. Oh well, not really important.