W700 - Very Disappointed

[RogerBlake]

Well folks my new W700 has now arrived and my thoughts after only one day probably can't be repeated in polite company.

So what's the problems: well first is support or rather the lack of it.
Getting support for my T42P was never a problem and IBM were always helpful and efficient. Although it still seems to be IBM that
provides Lenovo's UK support they are now barely audible on the 'phone and refused to provide support today (Wednesday) on my system which arrived on Monday. They stated it was after some "10 day" support period following initial delivery. So I own machine that has a three year warranty yet I cannot get support for a basic O/S problem that should work out of the box. I am downgrading to Windows XP and discovered the downgrade disks don't work correctly. Following the support web site instructions for installing without a floppy for the drivers results in "Missing Operating System" after the reboot following the Rescue and Recovery Disk despite changing the BIOS options to those specified.

I am simply disgusted - they want me to obtain an invoice stating the order date - I haven't actually received that yet from the supplier - but am thinking if this is the treatment customers now get then maybe I don't actually want to be a customer of Lenovo.

I am also pretty disappointed with this system - I think the screen is lousy and wonder whether those on these forums who said what a good screen it is have actually seen a really good screen ? I know several folks here did warn of potential disappointment but I thought they might be too fussy - but apparently not. The backlight bleeds significantly in actual use. The colour variation across the screen is significant and I cannot imagine why anyone would think this screen worthy of calibration and subsequent use by photographic professionals.

The build quality is slightly lower than the T42P and the keyboard slightly worse. However regardless of all the quad cores and 4GB - which I would have found really really great - the lousy screen and appalling attitude to basic support is causing me to think seriously of returning the system as “not fit for purpose”.

So a warning - anyone wanting to run XP in RAID mode you need to go out and purchase a floppy drive and a floppy disk - assuming shops still sell the latter ! AFAIK you cannot slipstream the drivers into the XP install disks because they are all proprietary Lenovo format. I am also not impressed that they are only SP2. And as yet I don't even know if the install with floppies will work - although I now see other's here have had that problem and finally got XP installed.

Bitterly disappointed ... rant over - for now !

So I guess it's back to looking for a good second-hand IPS T42/43/60P on Ebay. They are few and far between in the UK unfortunately – maybe one a month. I guess anyone who has one knows a good thing when they own it !

Please Lenovo bring back the good ol' support, and bring back a IPS version sometime. I really loved the T42P straight out of the box and would always highly recommend it - definitely cannot say the same for the W700.

[RogerBlake]

Update: I've now tried loading XP with the floppy driver and it still fails on reboot with a STOP 0x7B blue screen. Correct drivers were loaded although the system informed me they were already on the Rescue and Restore Disk anyway. Looks like I have a major problem now which with no support from Lenovo and limited time so currently it looks like it is going back for a refund.

I've now read very carefully another forum posting on XP downgrade and it seems "deforest" was never able to boot XP from the Rescue and Recovery Disks, but only from a retail XP or a R&R created from an W700 already loaded with XP. Unfortunately I have neither legally available.

So has anyone actually got XP working with the Lenovo supplied R&R disks ?

[barrywohl]

I am sorry your experience is so frustrating.

I have not tried the XP downgrade. Vista Ultimate x64 preinstall runs well on my W700.

In the U.S., IBM EasyServ provided me excellent support from day one.

My WUXGA screen has even color across the screen. The calibration works well. I am an amateur photographer, not a professional, running Nikon Capture NX 1.3 with the new 1.5 Nikon NEF Codec in 64 bit. Nikon RAW works fine on my WUXGA.

I hope you get your issues resolved.

[deforest]

I was able to get the r&r xp installed.

Couple of things I learned, was that it was bartPE package.

One is that you have to use the ide cd/dvd. The usb cd/dvd will give errors. MS has a kb that states xp can't be installed (or can have probleems) via usb device.

I had to remove 2 gb, my machine has 4gb, and I got stuck with the full 4gb.

I'm trying to recall if I installed this in a raid or not. I have it now on a single drive, since I was booting off of that in the ultra bay, since that was my test environment to collect drivers, experiment with bart and vista pe boot disks, plus other disk/os clone tools, to manage the disks on the raid.

So for the r&r recovery, I probably used the ultrabay cd and sata mode compatiable with only 1 disk in the main bays.


For me I found a tool that was real useful, ghost solution suite 2.5 for oem/system builders. In there they have tool called deployanywhere, which will take a cloned os, in this case i cloned a t60 os onto the w700 raid 0, and injects the disk and network drivers, and then runs mini prep on system boot and installs those drivers. So I was able to effectively boot off the w700 using the t60 image.

The process was simple, boot using their boot disk, with the driver database including the network/disk drivers. Using ghost to clone the disk from the ultrabay to the raid. Then use deployanywere to inject the drivers on to the raid os. Remove ultrabay drive and the cd, and boot using the raid. Raid xp os boots, adds new disk/network drivers, and then the system boots as normal. Then add in drivers for the new devices as needed.

During my ordeal, I did get another set of r&r disks for xp from lenovo. They are marked differently, these at least have a fru number on them, and have a newer date, than the xp recovery disks that shipped with the machine. I haven't tried these to see if they behave differently.

Vista recovery onto the raid is no problem, I done that a couple of times.

[Proteus]

Why on earth would you cripple a brand new system with a 7 year old obsolete, insecure OS?

This system was designed and built for Vista x64 SP1. Server 2008 runs great on it as well, as does Windows 7.

Sure...Windows 95 is going to be blazingly fast on it too..but its also crap.

[comptiger5000]

I agree. If you absolutely need XP for something, try Server 2003 (if you can get it). It's a little newer, more secure, faster, and functionally equivalent to XP.

[RogerBlake]

I could politely ask why I should cripple my new W700 with Vista !

Windows XP runs fine and is no less secure than Vista when patched and used sensibly. Increased code bloat in Vista simply means many more as yet undiscovered security bugs. (And obsolescent software is sometimes defined as software that works correctly !)

Much of the software I use will not run on Vista or is uncertified. I cannot afford to spend thousands of pounds on unnecessary upgrades simply to get Vista compatibly when I gain no extra useful features. Vista itself has nothing much extra for my applications apart from frills and frippery. Windows 2003 in the UK costs as much as several cheap laptops ! So Windows XP remains the only sensible cost effective solutions and is likely to remain so for a number of years. If Lenovo themselves consider that the W700 should not be used to run XP they should not be advertising either the XP pre-install or the downgrade.

Having said that I might have another look at Vista over the hols - since I can't currently load XP easily I've just bought myself a book about coping with Vista quirks! (The "Green Ribbon of Death" was a new one to me)

Roger

[jdhurst]

Roger makes a few decent points here.

I now use Vista Business 64-bit on my T61p and have it now running happily and smoothly. However, as I have noted elsewhere in this forum, I had to spend a couple of thousand dollars on software upgrades to do it. Since I run a business, I needed to do this to assist with clients. And as was noted here, there is little Vista offers that XP doesn't. I can't think of anything, actually. I just did it to prove it could be done and to assist clients.

To the comment about a 7-year old obsolete operating system. Please read the news. XP Pro is such an excellent operating system that Microsoft has to keep extending the deadline to withdraw it. Businesses, by and large, have issues with spending the money to upgrade to Vista with so little payback.

I am in no way saying a person should use one OS or the other. I am justing noting the obvious points. While I myself have grown to like Vista and it is truly my daily driver, I see both sides of the coin.
... JDH

[muol]

After 7 years of running XP on my T40p I'd loved to continue using it on my W700. The only problem with XP is its limited capability of using RAM beyond 2 GB and it recognizes only 2.5 GB on my machine.

So I tested four different Windows versions (XP, XP x64, Server 2003 and Vista Business x64) on the W700, before I decided to go with Vista x64. The final reason was that Lenovo doesn't provide driver support for XP x64. Many drivers can be obtained from other sources but unfortunately not all. I ended up with a non working hot key driver and fingerprint reader. Server 2003 recognized all 4GB RAM but I ran into problems with both network cards.

But Vista is running smoothly now. After disabling all those gadgets like Aero there's no loss in performance compared to XP.

[comptiger5000]

For server 2003, you can force the drivers to install. I've seen very few XP drivers that don't work on 2003. Runs beautifully on a laptop too.

[Quagmyre]

I can hear you. I was equally shocked about the display quality when I first got my 15.4'' WSXGA+ T61p.

Forget about high-quality IPS displays. They are not going to come back.
It's all about cutting costs and maximizing profit in the mass market, and these "virtues" don't include catering a small high-profile user crowd that wants quality and might even be willing to pay for it.

Unless the panel industry comes up with an entirely new concept to increase screen quality while at the same time maintaining or even decreasing cost, we'll have to put up with the cheap low quality TN panel junk found in today's notebooks.

[RogerBlake]

I've finally managed to get a T42P UXGA IPS on Ebay and despite some hassles and potential problems with the backlight
I am again seeing why I loved my old broken T42P so much. I like this old system far better than my brand new quad W700
The screen is dimmer and suffers dark patches on the lower corners but is still way superior to the W700 screen. It really is pathetic that Lenovo cannot just admit that the IPS screen or something equivalent is necessary in a high end system and
get on and do something about getting a supply. A company this big should be capable of buying/building an LCD factory if that is what it takes, and just get on with it !

It is laughable that they're messing about with dual screen laptops when basic screen quality cannot be addressed in a satisfactory manner. I've noticed that the W700 screen can be judged just adequate in certain very controlled lighting situations as far as evenness is concerned but probably very few users have such perfect lighting. The T42P screen is nearly always excellent in a variety of lighting situations. As for field of view - well I notice recommendations that the dual screen has to be placed at 45deg to the main screen to adequately view it. What idiot came up with such a stupid concept when the main 17" screen itself can't all be viewed adequately without moving one's head. Trouble is that now with the recession I'm guessing new display technologies will be delayed a year or two so I'm expecting new screens as good as IPS to appear again in about five years time maybe.

Off course if laptops get even bigger - say 2560x1920 30" then they'll be no problem as those IPS screen seem to be readily available - W3000 anyone

Roger

P.S. Update on my Windows XP on W700 problems - new recovery disks eventually received from Lenovo worked fine - only the startup disk had changed. Prior to receiving them I did find that I could load the original recovery disks in just one BIOS mode - probably compatability -. Then a new disk set created from the newly loaded OS did work fine in all BIOS SATA chipset modes, including RAID without any problems. New recovery startup disk was dated October 2008 rather than July 2008 for the original one.

[Pocket Aces]

Windows XP wasn't built with quad cores, x64, or massive amounts of RAM, etc, in mind. If you're going to downgrade, you lose much of the functions that you paid so much for.

[RogerBlake]

Windows XP runs fine and uses all quad cores, but admittedly not all the memory. Given Vista bloat
the memory issue might not be too important in practice anyway ?

However I do use linux too and that WILL use the high end spec stuff just great ... I think it's just the
fingerprint reader won't work - and those never work with my fingers anyway !