My first Thinkpad experience

[patfla]

Posted this on my ISP. Might be interesting to put it here as well

...

Well that was sort of interesting. A short, but furious ride that will, presumably, soon be over. Various conclusions may be drawn one of which, of course, is caveat emptor.

My Certified Used T42 has what I think most would agree to be a fatal problem. You can run if off AC, but it refuses (is unable to run) off of batttery alone. At the first IBM business unit I went through today (on the phone - first out of three), it was more-or-less determined that while the battery icon was there and the battery appears to be charging. Well it was charging, but it was something that the (quite good) tech support guy had seen before. There's a problem in the motherboard connection and the battery can't, in effect, return power to the motherboard. Nice.

It gets better. The only way to fix this is to swap in a new (presumably good) motherboard. The first guy was quite agreeable about this. He was somewhat unsure of the details of my Certified Used warranty (which is for 6 mths - unusually long for Certified Used). He wrote me up a ticket (subject to someone else later on checking the details of the Warranty). A box would arrive tmw; the machine would go somewhere; the bad motherboard would be swappped for a good way (and presumably tested); and then shipped back. And I should have it maybe by Wed of next wk (it's now [for the record] Thurs of this wk).

Excellent. Later the Warranty woman called. "Good news, you're covered". Blah, blah, blah. Which was true in one sense but completely wrong in another.

She said I needed though to call a third IBM business unit. The people 'who actually do Certified Used'. IBM Global Financing or something like that.

Call this person. He's quite unpleasant, unforthcoming and defensive from the start. Doubtless because he's been in the position many times before. Or rather it's his job.

The Certified Used _Limited_ Warranty works as follows. You send us the bad machine. If we have a suitable replacment, we sent it to you (but supply is limited). If not, we give you your money back. Certain parts are defined as 'user-replacable' in which case we (IBM) will send you that part. That doesn't cover motherboards.

I spent several months watching Certified Used, to see a machine come up whose screen does more than 1024 X 768. I consider 1024 X 768 a non-starter. I don't consider the likelihood of their having a replacement machine to be good, and my expectation is that I'll simply get my money back.

So it could have been worse I suppose. I did buy (and already installed) an extra stick of 512MB DRAM. Bought it for $60 from a company on the peninsula. Will call tmw them to see if I can return it; if not then maybe I'll sell it on EBay for, say, $30-40.

Oh well.

pat

[kyrotech]

Thats the problem with Certified Used Computer / Laptops... you can get lucky and never have a problem...or experience what just happened.

And IBM service, well, you know