Z-series shipping delays

[Ken Fox]

I had 30 seperate orders backlogged... Nothing but BS from Lenovo management and PR about it...

Not trying to contradict you but here's my experience. I have ordered and received 3 systems, all of which were delivered to me in the last month. All three showed fairly long lead times at the time I ordered them so at least I had warning. Two of them shipped way earlier than the originally predicted lead times. The one system that did not ship on time was a closeout item ordered from a saved cart that was saved several weeks before and the item was not longer listed for sale on the website when I put the order through. A phone call resolved the problem and I got that system quickly also. Arguably it was my own fault for procrastinating on placing that order and putting it through at a time that Lenovo was no longer listing the system (a T43) for sale.

One of the systems has turned out to be defective (X60 with hot right palmrest documented in X60 forum). A tech was very helpful today and gave me a number to call to hopefully get an exchange, and even looked up the case numbers for me to present to the salesperson when I got connected. With no fight whatsoever the salesperson arranged for an exchange, the cost of which appears to be (including 3 shipments when this is over with) entirely born by Lenovo.

I'm not any sort of special customer and have no media links. They have no reason to try to satisfy me more than anyone else.

So far, I'm pretty satisfied with their service, as satisfied as I was with the 4 prior systems I bought directly from IBM.

[andreasimone]

Sounds like some of you have had great luck! I have dealt extensively with the customer service, as well as with the corporate, as the order has had issues . . . currently I am holding on because I got the sale price from December, plus an additional 10% off because of the 2.5 month delay. But every two weeks I have heard another story. While all of customer service has been pretty nice, sometimes they just can't do anything, because they don't seem to have direct communication with the warehouse. It's the Z61t . . . it better be worth the wait, if it ever comes!

[andreasimone]

Should I cancel my order and get a notebook that comes with Vista installed?

[Ken Fox]

Sounds like some of you have had great luck! I have dealt extensively with the customer service, as well as with the corporate, as the order has had issues . . . currently I am holding on because I got the sale price from December, plus an additional 10% off because of the 2.5 month delay. But every two weeks I have heard another story. While all of customer service has been pretty nice, sometimes they just can't do anything, because they don't seem to have direct communication with the warehouse. It's the Z61t . . . it better be worth the wait, if it ever comes!

Is there something very unique about your configuration? I ordered a 9442 model with T2500 (2ghz Core Duo) processor in very early January and it shipped about a week later. All of this was done online and I never spoke to a human being, just ordered online and then received it from the UPS Man. Original ship date was something like 1/23 but it shipped several days after the order was placed, about 10 days to 2 weeks before the scheduled ship date.

Of course, a heavily customized order could have delays for any reason. Mine was basically off the shelf, a standard system.

[Ken Fox]

Should I cancel my order and get a notebook that comes with Vista installed?

I think you have 2 reasonable choices. You can take the machine they will ship now with XP on it, pay $10 for a Vista Upgrade disk, and then install Vista at your leisure after the beta testers have found the most obvious flaws during the next few months. This will give you stable and reliable computing with XP until you decide that Vista is worth the hassle and the risk. If you have an imaging program like Acronis Truimage or Norton Ghost, you can copy your XP installation before the upgrade and you could always go back to XP if you decide that Vista isn't worth the aggravation. So, for $10 you get your choice of two operating systems.

Alternatively, you could get a system preloaded with Vista. If you don't like it then tough, there is no going back to XP, and if you order it in the next couple or three or four months, you are going to have to put up with the aggravations of being an early adopter with a new MS operating system (something I'd not wish on most people).

Or, you could wait 6 months until most of the early Vista issues are resolved and buy a preloaded system then. You will of course have to go without a new system during those 6 months and use whatever you have now (or nothing) until then. The potential benefit would be that whatever system they are selling in 6 months will be more powerful than the systems they sell now and will probably be cheaper. But then you could always use that argument when it comes to buying computer systems and taken to its logical extreme that would mean buying a computer just before you croak so you can spend eternity with it 6 feet under.

[dsalyers]

Should I cancel my order and get a notebook that comes with Vista installed?

I have played with Windows Vista on a spare machine for awhile now. I can say I would not recommend that you jump over to vista just yet. Using the OS, it seems stable enough, however there are a number of issues that prevent me from wanting to put it on my main system.

1) Vista is new and requires new device drivers. Not all manufactures are have put up vista drivers yet.

2) Some software does not run under vista (although I have not had too many of these). Or I would have to buy an upgrade to my current software to get it up and running.

3) The User Interface is inconsistent. One of my favorite examples is that in the folder view the address drop down box will contain web pages, but if you click on a webpage you will be told that the folder window can not open that location.

So, for these and many other reasons I would wait to install Vista until after SP1 is released before the end of the year

Hope your system ships soon.