New Thinkpad(s) owner

[pmperry]

Making an initial post because I am a "newbie" ThinkPad owner. (See my signature for details). I just purchased two of them and look forward to visiting this forum regularly for insights and help.

By the way, do you all prefer buying ThinkPads from retail outlets or direct? Reason I ask is that I purchased both computers from a retail store here in Manhattan. And my T60p required Windows updates from as far back as January of this year. I am wondering if the machine has been sitting in stock that long! I suppose Lenovo could have shipped it to the store without the latest updates though. (If it means anything -- the T60p has the IBM logo in the lower right corner: Is that no longer present with the newer laptops?)

Anyhow, not complaining, just curious. The computers are working great. Love em!

[carbon_unit]

Welcome to the forum. We look forward to your experiences with your thinkpads. If you have any questions feel free to ask. There is a lot of good info in the posts on this board. Searching can reveal a wealth of answers for your questions.
Here, have a banana.

[rleo25]

Welcome pmperry! In the same sticker in which it appears the serial number you will find -bottom right corner- two numbers sepparated wiith a slash: that´s the date the notebook came out from factory. It makes a lot of sense the machine was in stock several months and has a lot of software to update. Congratulations on your purchase, T60 are a hell of tough hard work machines...

[tfflivemb2]

...<snip>...And my T60p required Windows updates from as far back as January of this year. I am wondering if the machine has been sitting in stock that long! I suppose Lenovo could have shipped it to the store without the latest updates though.!

They tend to use the same image for each of the same models. Your model could be very recent, but the image was from January...

[ryengineer]

They tend to use the same image for each of the same models. Your model could be very recent, but the image was from January...

Second that.

snip...........the T60p has the IBM logo in the lower right corner: Is that no longer present with the newer laptops?).......snip

As far as logo goes, here are few forum threads:

labelling

IBM or ThinkPad badge

An article from lenovoblogs: Same Product, Different Stickers.

In short, under 5 years agreement with IBM, lenovo is allowed to bear IBM name and logo, from 2008 all lenovo products will come without IBM badge.

[pmperry]

Thanks for the warm welcome and kind words everyone.

Regarding the issue of shipping dates, it seems the T60p was on the retailer's shelf a bit longer than the other machine. I checked the labels on the back of each machine and here are the entries:

T60p: 07/03
Z61m: 07/08

Btw, it's worth noting that the year comes first. Could be ambiguous sometimes.

[GomJabbar]

Welcome!

BTW, the warrany starts from the date the Notebook left the factory, not the date you bought it. You can check the actual warranty expiration date from the following link.

Warranty and License Agreement

If you decide to add additional warranty, be sure to do it before your existing warranty expires.

[ryengineer]

snip.........BTW, the warrany starts from the date the Notebook left the factory, not the date you bought it. You can check the actual warranty expiration date from the following link......snip

I too always thought it worked exactly that way; until someone more knowledgeable corrected me.

Warranty does not start from the manufacturing date, it starts from the date of purchase, the one printed on the invoice from lenovo or authorized business partner.

The case of buying directly from lenovo is different as resetting the date to the closest of the date of delivery is one of a part of the final checklist before they dispatch the product to the customer.

Buying from a business partner means you can definitely expect a product that sat few months in a warehouse doing just nothing but decreasing the time of warranty. However, when this product is bought, what these business partners forget to do is to request IBM to reset the date. I am not sure if these guys will help you once they have sold a product, but please do remember you're not dealing with lenovo/IBM but with some individuals who have bought a portion of products from lenovo and have agreed to be the part of this program following the guidelines set by lenovo.

When it comes to customers, yes they can request for "date reset" to show the correct warranty date from IBM by faxing out their POP with other required documents.

Btw, it's worth noting that the year comes first. Could be ambiguous sometimes.

It has always been that way, atleast from the time I've seen. The dates you mentioned are very less ambiguous though as there was never a T60p in 2003.

[GomJabbar]

I too always thought it worked exactly that way; until someone more knowledgeable corrected me.

Warranty does not start from the manufacturing date, it starts from the date of purchase, the one printed on the invoice from lenovo or authorized business partner.

I am glad to hear this is the case. However when I bought my T42 from IBM a couple of years ago, this did not seem to be the case. I bought the T42 brand new from Cost Central. When I went to renew the warrany a few days before the anniversary of my purchase, I found out I was too late. The one-year warranty started some days before I ever ordered the T42 from Cost Central.

[ryengineer]

snip.......The one-year warranty started some days before I ever ordered the T42 from Cost Central.

Sorry to hear that as I said before these business partners seldom do a favor to customers by requesting IBM to reset the date but it can also be done by owners later on by contacting IBM and bringing this sort of matter to the attention of appropriate department which will require POP to be faxed.

If I'm not wrong then Thinkpad T42 was one of the machine IBM stopped offering warranty services for.

Service for the WAMO (Warranty and Maintenance Option) product begins at the machine's date of purchase.