got sick of waiting for ThinkPad T43 - 266884M

[sonoma]

I live in Australia, and this particular Sonoma-ish model appeared first on the IBM Australia Web site on the 17th of February, 2005. This is also when I placed my order.

NB: This model had been the best spec T43 up until yesterday as IBM USA only had three 'basic' T43's but not 2668C3U. 2668C3U only just appeared on the IBM US site yesterday (maybe the day before yesterday). The differences between my model and 2668C3U are HDD size and wireless LAN module (abg instead of bg).

The bottom line is I am still waiting for its delivery. I feel like having ordered a full-blown x series server or something!! When I bought a R32 a couple of years ago, I only had to wait three days for it to be built and shipped. I remember ordering R32 as soon as it was released back then as well - I usually do a lot of research in prior. What has changed since then? IBM suddenly decided to sell its PC division to Lenovo sometime later this year??

I don't get it. The turnaround time should not have changed this dramatically (hopefully not the quality of the great product). After deciding it was finally time to upgrade my laptop (R32) to T43, I have been 'praying' like a child every single day for this laptop to arrive safely in my hands before the end of this month (hopefully). How would I feel if I received one with some dead or stuck pixels after all?

There seem to be some people in this forum who have already received their T43 but have found some dead pixels on their screen. If I were sent a T43 with dead pixels, I am surely going to return it back or even cancel my order altogether. You don't know what I had to go through.

My order was placed successfully and correctly through their Web site (I take due care ordering things) but they stuffed up their internal ordering system and there were so many phone calls I had to make to follow them up (like a child) to have them sort the 'internal system issues' out asap so that my order could actually be placed into their system and sent to the factory/warehouse in China.

After initially placing my order on their Web site, I had to ring them almost every day - why? because (a) they never give me any status updates on their own (even when I ask so), (b) they don't seem to be active enough in handling their internal issues with my order). Can you believe I had to 'waste' the first 6 weeks like this? to move my order every one little step forward each time I ring. Now hearing the news that some people - possibly who placed their order after me - have already started receiving their orders makes me very sad.

If a customer had to waste a couple of weeks of wait due to their internal problems, would not IBM consider arranging some special 'fast track' delivery at the least to make the customer return to their business?

Well, the bottom line is I made two official complaints to their product manager who gave me 21/03/05 as ETA but I don't think that they can make this date!!! BTW this ETA was given two weeks ago. I have completely lost my loyalty to IBM.

OK. I can forget the past. I can live with it. But if I was sent a T43 with dead pixels, I am going to be very 'nice' to IBM!

[stgreek]

The (severe) delay has nothing to do with IBM, rather with the shortage of sonoma chips. It is of course reasonable to ask why IBM didnt hold them back a little until they made sure people could get theirs...