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Please read this before you buy a Lenovo Thinkpad.I have owned several laptops in the past and I this year it was a good time to replace my 500$ Acer home laptop which is still working after 4 years.
Since I use my computer as my main working tool I decided I was going to get something that is robust. A business laptop.
My first choice was an Asus Business edition and I regret that I did not bought the Asus vs this Lenovo.
After several failed HP (screen dies and other problems) I was recommended to get a ThinkPad, its suppose to be a Enterprise laptop and to be a rock solid computer initially designed by IBM.
IBM is really trashing their brand leaving their ThinkPad name to Lenovo.
This Lenovo I got here from Amazon and its not even 2 months old and I just have problems I never had with other laptops.
First, let me say that from day 1 I could never open the "Smart Audio" control panel that comes with this Lenovo. I just go an error "Failed to initialize Smartaudio.....
I updated the drivers for this several times, there seems to be just fine but I cant open this thing at all.
This is annoying on a brand new laptop. The software that comes with Lenovo their Access Connections, Power Manager etc is a garbage. The system will suffer from load performances because of this badly programmed software running in the background. Example, when the system goes to sleep it disconnects the wireless device. After waking up the system you will find out you dont have Internet for at least 5 minutes, until it turns on again. Actually it turns on again by you will just have no connectivity.
The screen has dead pixels, if you see it from the sight I can see a bright spot in the screen, something that never happened in my cheap Acer laptops.
I have a logitech laptop stand, now here comes the strange thing. You have the laptop in bed or in this stand the laptop is not in horizontal position and it starts to make a strange sound like if the hard disk is starting to fail. If you put the laptop on a table in normal position again it stops. This is highly annoying, I checked the drive several times and it seems fine. Still this electronic sound it makes every 15 seconds is strange.
2 times the computer started to make an horrible sound and I just had to reboot it and it was gone.
The system is slow. Very slow, when I boot another Acer One, which has a cheap Atom processor and 1 GB ran its twice as fast booting as this i5. I can start browsing in Chrome already and in this Lenovo I still see the Windows 7 loading icon. I suspect something is wrong with the power manager software that this computer is just not performing like it should. It doesnt feel like a new computer at all.
It also never locks correctly. Example, if I go away 20 minutes and come back the screen is off, and Windows is suppose to be locked, when you move the mouse the screen turns on and instead of seeing the Windows Log on screen you see first "Windows is locking..." and then it locks itself and then you can log in again. What ???? Everything just seems to work horrible.
Last week I opened VmWare and suddenly the full screen change to a vertical position, I have this lenovo reading optimization installed but it was turned OFF, I have to open this software, turn it on and then again off so the screen would go back to a normal position.
Today and the reason im writing this review is something that just raised my blood levels to anger for a laptop I paid over 1300$.
I played a youtube video and suddenly the whole system was frozen. I mean the whole computer !!! The speakers started to make an horrible loud sound, nothing was responding, not even the power button. Was this Windows 7 crashing? I never saw Windows 7 crashing and if it was the OS at least you can hard reset the system. No with this Lenovo you cant. The power buttons would not do nothing. Unplugging the power neither. I had to take the battery off to kill the system.
This is just to much. This computer is garbage honestly. It was allot of features and stuff you would say WOW, but I cannot trust this system anymore with my data. This is for sure not a IBM ThinkPad at all. The reviews that say you can drop this laptop from 50 feet of go with a car over it... Well I think if I would drop this laptop from 3 feet high I would break. Only moving this laptop around and playing a video at the same time and the video will start to play sluggish, the minute you stop moving the laptop it plays fine.
My Bluetooth 50$ plantronics headset doesn't work with this correctly either. The minute you go 3 feet away from the laptop the sound goes horrible, so you have move again infront of the laptop so the Bluetooth will be in range again. I suspect the bluetooth is just to weak, the signal is so weak that if you go just 10 feet away it will disconnect. Why do you want a wireless headset if you need to sit infront of the PC all the time?
I could go on and on about the problems I have, in Skype I hear myself when talking as well, something it works perfectly and other times it doesnt. This when I use the build in mic and speakers. It doesnt do echo cancelling at all like it should, the webcam is suppose to be HD but its terrible as well. Colors are washed out.
The keyboard on Thinkpads is suppose to be the best keyboards in laptops. I just hate it from day one. I thought, ok give it time, you will get used to it. No, the design is just made by a monkey. Honestly the IBM design is fine but Lenovo just introduce changes that make it terrible. The control key in the left is not in the default position. This is just bad, I use Logitech external keyboards all the time and I cant get used to this, you always hit the Fn key instead. And Lenovo decide to put a forward and backward keys next to the arrows key. Oh boy !! What a terrible mistake. If you happen to hit one of this accidentally, you will go away from the page you are, which happens allot. Example, im writing this review here on Amazon and I have to be very carefully not to hit them by mistake or I will just lose everything I just typed here when the browser goes backward or forwards depending on which key you pressed by mistake.
The battery is also a bit lose, it doesn't fit tight. I would not expect this from a quality laptop and they even recommend you Lenovo batteries...
A battery should fit perfectly and not move once its secured. A friend of my with another Thinkpad suffers from this as well so Its just bad quality testing from Lenovo. And his system suffers from slow performance as well, he has a i7 and it gets to hot that you can burn yourself. At least this is 1 positive thing I can say about my Lenovo, is just doesnt overheat ever.
To finish this, I have a 23 inch Samsung monitor. If I plug this to this Lenovo the screen will flicker. I tried everything, resolution change, drivers updating, using the Nvidia card or the integrated Intel, nothing, the screen just flickers and you can really see this on black backgrounds. You can plug any other laptop and it doesn't so this.
I think all problems are related to something in the power settings or maybe the power adapter or just bad quality hardware. On the end I don't care, I dont have to figure this out for myself. Lenovo should before shipping a laptop.
So since im travelling I just cannot return this. Otherwise im thinking into going to a Lenovo store in the country im right now and have a replacement. The problem is I dont want Lenovo anymore. This is the worst possible laptop you can buy. Remember this is not a 500$ laptop. It costed me over a grant and I also bought the leather lenovo case for almost 99$.
It seems you can really see this is not made by IBM anymore. Its just a cheap laptop, they put tons of features most that work correctly and put the thinkpad name to sell it for a more expensive price. This is for sure a cheap quality laptop and from design its ugly as well. Everyone ask me if this is a laptop from the 90s and its heavy. I dont care about design, I knew it was ugly but I wanted something that could stand hard usage, a rock solid laptop for work. This is for sure not a work laptop. It feels cheap and it works cheap. It suffers from almost unlimited problems that will just make you hate this laptop.
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