Totally destroyed my faith in Thinkpads. TOTALLY.
Written: Feb 26 '01
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Pros: Very cute and light
Cons: Unreliable, criminally negligent tech support, no ports or floppy, a true Helen Keller machine
The Bottom Line: A total disaster. IBM tech support, normally very sharp, helped me reduce it to a non-booting hulk, and stranded me with the wreckage. Criminals! It IS cute though...
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| expert_witness's Full Review: IBM Thinkpad X Series |
This has been the laptop from hell. After just a week of ownership, with nearly two 8-hour days on the phone with IBM tech support (they got paid for it, I didn't), my brand new X20 won't even boot and IBM is refusing to support their machine. Their 3-year warranty is a sham, since they can (and have) claimed that they don't cover software, even their own factory-owned software.
First, some backstory.
For ten years I've owned nothing but Thinkpads. I've had 760s, a 560, a 570, and I naturally assumed my new X20 would be the latest and greatest refinement of the form.
Since IBM only sells direct and through a few mail order firms, it's impossible to see and handle a new Thinkpad without purchasing it first. ShopIBM offers a return policy, along with the highest prices, but none of the other vendors do (thanks to their agreements with IBM); I chose a less-expensive vendor and researched my purchase as well as I could by talking with IBM pre-sales, reps at several mail order vendors (PCMall, etc) and the IBM website. I thought I knew what I was getting into.
Ha!
Fresh out of the box, FIRST IMPRESSION: it's extremely cute, very small, retains a full-size keyboard and a reasonably sized (12.1") screen. A perfect machine for a writer like me who merely wants to word-process in restaurants, in the car, anywhere. But five minutes after my first oohs and aahs, it hit me -- how do I get whatever I write out? The unit doesn't ship with a floppy drive (um...okay, I can always buy a USB floppy drive) and it doesn't have a printer port (um...okay, I can always buy a USB printer). I called IBM and asked if the ports were hidden somewhere (since even the help software on the X20 refers to the machine's serial and parallel ports) and the IBM rep told me yes, it did indeed have serial and parallel ports, and only after swearing up and down that I didn't see them, couldn't find them, where are they, did he actually do some "research" and inform me that oh, yes, I'm sorry, they're actually on the (heavy) ultrabase for the machine, along with a floppy and a CD Rom. So much for "super-portable"! If I wanted a machine with all that heavy stuff in it, wouldn't I have bought a Thinkpad T20 instead? So five minutes in, I'm wishing I could return it.
Then the REAL fun began.
I noticed the machine took a while to come out of suspend mode, so a friendly IBM tech suggested installing the latest drivers from their website. (Why I should need new drivers on a day-old machine escapes me.) He had me upgrade the BIOS as well. Suddenly the machine wouldn't go into suspend mode at all, and its built-in FlashCard reader no longer worked. Twelve(count them TWELVE) hours on the phone with IBM tech support hadn't resolved the issue, no matter how many drivers they had me download and replace. (An IBM tech tried "It's not our problem, it's a third party item, you should contact Kodak, they made the flash card." That got me mad...)
They ran out of ideas, so they suggested using the recovery software to wipe the hard drive and restore the software to factory-fresh condition. (Say goodbye to the hours I spent installing my software and files...) I was instructed to press F11 to recover the machine, and many hours later my drive was completely wiped and reconfigured to "factory specs". But it still wouldn't work properly! At which point I said look, I'm sending this thing in and YOU figure it out, you're technicians, not me -- and they told me I couldn't because "it's a software problem, and software isn't covered by the terms of our warranty agreement." Excuse me? It's got factory-restored software, and you won't cover it? They told me to contact Microsoft!
So I did. And I conferenced them in. I literally had Microsoft on Line 2 tell IBM on Line 1 that it was clearly a hardware problem, while IBM insisted it was a software problem. In the end, both parties finally agreed not to help me. And after following their commands to remove things from Device Manager etc, my machine would no longer even boot into Windows!
The IBM tech said I had no choice but to recover the hard drive AGAIN. I disgustedly pressed F11, and this time nothing happened. "Oh, we've got a patch for F11 functionality, just download it from our website and you'll be able to recover your machine." How am I supposed to download anything, the machine won't boot into Windows? "Oh..." he said. Then "Download it on another machine, and copy it over to the X20." How am I supposed to do that, the machine doesn't even have a floppy drive? "Oh..."
And the kicker. "You can BUY a USB floppy drive for $89 from ShopIBM, it's the only one we guarantee to work, or you can send the machine to us and we can reconfigure your hard drive for $187."
I will not repeat my response.
In short, in just over a week, with FIFTEEN hours of tech support, my X20 has been reduced to a non-booting hulk that IBM doesn't want to support. Even if it did work as designed, it's crippled by its design.
I'm too weary to be disgusted.
After years of loyal customerhood, it has taken a single product and a handful of tech support technicians to make me never want to buy an IBM product again. How's that for a review?
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1500
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: 401-500
Screen Size: 12
RAM: 64
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expert_witness
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Reviews written: 22
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